Journal for Cultural Research

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Economy as social practice

Rahel Jaeggi

To cite this article: Rahel Jaeggi (2018) Economy as social practice, Journal for Cultural
Research, 22:2, 122-125, DOI: 10.1080/14797585.2018.1461355

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2018.1461355

Published online: 24 May 2018.

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Journal for Cultural Research, 2018
VOL. 22, NO. 2, 122–125
https://doi.org/10.1080/14797585.2018.1461355

Economy as social practice

Rahel Jaeggi
Philosophy Department, Humboldt University of Berlin, Berlin, Germany

ARTICLE HISTORY  Received 8 April 2017; Accepted 30 March 2018

KEYWORDS  Economy; practices; forms of life; practice theory; critique of capitalism; capitalism; system vs. lifeworld

In order to understand the economy in a wider sense we should conceive of the economy as
a set of social practices. To conceive of a ‘practices-oriented’ foundation for our thinking
about economy and its institutions, we should view economic practices as a subset of social
practices in general, sharing the features of ‘practices.’ As such they are interrelated with
other practices in a variety of ways and (together with them) form part of the socio-cultural
fabric of society.
To conceive of the economy as a social practice and part of a broader form of life entails:

(1) First, the normativity of economic practices. The thesis that the market and even
economic institutions as such are a ‘norm-free sphere’ has recently been intensely
countered with the argument that economic actors are not free from moral consid-
erations, and even more so, not free from ethical considerations, habits, and dispo-
sitions, that is, their ‘ethical life’ [Sittlichkeit]. While agreeing with these diagnoses,
my account of the economy as a social practice goes further: Normativity or the
ethical background/embeddedness of the economy doesn’t come into the picture
from the outside, because the economical agents are in fact not free from moral
considerations or ethical orientations. If practices are (internally) constituted by
norms, then economic practices also have inherent normative conditions of success,
or ethical-functional norms that are indispensable for their proper functioning.
(2) Second, and to very briefly mention Habermas and the differentiation between ‘sys-
tem’ and ‘lifeworld,’ where the capitalist economy belongs to the system, I propose
that with a practice-theoretic approach, the alternative between an action- and a
system-theoretic approach to the economy can be overcome in a meaningful way.
One advantage of a systemic view of the economy is that it can grasp ‘mechanisms
of social integration’ that are ‘not necessarily intentional, i.e., with communicative
effort through the consciousness of participants in interaction, but rather objectively
coordinated behind their backs, so to speak.’ The ‘invisible hand’ of the market, then,
is the paradigmatic case of this sort of regulation. But then: to conceive of the econ-
omy as and in a context of social practices doesn’t mean that it arises from actions
and intentions, or the results of such. Practices are only partially intentional, partially
explicit and partially due to the will and actions of people. They are not planned for

CONTACT  Rahel Jaeggi  rahel.jaeggi@staff.hu-berlin.de

© 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH   123

in advance, but emerge, and they have habitual elements. When practices ‘congeal’
into institutions (which I think of as states of aggregate practices), they can achieve
their own dynamic and take on a life of their own, a phenomenon that is difficult for
the parties involved to see. It might then be fruitful to re-address the ‘systemic’ phe-
nomena in a practice and institutional theoretical framework, thereby avoiding the
unwanted side-effects of an understanding of economics as a non-normative sphere.
(3) Third, if it follows from the above-described character of economic activities that,
as social practices, they are interrelated with other social practices and aggregate
or bundle with them into a form of life, this context must be understood as open.
It cannot be clearly or conclusively answered a priori which practices are essential
for what purpose and which practices are dependent on each other. We might think
of a variety of different relations between these practices, functional dependencies
of some sort but also cases in which the relation is looser, mutual, or reciprocal.
Even if in some cases one practice is more dominant or ‘steers’ more than another
it shouldn’t be taken for granted a priori, for instance, that cultural practices would
be premised upon economic practices or vice versa. We might therefore abandon
a simplistic ‘base/superstructure’ model without losing sight of the mutual depend-
encies between different practices and norms.
(4) Fourth: In each of the (only sketched) cases, the extra-economical aspects are not
merely preconditions for the economical activities and institutions in the narrower or
‘proper’ sense (i.e., for maximizing utilities in the market, for bringing about results
in an instrumental fashion through labor, for being able to divide the world along
property- relations). We cannot take these far-reaching preconditions for granted.
To conceive of economic attitudes as practices that are interrelated (economic and
non-economic) practices, thus as an ensemble within an ensemble, implies that the
very distinction between economics and its preconditions, and the inside/outside
dichotomy itself turns out to be less informative and less helpful then we previously
thought. According to the practice-oriented description of the economic, then, it
makes little sense to speak of rescuing a particular class of practices from out of
the context of a form of life. Among the basic orientations that we might have to
re-examine, then, is the widespread concentration of critical efforts – within critical
theory as well as within other discourses critical of capitalism – to protect certain
spheres (cultural, social, personal) from contamination by the supposedly separate
economic sphere. Economic practices, according to this view, do not merely rely on
or are ‘embedded’ in a surrounding or enabling ethical form of life; they are rather
part of the form of life itself and its respective dynamic.
(5) Fifth: with a concept of the economic as a nexus of practices we should be able to
overcome the narrow concept of the economy famously criticized by Horkheimer
in two interrelated ways: the economy itself is understood in a wider sense, since it is
no longer reduced to the (narrow) attitudes of purpose-oriented utility maximizing
behavior that seeks to fulfill narrowly defined interests. But furthermore, the relation
between economic and other social practices is understood in a wider sense than an
economistic determinism allows for.

Does this situatedness of economic practices still hold for capitalist societies? Isn’t it a
defining feature of a capitalist society that ‘the economy’ (and economic rationality) has
124   R. JAEGGI

disentangled itself from the web of social practices it was involved in - or, as Polanyi has it:
isn’t the process of ‘disembedding’ the economy from its social context the peculiar (and
threatening) characteristic of capitalist societies? Capitalism would then not be a ‘form of
life,’ it would not actually ‘live’ but threaten all forms of life with its dominance (and the
domination of abstract and ‘dead labor’). In fact, economic practices and institutions in cap-
italism take on a certain determinate and determining shape, such as private property in
the means of production, the existence of a ‘free’ labor market, and an accumulation of capital
oriented toward ‘gain’ instead of ‘need,’ i.e. toward the cultivation of more capital instead of
the consumption of it or subsistence on it. Economic relations not only overtake other
aspects of life, but also develop dynamics of their own that ‘exceed the subjective ends and
the control of its participants and that, moreover, cannot be affirmed by them collectively.’
Here the social is transformed into ‘social forces.’ This is what we might refer to as the systemic
character of a capitalist economy. But then, my tentative hypothesis is: The activities involved
are still practices, based on norms, aggregated into institutions and involved in the larger
practical context of a form of life – even if they might turn out to be ‘failed practices’ in a
certain respect. The capitalist organization of the economy only presents itself as ‘disembed-
ding’ or ‘de-normativizing’, insofar as its dynamic consists in dissolving traditional ethical
limits as they expressed themselves institutionally, for example, in premodern guild-like
regulations and limitations of economic activity. However, it also constitutes its own, new
normativity. I am suggesting here only the absence of a specific ethos and the replacement
of a norm and its institutional framework with another one – one that presents itself as eth-
ically ‘neutral’ and based on rational preferences and utility maximizing. One should not be
fooled by capitalism’s tendency to make the normative and the dense ethical character of
economic institutions invisible, something that underlies neoclassical economics, for
instance. Even the idea of universal exchangeability, as I have suggested, presupposes as
well as constitutes a form of life. Even the practice that conceals its ‘practice-character’ is still
a practice. And even dissolving the bonds to other practices is still characterized by entan-
glements, even if those are based upon ‘false abstraction’ (from the entanglement with other
practices) and working behind our backs, without being (as Hegel might put it) self-con-
sciously embraced. To put it in a manner amenable to Marx’s characterization of civil society:
the ‘context of contextlessness,’ (‘Zusammenhang der Zusammenhangslosigkeit’) is still a con-
text. And the ethos of abolishing substantial ethical relations and restrictions, like the ones
that were broken in the course of ‘modern’ or capitalist economic institutions (which are
both a presupposition and effect of such relations), is still itself an ethos – the ethos of cap-
italism. But then the capitalist form of life itself and its economic practices that comes into
view – and the prospect of a debate about and a critique of capitalism as a form of life.
I would like to clarify one potential misunderstanding: When I refer to a critique of capi-
talism as a form of life, this should not be equated with the so-called ‘ethical critique’ of
capitalism such as the thematization of the ethically detrimental effects of (what Weber calls)
the ‘economic mentality’ of capitalism or the ‘culture of capitalism’ on our ways of life. At
stake is not critically judging capitalism against a standard of critique based on a theory of
the good life. Rather, if economic practices are conceptualized as practices within a wider
context of practices, as part of the socio-cultural fabric of society, and if even the seemingly
inaccessible and self- moving dynamics of economic processes should—in principle—be
conceivable as results of a complex chain of practices, what comes into view is rather the
prospect of renewing a critique of capitalism as an irrational social order in a certain sense.
 JOURNAL FOR CULTURAL RESEARCH   125

What, then, is wrong with capitalism (as a form of life)? It is both easy and complicated to
explicate what is intrinsically wrong with capitalism. From my discussion at least one meta-cri-
terion for criticism evolves that might set the stage for further inquiry. Returning to the matter
of ‘failed’ practices and the supposed ethical neutrality of a capitalist economics: there seems
to be something wrong with a social order that relies on an ethics that it at the same times
conceals and universalizes as ‘neutral.’ And there seems to be something wrong with practices
that we don’t see as practices and that are constituted in such a way that the fact of their
artificiality (of their ‘being made’) is concealed, as is the case with the economic forces that
drive our lives in capitalism.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Rahel Jaeggi has been a professor of practical philosophy/social philosophy at the Humboldt University
of Berlin since 2009. Her areas of specialization include social philosophy and critical theory. Recent
publications include Alienation and Kritik von Lebensformen (English translation forthcoming).