This chapter sets the context for the book. We note the purpose of economics should be to describe concepts and models that can be made consistent with sound scientific understanding of the other aspects of life. At a minimum economic behaviour is embedded within the organic system we call the society: it affects extraction, production, utilization, exchange, consumption and disposal of physical entities and services. We consider the main questions about how to contextualize economics. It can be argued that the economy is a mechanism to organize a subset of decisions in a larger highly distributed society. The social organization obeys no simple model of control; its dynamics is often evolutionary at many scales of time, space and material content; and with these it is subject to both historical contingency and great complexity.
Book Review: How the Other Half Works: Immigration and the Social Organization of Labor
