 Daughter in a Rocker by H. Lyman Saÿen, born Philadelphia, PA 1875-died Philadelphia, PA 1918 Smithsonian American Art Museum. Record ID: edanmdm:saam_1967.6.4 Today’s urgent challenges, inequality, deprivation, marginalization, mobility, housing, displacement, and ecological and care crises, cannot be addressed through a narrow conception of markets. These are phenomena that unfold over time and in contexts (processes). They are shaped by power, subordination, vested interests, and even predation (hierarchies of domination). They affect people’s bodies, lives, communities, and ecosystems (provisioning and deprivations of life). To address the seriousness of current realities and to make sense of multidimensional crises, economics needs to build on broader and deeper foundations. Instead of organizing analysis around machine-like conceptions of individual and collective interactions, and universalizing behavior and goals, three concepts serve as a shared orientation towards addressing system-wide economic problems: processes, provisioning for life, and hierarchies of domination.
Processes are not mechanisms or subjective complexities. Provisioning is not just about markets, exchange, and scarcity choices. Hierarchies are not only unequal outcomes or conflicts resolved in strategic games. These concepts reflect a long tradition in political economy and continue to animate various strands of contemporary economic research, often broadly referred to as “heterodox economics”. On the other hand, a supply-demand mechanistic interaction describes aspects of markets but falls short as a foundation for a theory of distribution and for explaining the actual conditions of economic life. Further, reducing the economy to an exchange-based choice and strategic games that resolve narrowly construed conflicts molds a narrow scope and a shallow view of systems and economic relations. 1. The Economy as a Process of Life, not Mechanisms Thinking in terms of unfolding process means recognizing two essential features of economic life: historical emergence, and cumulative causation and impacts over time. Both entail recognizing the centrality of bodies and ecosystems in analyzing economic activities and outcomes. Historical emergence: Economic activities' outcomes and phenomena are products of particular histories and social organization. Also, it takes time to sustain lives through care and to develop resources and (re)build economies and networks. Cumulative causation and effects: Economic decisions and outcomes build on one another in a cumulative manner (snowballing, positive feedback, systemic effects). There is also irreversibility in living systems, such as in the impacts of economic outcomes on human bodies and lives. Environmental degradation, lost skills from long-term unemployment, depleted savings from lost income, or chronic illness caused by economic stress cannot be entirely undone. Consequently, conceptions of equilibrating and balancing markets, and of individual and group strategic conflict resolution, exclude crucial aspects of economies. For example, access to essentials like housing cannot be fully addressed by re-balancing supply when there are cumulative effects of social stratification and unequal incomes and wealth. Instead, opening economic analysis leads to a multitude of actions, rather than extrapolating on one aspect of a problem. 2. The Economy as Social Provisioning: Sustaining and Depriving Lives The economy is an evolving set of social processes through which societies support populations, but also limit the means of living and institutionalize enduring processes of deprivation. Viewing the economy as a system of social provisioning has three implications. First, it bases the analysis of the economy on society and nature. Production, care, distribution, consumption, and development of resources and tools are socially organized, dependent on, and impactful to ecosystems. This embeddedness has a broader meaning than just resolving conflicts through individual choices and collective norms. This is evident in long-term processes such as oppression, care provision, and environmental degradation. Second, the concept of social provisioning broadens what counts as economic activity to include activities outside markets, such as unpaid care and community work. Care is the most basic economic activity, essential to any economy's functioning. It appears in many forms and is provided in various ways. In any case, care is unquestionably more important to economic life and produces more information in the shared pool of knowledge than, for example, asset trading or gambling in prediction markets. Still, care as an economic activity has long been sidelined in economics. Third, the social provisioning view of the economy avoids mixing private, public, and community-based provision. This means that these economic activities are recognized and appreciated as being driven by different logic, goals, and measures of effectiveness In this broader view of the economy, market exchange is just one type of economic relationship. Other diverse economic interactions across areas of life include gift-giving, reciprocity, obligation, sacrifice, tribute, and debt, which people experience and rely on in their everyday lives. This broader perspective also shifts economic priorities. Instead of framing most questions around how to allocate fixed resources, more systemic questions emerge: What hinders the development and availability of resources? What are the impacts on ecosystems? Is care adequately supported? How can we reduce deprivation and expand human capabilities, community strength, and autonomy? How do we live within ecosystems and act in ways that honor humanity and everyone's essential needs? Are resources being directed toward long-term well-being? What does a democratic organization of work look like? How can we achieve democratic environmental adaptation? 3. Hierarchies and Powers Economic systems are not neutral or harmonious spaces where everyone participates equally by exchanging their “endowed factors” through choices. Instead, they are organized by hierarchies of class, race, gender, nationality, and ownership, which influence who benefits, who has mobility, who lacks autonomy, who bears risks and how, who participates, and whose work and contributions are valued. These hierarchies are embedded in institutions and everyday practices, as well as in individual behavior and decision-making. They influence wages, occupational status, access to credit, exposure to environmental harm, and political voice. They also contribute to cultural ideas about worth, wealth, productivity, belonging, efficiency, and success. Social hierarchies form as economies grow capable of producing more than needed for basic survival, creating a surplus. Hierarchies of domination get reinforced through ongoing processes such as invidious distinction (acting out of a sense of superiority), centralization of decision-making, violence, exploitation, surveillance, ceremonial authority (mis-attribution or over-attribution of value), and ideology. These hierarchies influence not only income distribution but also dignity, safety, access to education, and opportunities. Therefore, examining and challenging the endurance of hierarchies of dominance is at the very heart of relevant economics. While hierarchies entail the exercise of power, power is not solely about domination and subordination. Power also pertains to (collectively) challenging hierarchical processes and the effects of hierarchy-based economic decisions and outcomes that hinder democracy, human development, and full participation in the economy. Why These Concepts Matter, Now? It is hard to deny that today’s crises are deeply interconnected. Environmental, financial, employment, energy, infrastructure, social, housing, political, displacement, health, and care provision crises cannot be tackled alone. Analyzing these problems requires: 1) a process perspective to understand how patterns develop and reinforce themselves; 2) a provisioning perspective to assess whether economic activity sustains life and ecosystems or favors vested interests; 3) a focus on hierarchies to see how benefits and burdens are distributed and to shift powers away from market central planning and concentration of economic decision-making. We face the increasing centralization of market activities and decision-making due to the concentration of production, retail, information, technology, financial markets, and wealth, as well as to corporate-style governance and the growing fragmentation of nature. This means exponential growth in private central planning of production, consumption, recreation, and other areas of economic life, such as education and citizenship. Reconnecting economics with the questions that originally motivated political economy - the system of production and distribution, and socialized individuals - is crucial for addressing global and social stratification, environmental degradation, authoritarian pressures, and a changing technological, business, and public landscapes. Economic language is often used loosely in public discourse and even in academic discussions and publications. Sometimes, economic terms use the same or similar words but refer to different conceptual frameworks. For this reason, clarity in conceptual focus avoids confusion about the scope, meanings, and goals of economics and counteracts demagogy. Focusing economics around processes, social provisioning, and hierarchies does not eliminate theoretical disagreements and variation in economic analyses, which is what inquiry is about after all. Many economists work with all or some of those concepts in mind. However, there needs to be greater conceptual clarity in discussions and a broader shared orientation towards living systems, rather than doctrinal, mechanical premises that are not relevant or helpful for the lives of most people. Without clear conceptual reframing and understanding, many economic analyses and recommendations would keep justifying harmful outcomes and providing underwhelming or even fake solutions. We need to treat economic outcomes as historical artifacts of social systems structured by entrenched hierarchies that impede democratic economic life. We cannot address persistent harmful trends with narrow and trivializing economic foundations. Cite this Blog: Todorova, Zdravka. (March 5, 2026). “Three Concepts for a Relevant Living Economics, Blog # 4, www.ztodorova.net Suggested Readings: Routledge Handbook of Heterodox Economics, 2nd edition, edited by Tae-Hee Jo, Lynne Chester, and Carlo D’Ippoliti. London and New York: Routledge. 2026. “In Memoriam: Robert L Heilbroner - the Continuing Relevance of The Worldly Philosophy” by Mathew Forstater. Economic Issues, Vol. 10, Part 1, March 2005. “Social Provisioning as a Starting Point for Feminist Economics” by Marilyn Power. Feminist Economics, vol. 10, no. 3, 2004, pp. 3-21. https://doi.org/10.1080/1354570042000267608 Doughnut Economics – 7 Ways to Think Like a 21st Century Economist, by Kate Raworth. Chelsea Green Publishing. 2017. “What Are the Questions?” by Joan Robinson. Journal of Economic Literature, vol. 15, no. 4, 1977, pp. 1318–39. Institutional Economics: Theory & Practice by James Sturgeon. Polity. 2025 “Processes, Social Provisioning, and Invidious Distinction: Central Concepts in Heterodox Economics” by Zdravka Todorova. Brazilian Keynesian Review (forthcoming, 2026). The Theory of the Leisure Class by Thorstein Veblen. 1899.  Comments are closed.
|
Zdravka Todorova
I research, teach, and write about systems, processes, and relations of economic lives. Archives
March 2026
Categories
|
RSS Feed
