“The ‘rational actor’ theory, which seeks the ‘origin’ of acts, strictly economic or not, in
an ‘intention’ of ‘consciousness’, is
often associated with a narrow conception of the ‘rationality’ of practices, an economism which regards as
rational (or, which amounts to the
same thing in this logic, as economic) those practices that are consciously oriented by the pursuit of
maximum (economic) profit at minimum
(economic) cost. Finalist economism explains practices by relating them directly and exclusively to
economic interests, treated as
consciously posited ends; mechanistic economism relates them no less directly and exclusively to economic
interests, defined just as narrowly
but treated as causes. Both are unaware that practices can have other principles than mechanical
causes or conscious ends and can obey
an economic logic without obeying narrowly economic interests. There is an economy of practices, a reason
immanent in practices, whose ‘origin’ lies
neither in the ‘decisions’ of reason understood as rational calculation nor in the
determinations of mechanisms external to
and superior to the agents. Being constitutive of the structure of rational practice, that is, the practice
most appropriate to achieve the
objectives inscribed in the logic of a particular field at the lowest cost, this economy can be defined in
relation to all kinds of functions,
one of which, among others, is the maximization of monetary profit, the only one recognized by economism.
In other words, if one fails to
recognize any form of action other than rational action or mechanical reaction, it is impossible to
understand the logic of all the
actions that are reasonable without being the product of a reasoned design, still less of rational
calculation; informed by a kind of
objective finality without being consciously organized in relation to an explicitly constituted end;
intelligible and coherent without
springing from an intention of coherence and a deliberate decision; adjusted to the future without
being the product of a project or a
plan. And, if one fails to see that the economy described by economic theory is a particular case of
a whole universe of economies, that
is, of fields of struggle differing both in the stakes and scarcities that are generated within
them and in the forms of capital
deployed in them, it is impossible to account for the specific forms, contents and leverage points thus
imposed on the pursuit of maximum
specific profits and on the very general optimizing strategies (of which economic strategies in the narrow
sense are one form among others). (p.
50-51)
Economism is a form of
ethnocentrism. Treating pre-capitalist
economies, in Marx’s phrase, ‘as the Fathers of the Church treated the religions which preceded Christianity’, it
applies to them categories, methods
(economic accountancy, for example) or concepts (such as the notions of interest, investment or capital)
which are the historical product of
capitalism and which induce a radical transformation of their object, similar to the historical
transformation from which they arose.
Economism recognizes no other form of interest than that which capitalism has produced, through a kind of
real operation of abstraction, by
setting up a universe of relations between man and man based, as Marx says, on ‘callous cash
payment’ and more generally by favouring
the creation of relatively autonomous fields, capable of establishing their own axiomatics (through
the fundamental tautology ‘business is
business’, on which ‘the economy’ is based). It can therefore find no place in its analyses,
still less in its calculations, for
any form of ‘non-economic’ interest. It is as if economic calculation had been able to
appropriate the territory objectively
assigned to the remorseless logic of what Marx calls ‘naked self-interest’, only by
relinquishing an island of the ‘sacred’,
miraculously spared by the ‘icy waters of egoistic calculation’, the refuge of what has no
price because it has too much or too
little. But, above all, it can make nothing of universes that have not performed such a dissociation and
so have, as it were, an economy in
itself and not for itself. Thus, any partial or total objectification of the archaic economy that
does not include a theory of the
subjective relation of misrecognition which agents adapted to this economy maintain with its ‘objective’
(that is, objectivist) truth, succumbs
to the most subtle and most irreproachable form of ethnocentrism. […] By reducing this economy to its ‘objective’
reality, economism annihilates the
specificity located precisely in the socially
maintained discrepancy between the ‘objective’ reality and the social representation of production and exchange.
It is no accident that the vocabulary of
the archaic economy is entirely made up of double-sided notions that are condemned to disintegrate
in the very history of the economy,
because, owing to their duality, the social relations that they designate represent unstable
structures which inevitably split in two
as soon as the social mechanisms sustaining them are weakened.” (p. 112-3)"
Source: https://economicsociology.org/2017/07/19/pierre-bourdieu-economism-is-a-form-of-ethnocentrism/
"Bourdieu evoca um continuum de atividades muito diversas, no qual a atividade de produção simbólica do produto ocupa um lugar mais ou menos importante, tendo cada um sua especificidade. A alta costura, por exemplo, caracteriza-se pela necessidade de inovação permanente. A produção automobilística notabiliza-se entre outras pela preocupação com o design , a criação de marcas e de modelos. Enquanto os autores da economia neoclássica, e mesmo sociólogos que limitam sua atenção à especificidade da economia de certos bens "diferentes de outros", qualificam de "standards " os bens de uso quotidiano, Bourdieu faz referência aos produtos que possuem uma carga simbólica mais ou menos importante: como em A distinção (1979), o sentido atribuído aos produtos ou às práticas não pode ser pensado de modo essencialista, porém relativo. O caráter "standard" ou "simbólico" dos bens não pode ser visto como uma propriedade intrínseca. A distinção entre bens "standard" e bens simbólicos é uma disputa e um instrumento de lutas no espaço em que as trocas econômicas ocorrem. Nada é mais classificador em relação ao indivíduo que seu endereço, a aparência de sua casa, seu modo de se vestir, de comer ou, ainda, a marca de seu carro. Esses são os gostos associados ao quotidiano, que os economistas nomeiam de "preferências reveladas", explicam o sentido da boutade segundo a qual "os classificadores são classificados por sua classificação" (Bourdieu, 1979)."
Marie-France Garcia-Parpet (2013)
http://www.scielo.br/pdf/sant/v3n5/2238-3875-sant-03-05-0091.pdf
http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_arttext&pid=S2238-38752013000500091
