Methodological Implications of the Schutzian Postulate of Adequacy for Economic Research

Abstract

For a few decades, the debate about the dominant economic theory has focused on the epistemological problems caused by the use of objective categories or “intellectual abstractions,” which involved “oblivion,” or disconnection of social actors understood as concrete persons. In Husserlian terms, this genuine “crisis of the sciences” meant the loss of the life-world as the substratum and foundation of all scientific knowledge. In the context of these discussions, the phenomenological sociology of Alfred Schutz has much to say on the issue. Our article will assert that the postulate of adequacy and its inseparable pair, the postulate of subjective interpretation, have important methodological implications for economic research.