Introducing Anthropological Economics: The Quest for an Anthropological Basis for Economic Theory, Growth Models and Policy Development for Wealth and Human Welfare Maximisation

This paper attempts to merge the concepts and theoretical frameworks of the disciplines of Anthropology and Economics, and attempts to create a new sub-field in Economics called ‘Anthropological Economics’ which is mired in Anthropological concepts and principles and seeks to maximize not only human welfare and happiness but also wealth maximization across cultures, while considering both the psychic unity of man, universal human needs and culturespecific factors. Thus, Anthropological Economics is expected to be inter-related to other disciplines of Economics, but remain complementary to them i.e., it is not expected that it will intrude into other sub-fields of economics, replace them, or override their principles in any way. It will therefore draw upon other aspects of economic theory, and enrich them suitably. It is therefore expected that all aspects of Economic theory will be taken into consideration for policy formulation and decision-making, including those of Anthropological economics, and independent, context-specific judgment will always be applied. The new proposed field of Anthropological Economics proposes to take the idea of Human Welfare to its logical conclusion by extending the work already carried out in various sub-disciplines of economics, and integrating it more tightly with various concepts in Anthropology. Many new tools and techniques are therefore, proposed as a part of this paper, and we believe these will suitably enrich the field of Economics as well. While many attempts have been made in the past to integrate the fields of Anthropology and Economics, we hope this endeavour will take this exercise to a much higher level, by creating a new generation of “Anthroeconomists”. We also hope it will eventually help move mainstream economics away from Neo-classical approaches to Anthropological and human-centric approaches.