904981

research-article2020
STXXXX10.1177/0735275120904981Sociological TheoryAilon

Original Article

Sociological Theory

The Phenomenology
2020, Vol. 38(1) 36­–50
© American Sociological Association 2020
DOI: 10.1177/0735275120904981
https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275120904981

of Homo Economicus st.sagepub.com

Galit Ailon1

Abstract
Much has been written about the fictitious nature of the atomistic model of homo economicus.
Nevertheless, this economic model of self-interest and egoism has become conventional
wisdom in market societies. This article offers a phenomenological explanation for the
model’s commonsensical grip. Building on the work of Alfred Schutz, I argue that a
reliance on homo economicus as an interpretive scheme for making sense of the behavior
of economic Others has the effect of reversing the meaning of signs and doubts that
challenge the model’s assumptions. Moreover, it orients social action in ways that prevent
the model’s interpretive incongruences from rising to the reflective fore. Consequently,
an interpretive reliance on homo economicus creates a “phenomenological gridlock.”
Alternative sources of information and alternative interpretive schemes can bypass this
entrapment of the economic interaction, but this article further explains why the norms
and cultural horizons of market society limit the accessibility of these alternatives, thus, in
effect, sedimenting gridlocked experiences.

Keywords
homo economicus, phenomenology, Alfred Schutz, economic interaction, market society

Early in its history as a model of human nature, the greedy and calculating homo eco-
nomicus was described by John Stuart Mill (1844:144) as “an arbitrary definition of man,”
reductionist for analytic purposes.1 Mill (1844:139) also stated that no political economist
“was ever so absurd as to suppose that mankind are really thus constituted.” Interestingly,
Mill is often identified as the creator of homo economicus (e.g., Morgan 2006:4–5; Persky
1995:222).2 Although widely used in economics, the model has been a subject of contro-
versy; it has been modified by many economists (Morgan 20063) and its premises have
been analytically discredited by economic sociologists and anthropologists (for overviews,
see Carrier 2005; Smelser and Swedberg 2005). Still, homo economicus has to a great
extent become taken-for-granted, conventional wisdom. Researchers of diverse theoretical
orientations have offered accounts of its pervasiveness as such in market societies (see,
e.g., Bourdieu 2005:1–13; Cohen 2014; Foucault 2008).

1
Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

Corresponding Author:
Galit Ailon, Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bar-Ilan University, Ramat Gan, 5290002, Israel.
Email: galit.ailon@biu.ac.il
Ailon 37

In this article, I seek to explain how the economic notion that humans are calculating
atoms of self-interest persists as common sense. My point of departure is the simple fact that
this notion does not concern a reality that members of market societies rarely encounter:
Everyone experiences humans in economic interactions practically every day. Given that
homo economicus is “an arbitrary definition” whose actuality is an absurdity as Mill origi-
nally portrayed it, and as many researchers have affirmed, I ask how it survives these every-
day economic interactions. Why do people not regularly and overwhelmingly perceive its
arbitrariness and absurdity in the course of their daily economic lives?
Existing socioeconomic theory suggests two possible but incomplete answers to this
question. The first is that people do not grasp the absurdity of homo economicus because
this model has been made real. Economic agents might not be naturally predisposed to
asocial egoism, but in a market society, they can be socially driven, coerced, configured, or
otherwise constituted so as to behave this way.4 Perhaps the most straightforward contem-
porary theoretical formulation of this possibility is articulated by economic-performativity
theorist Michel Callon (1998), who maintains that economic theory has substantial perfor-
mative capacity to produce the world it describes (see also MacKenzie, Muniesa, and Siu
2007). This capacity includes the configuration of economic theory’s core figure, homo
economicus. “Yes,” Callon (1998:50–51) insists, “homo economicus really does exist,” and
sociologists should neither denounce his existence nor strive to give him “a bit more soul—
the life and warmth that he lacks.”
Yet this argument has been deemed overly extreme even by other performativity theorists.
In their study of the historical sociology of a financial derivatives exchange, MacKenzie and
Millo (2003:109) found that although the performativity of economics is substantial, it has
limits that pertain precisely to the configuration of homo economicus: The economic actors
they studied “were not and did not become atomistic, amoral homines œconomici.” Stating
that Callon himself concedes the formatting of homo economicus is “never complete or
stable,” MacKenzie and Millo (2003:140–41) conclude it is questionable whether this model
“can be configured morally, out of real men and women.” Based on their empirical analysis,
they reaffirm Granovetter’s (1985) foundational notion of “embeddedness,” and thus they
join a long line of economic sociologists who have repeatedly shown that economic agents
do not behave along the lines suggested by atomizing conceptions of economic action (see
Krippner and Alvarez 2003:223–27). Put simply, economic agents always remain much
more social and complex than the model of homo economicus makes them out to be: They
seek to relate, they often trust and care, they conform, they occasionally lose themselves,
they sometimes want to help, and so on.
Hence, the question remains: What prevents people in market societies from regularly
and overwhelmingly recognizing the absurdity of homo economicus? A second possible
answer is that people simply do not give the issue much thought. Acting habitually in
everyday life, people spontaneously use practical know-how they have internalized through
their incorporation in the wider structures of society (Bourdieu 1977). Homo economicus,
one could argue, is a part of this know-how. A practically convenient and taken-for-granted
scheme of perception, it is rooted in market society’s “universe of the undiscussed”
(Bourdieu 1977:168).
This is a plausible explanation, but as scholars (e.g., Crossley 2001; Myles 2004) have
noted, habitual attitudes never go so far as to exclude all reflexive potential. Even if we start
from habituality, we have to ask how this misrecognition of economic Others actually
works. After all, we are not talking about a misrecognition of abstract or elusive realities,
such as the workings of symbolic power or the arbitrariness of social structures. Nor are we
dealing with realities that are rare. We are discussing the reality of people we routinely meet
38 Sociological Theory 38(1)

in everyday economic interactions. On the face of it, the case of absurd homo economicus
is precisely a case in which a potential for reflexivity could easily arise from everyday
habitual action.
This article offers an explanation for why this potential is nonetheless limited. My expla-
nation builds on the foundational social phenomenology of Alfred Schutz (e.g., 1967, 1970).
Schutz examines the essential features of the interpretive processes that endow a person’s
lived experiences—including, crucially, their lived experiences of Others—with meaning,
and he shows how these processes form the basis of action and interaction. Influenced by the
philosophy of Edmund Husserl, Schutz’s vantage point is the constitution of meaning in the
stream of consciousness of the solitary Ego. Yet when Schutz proceeds to study the social
world—for example, in his major work, The Phenomenology of the Social World (Schutz
1967:43–44, 97–98)—he explicitly abandons Husserl’s method of transcendental-phenome-
nological reduction,5 sets aside the philosophical question of “how the Thou is constituted in
an Ego,” and focuses instead on the subject who tries to understand other selves from within
“the natural attitude.” As Crossley (1996:77) explains, in this book and in all of Schutz’s
discussions on intersubjectivity, Schutz looks at “the human subject as an embodied being
whose actions draw upon a stock of shared social resources and know-how or ‘common-
sense knowledge’ and who is always already situated amongst other similarly embodied and
situated beings.” Schutz’s discussions yield categories that can help us analyze what hap-
pens once homo economicus becomes a part of this stock of commonsense knowledge that
actors draw on in economic interactions.
Presenting such an analysis, I argue that when actors draw on homo economicus as a
commonsensical interpretive scheme, the model “entraps” their subjective experiences
and perceptions of economic Others. More specifically, an interpretive reliance on this
model transforms potential refutations into reaffirmations that strengthen the model’s
commonsensical grip. Thus, homo economicus produces an estranging “phenomenologi-
cal gridlock.” Some potential sources of information and ideas about economic Others
can, and sometimes do, bypass the gridlock, but this article further explains why these
sources are largely rendered inaccessible by overarching norms and cultural discourses
of market society.
While drawing on Schutz, it is important to mention from the outset where I depart from
him. Schutz was employed in the banking industry for many years and was an active mem-
ber of the Austrian school of economics for a decade (Prendergast 1986). He took a compli-
cated stance on the economic model of man. On one hand, Schutz (2011:87) referred to its
assumptions as fictitiously portraying an actor who “is not a man who lives his full life
among his fellow men” and who is characterized by “an imaginary consciousness.” On the
other hand, he treated this model as a methodologically useful shorthand for pure theory.
Schutz (2011:86–92) implied that as long as economists remember that the make-believe
“puppet exists and acts by the grace of the scientist,” it can serve useful theoretical functions
in the scientific process.
Interestingly, however, Schutz himself affirmed the problematic tendency to forget this
fact. He wrote that some theoreticians come to “assume that the human mind cannot work
otherwise than the fictitious consciousness with which they imagine the artificial puppet to
be endowed” (Schutz 2011:91). This forgetfulness has arguably been consequential, and by
now it has broadened far beyond the realm of theoreticians (see Bourdieu 2005:1–13; Cohen
2014; Foucault 2008). The questions of its phenomenological manifestations and implica-
tions have accordingly become crucially important. A first step toward addressing these
questions is to take a close look at the interactional significance of homo economicus as a
ready-made interpretive scheme.
Ailon 39

The Interpretive Scheme of Homo Economicus

The starting point of Schutz’s (1967:100, 106–07) phenomenological analysis of interac-
tions is the fact that we cannot directly intuit or fully grasp other people’s streams of experi-
ence. We can be attentive to others’ communicative efforts—to what they try to tell us about
themselves and what they want. In face-to-face situations, we can also catch sight of outward
facts, such as their bodily movements. Perceiving such communicative and expressive infor-
mation as indications of others’ subjective experiences, we rely on interpretive effort to
make sense of what this information actually means.
These interpretations are determined by the total context of knowledge available to us and
primarily by what we know, or think we know, about others’ motives. Schutz (1967:171)
speaks of two motives in this regard: “because motives,” that is, the causes of a person’s
actions, and “in-order-to motives,” namely, the subjective goals orienting a person’s actions
or the projects their actions are intended to achieve. “Whenever I am interacting with any-
one,” Schutz (1967:171) stresses, “I take for granted as a constant in that person a set of
genuine because- or in-order-to motives” (emphasis in original).
In large part resting on culturally objectivated beliefs, this taken-for-granted interpretive
scheme of assigned motives is bound by a social “relevance structure” (Schutz 19536; Schutz
and Luckmann 1973) and is pragmatically relied upon in relevant situations.7 In such situa-
tions, individuals draw on the interpretive scheme in the first instance, as a starting point,
regardless of whether or not the assigned motives are the Other’s real motives (Schutz
1967:172). Preconstituted in our minds and ready to use, such schemes allow us to arrive at
an approximation of the other person’s plan of action and to anticipate their interpretation of
the subjective meaning of our own signs and actions.
This preexisting, first-instance interpretive scheme is nevertheless susceptible to change.
More precisely, it will be “taken for granted in the absence of evidence to the contrary”
(Schutz 1970:81). To recognize that a lived experience transcends it, there has to be “a refer-
ence back to the schemes we have on hand, followed by a ‘failure to connect.’ This in turn
throws the validity of the scheme into question” (Schutz 1967:84–85). Until such evidence
presents itself, the scheme remains a part of the personal stock of knowledge about the world
that we draw on—we might even say habitually8—in relevant dealings.
In the case of homo economicus, the ready-made because and in-order-to motives seem
straightforward. Namely, people universally seek to maximize gain and secure the greatest
value because they are naturally driven by self-interest. To the extent that this general typi-
fication, or “ideal type,” takes root in people’s minds and becomes part of their everyday
stock of knowledge (Schutz 1967:181, 185), it implies that when they meet a partner to an
economic interaction, the first thing they will feel they know about them is that greed and
egoism constitute the predominant inner rationales of their actions. They will assign these
motives to a partner’s consciousness even before the partner begins to move, act, or speak.
Nevertheless, once an interaction begins to unfold, one’s knowledge of the Other can
be revised. According to Schutz (1967), this is especially likely to occur in face-to-face
situations. In these situations, a “thou-orientation” is actualized through our intentional
turning toward the Other as a fellow human being, and if reciprocated, a “we-relation-
ship” can emerge (Schutz 1967:163–67; Wagner 1970:34). Face-to-face interactions are
peculiar in terms of their specific disclosure of the other person’s motives. Schutz
(1967:172) explains, “I can add to my expectation of what you are going to do the actual
sight of you making up your mind, and then of your action itself in all its constituent
phases.” Compared to my knowledge of a contemporary who “coexists with me in time
but whom I do not experience immediately” (Schutz 1967:181), my knowledge from
face-to-face situations is potentially more nuanced and direct. Face-to-face interactions
40 Sociological Theory 38(1)

thus carry more possibilities for recognizing the correctness or incorrectness of preexist-
ing interpretive schemes. Schemes that “return to reality” (Schutz 1967:185) can then be
modified on the basis of concrete experience. But an interpretive reliance on the scheme
of homo economicus, I will next argue, minimizes the likelihood of such revisions and
returns, even in face-to-face interactions.

Phenomenological Gridlock
As we have seen, the interpretive scheme of homo economicus conceptualizes the Other in
terms of an egoistic because motive and a value maximizing in-order-to motive. I argue
here that, when drawn on in interactions, this interpretive scheme entraps three core chan-
nels through which people could otherwise come to realize the inaccuracy of the motives
they assign to others with whom they interact. Namely, the scheme turns communicated
signs of care into suspicious indications of manipulation, it appropriates experiences of
interpretive doubt, and it discourages attempts to try to socially affect the other. Thus, it
gives rise to “gridlock.”
This gridlock, I argue, relates to any interaction in which homo economicus is drawn on
as the primary interpretive scheme in making sense of another person’s behavior. Typically,
this would include the classic commercial buyer–seller interaction—the analytic birthplace
of homo economicus. But gridlock could also arise in interactions culturally modeled
(Zelizer 2011) on commercial exchange, for example, inner-organizational or service inter-
actions where, in the context of a deepening market logic in organizations (see Cappelli
2000; Kunda and Ailon-Souday 2005), partners are made to think of each other along the
lines of buyers and sellers in the market. This gridlock does not directly concern situations
in which an interaction partner is unknown or intangible (as in online markets), although, as
I will discuss in the Conclusions section, it does implicate these situations as well.

Turning Signs of Care into Suspicious Indications of Manipulation

Communication between two people consists of the attempts of each to affect the other by
originating signs—language, facial expressions, bodily movements—for the other to inter-
pret. It is important to emphasize the complexity of this process: Words, expressions, and
movements all have meaning for the interpreter. Although the meanings found in them “need
not at all be identical with what the person who produced them had in mind,” the interpreter
“always interprets with the speaker’s subjective meaning in mind” (Schutz 1967:21, 128). It
is not enough for one to know what the signs (e.g., the words) “objectively” mean. Going
beyond the kernel meaning of the signs, interpretation relies on the effort to imagine the
communicative project the speaker must have had in mind: what the speaker’s communica-
tive in-order-to motive was or what they sought to convey.
As explained, the interpretive scheme of homo economicus implies a single “in-order-to”
motive behind all actions, including all communicative actions: securing maximum gain.
This established code of interpretation has two main implications. First, when there is no
apparent conflict between the communicative signs and the assigned goal of profit maximi-
zation, the interpretation of statements is straightforward. Consider, for example, the case of
a service provider who tells a customer the price of the service. If the quoted price seems to
the customer to be congruent with the taken-for-granted model of homo economicus—in
other words, if it seems to be a handsomely profitable price—then the customer simply takes
the quoted price to mean, “This is what the service provider wants me to pay.” However, if
there appears to be a conflict between what the service provider says and the model—for
Ailon 41

example, the service provider says they want to help the customer for free—the statement
will not be interpreted in a straightforward way. In this second type of situation, the only
logical inference from the model of homo economicus would be that the service provider has
something to gain by giving a service for free, that they could not do otherwise than egoisti-
cally act this way. “For free” would no longer mean “for nothing” but rather “for something
hidden and undeclared.” The assigned egoistic because motive and value-maximizing in-
order-to motive would transform the meaning of caring or generous words, turning them into
suspicious indications of manipulation.
Indeed, the interpretive scheme of homo economicus renders anything less than maxi-
mum gain (e.g., minor gain, reciprocity, altruism) as suspiciously manipulative. Any attempt
to communicate—to make someone take cognizance of—noncalculating contents of con-
sciousness is liable to turn against itself when the other person’s interpretive process relies
on homo economicus. Reliance on homo economicus would convert such communication
into an indication of an attempt to purposely conceal the allegedly constant, universal motive
of gain. Stated differently, as long as homo economicus constitutes the context of meaning
within the mind of the interpreter, expressive signs of care that are communicated are bound
to become grist to an interpretive mill of suspicion.

The Appropriation of Interpretive Doubt

Although the taken-for-granted interpretive schemes that we rely on in interactions tend to
escape our direct attention in the flow of everyday life, another characteristic of our interpre-
tive consciousness concerns the possibility of doubting them. More specifically, the fact that
the stream of consciousness of the person we interact with is given to us only partially, in
discontinuous segments, and indirectly means our knowledge of it “is always in principle
open to doubt” (Schutz 1967:107). Doubt, in turn, holds the potential for a readiness to
revise and enlarge our knowledge of the Other. It potentially motivates interpretive adjust-
ments. If the preconstructed typification of a person “is determined by the limits of the
observer’s knowledge at the time” (Schutz 1967:193), then the interpretive uncertainty that
often attends actual interactions can motivate a dynamic reflection upon and a reevaluation
of such typifications. The experience that we might not really know the Other as much as we
thought we did can lead to a reevaluation of the knowledge about them that we had, until that
moment, taken for granted.
However, in the case of an interpretive reliance on homo economicus, this potential is
minimized. Homo economicus postulates as a given that the Other we interact with is ego
centered and driven by self-interest, that the origin of all their actions is precisely that which
marks their singularity and separateness from us. Thus, from the outset, homo economicus
incorporates doubt about what we really know about the Other well within the bounds of its
meaning context. In other words, the model encompasses the awakening of doubt within the
scope of what can be expected.
Now, it only takes a “glance of attention” to apprehend and refer a lived experience to the
interpretive scheme at hand (Schutz 1967:83–84). Homo economicus would not produce a
sense of incongruence or insufficiency acute enough to attract more than this glance pre-
cisely because it anticipates such doubts. In other words, homo economicus would likely
prevent the experience of interpretive doubts from ripening into reflective reevaluation.
Rendering the experience of not surely knowing the Other consistent with the ego-centered
because motive we assign to them, the experience of not surely knowing would be appre-
hended as known. Identified as consistent with the meaning configuration of homo eco-
nomicus, the experience of doubt would likely not awaken or jolt our reflective attention
42 Sociological Theory 38(1)

toward reevaluation. Indeed, it would confirm, rather than challenge, the model’s interpre-
tive spirit of suspicion.

Discouraging Attempts to Socially Affect the Other

In interactions, we seek not only to interpret Others but also to affect them: to bring about
certain conscious experiences in them. When we experience a need to be sympathetically
understood, cared about, or assisted, our ability to successfully affect those with whom we
interact can, in theory, attest to their sociality: their social attentiveness, responsiveness, and
care. In this sense, the communication of a need becomes a test of the sociality of our inter-
action partners.
According to Schutz, however, the social action9 of affecting the Other necessitates a
motivational context in which the subjective effects that are to be brought about are antici-
pated in advance. explains:

In order to act socially upon an Other’s consciousness, I must pay attention to the
flow of his consciousness as it occurs. Further, I must have anticipated in phantasy
in the project of my act (in the future perfect tense10) the conscious experiences to
be brought about in the Other either as my final goal or as one of my intermediate
goals. (Schutz 1967:148)

It is only when the future subjective experiences and behavior of the Other can persuasively
become my in-order-to motive—only when I can imagine something my communication
attempt can achieve—that the social action of affecting them can take shape. Put simply, a
social action seeking to affect the Other begins in hope.
Homo economicus, however, assumes the Other is egoistic. Their thoughts and actions
are self oriented, not other oriented, and are eternally shaped by the gravitational pull of their
self-interest. We may get the Other to understand what we are saying, but if we are interested
in influencing their feelings and behavior toward us, then this is cast as a different type of
matter altogether. According to homo economicus, the Other’s potential for sympathetic
participation in my life seems quite hopeless from the outset. The only possibility for sym-
pathy is when it is enforced through mechanisms that somehow tie expressions of care to the
Other’s alleged self-interest. This is the case today in service interactions, where organiza-
tional control mechanisms explicitly tie expressions of care toward a customer with the
service provider’s rewards. This exception, of course, merely reaffirms the rule.
This sense that the Other is characterized by a heavily curtailed social orientation toward
oneself is critically consequential in shaping the motivational context of one’s own social
action. Because homo economicus renders the attempt to socially affect the Other largely
futile if not utterly useless, it discourages such attempts. As one is absent from the selfish
consciousness of one’s interaction partner, one cannot directly affect them in the direction of
one’s need. All one can do is try to lead them to affect themselves by framing one’s own goal
(one’s own in-order-to motive) as consistent with the partner’s self-interest. An interpretive
reliance on homo economicus not only entraps understandings of the communicative efforts
of the Other (see the previous two subsections); it also entraps the communicative efforts of
Self,11 discouraging attempts to affect interaction partners in ways that could bear evidence
of their sociality and relatedness.
Of course, there are some occasions in which one’s needs are so great that their expres-
sion cannot be held back or reframed as consistent with the Other’s self-interest. For exam-
ple, needs related to hunger, pain, despair, or fear are sometimes beyond containment. But
Ailon 43

as long as the model of homo economicus is taken for granted, the communicative attempts
through which such great and uncontainable needs would be expressed will likely lose their
synchronizing anchor in the Other’s flow of consciousness, as this flow is believed to be
basically unreachable or socially unaffectable. An interpretive reliance on homo eco-
nomicus would turn the communication of these needs into actions whose antecedent pro-
jection in the mind of the actor would doom them to fail. A person might know that responses
always remain to some extent undetermined, but the notion that the Other is not disposed
to be motivated to care or to help devalidates the attempt to affect this Other even as it
unfolds, thus in a sense disjoining the because motive—a great need—from the hopeless
in-order-to motive. Such a communicative action would broadly be cast in the shape of a
shout into a void: It would be fuzzily directed at affecting everyone and no one. Lacking the
synchronizing anchor of hope and belief, it would lose its sense of the Other even before it
had begun, never putting this Other to the concrete test of a fully attuned social action. In
summary, discouraging attempts to socially affect the Other, the interpretive scheme of
homo economicus would lead to a halting, reframing, or desynchronization of social actions
that could otherwise have put it to test.
To conclude this section, homo economicus entraps the communicative signs, the doubts,
and the social actions that could have brought it into question. Its core interpretive logic of
suspicion toward any communicative sign that transcends clear ego-centered, selfish
motives—in other words, its core logic of moral and social suspicion—reverses social mean-
ing, appropriates possible interpretive doubts, and discourages tests of social affecting. In
this way, homo economicus generates a phenomenological gridlock that blocks awareness of
incongruences that could have challenged its validity. Nevertheless, two potential sources of
information can theoretically bypass this phenomenological gridlock.

Potential Bypasses
The two potential bypasses concern (1) movements and actions that lack a communicative
intent and (2) alternative interpretive schemes. The next two subsections discuss these
bypasses and explain why they are, to a great extent, normatively and culturally curtailed in
current times.12

Potential Bypass 1: Movements and Actions That Lack a Communicative Intent

The interpretive scheme of homo economicus, I argued, phenomenologically entraps the
communicative signs that Others express in economic interactions, rendering them eter-
nal indications of egoism, manipulation, and estrangement. Schutz (1967), however,
points out that our interpretations of other people rely not merely on what they actually
say but also on movements and actions that are not intended to say anything to anyone
but that we nonetheless perceive. Theoretically, movements and actions that lack a com-
municative intent could bear nongridlocked evidence of economic care, altruism, inner
struggles, tensions, or complexities that exceed, complicate, or plainly contradict the
cold and socially impoverished “imaginary consciousness” (Schutz 2011:87) that homo
economicus depicts.
Let me further explain what is meant by “movements” and “actions” that lack a commu-
nicative intent. Regarding movements, these refer to gestures and facial expressions that
enter into everyday conversation but do not aim at any communication or expression of
thought. Often, they escape the actor’s awareness. Nevertheless, these movements could
have meaning for the observer, for they allow them to “watch” the flow of the Other’s lived
44 Sociological Theory 38(1)

experiences (Schutz 1967:117). According to Schutz, by watching other people’s lived expe-
riences as they actually unfold in an interaction, we can in one particular sense even know
them better than we know ourselves (Walsh 1967:xxv–xxvi):

In order to observe a lived experience of my own, I must attend to it reflectively. By no

means, however, need I attend reflectively to my lived experience of you in order to
observe your lived experience. On the contrary, by merely “looking” I can grasp even
those of your lived experiences which you have not yet noticed . . . . This means that,
whereas I can observe my own lived experiences only after they are over and done with,
I can observe yours as they actually take place. (Schutz 1967:102; emphasis in original)13

Regarding noncommunicative actions, in situations in which we are not interacting but

merely watching someone (e.g., a clerk going about their daily routine in a shop), the Other’s
actions have no communicative intent for us. We might nevertheless still wonder what is
going on in their mind. According to Schutz (1967:114), despite the lack of communicative
intent, some intersubjective understanding could be derived from these types of situations as
“we put ourselves in the place of the actor and identify our lived experiences with his.”
These glimpses of the Other’s being could interrupt “the course of the chain of self-evi-
dency” (Schutz and Luckmann 1973:11) that, in the case of homo economicus, entraps com-
municative actions.
Note, however, that two institutionalized norms of market society limit the accessibil-
ity of Others’ noncommunicative movements and actions: norms of economic practical-
ity and of privacy, respectively. The effects of both are subject to contextual variations,
but let us first explore their underlying impetus. The former—norms of economic practi-
cality—center on a pressure to economize time. Sanctioning the impulse to minimize the
duration and constrain the focus of economic interactions, such norms limit the potential
to see Others’ noncommunicative movements and to develop a genuine understanding of
them. According to Schutz (1967:103), a basic feature of our knowledge of Others is that
in social interactions, we sense our partner’s stream of consciousness is simultaneous
with our own. This experience, that we are “growing old together” (Schutz 1967:103;
emphasis in original), is important for the development of a genuine understanding of
what is going on in the Other’s mind. When interactions are cut short, we have fewer
opportunities to do so.
The latter—norms of privacy—limit our ability to witness noncommunicative actions.
These norms (see Kasper 2005) have become a focus of heightened attention and concern in
the past decades—they are critically important in offsetting new and old forms of institu-
tional power and in protecting people’s dignity and freedom. But precisely for these reasons,
they morally sanction an impulse to look away and not witness actions that do not assume an
audience, and they implicatively reaffirm the sense of mystery behind the public scenes.14
The fluster of a salesperson who has sold merchandise at too high a price and suddenly needs
time to be alone, or the sunken eyes and pained sigh of a mother who returns to the rack a
product her child needs but she cannot afford—privacy norms sanction an impulse to not
witness noncommunicative actions such as these, actions that bear evidence of the morality
and sociality of Others in day-to-day economic life. By remaining hidden, actions that lack
a communicative intent also remain equivocal and open to the type of suspicion that homo
economicus incites.
The norms of economic practicality and privacy thus set a broad societal impetus toward
sedimenting the gridlock. Consequently, as people move in and out of economic interactions
in the course of their daily lives, a substantial portion of their experiences of economic
Others will likely be gridlocked. It is important to acknowledge, however, that specific
Ailon 45

characteristics of relational networks (see Granovetter 1985) and relational contexts (see
Zelizer 2011) have an effect, too. Long-standing networks of economic relationships in
which interactions are repeated (e.g., in organizational settings) may allow more opportuni-
ties to observe Others’ noncommunicative movements and alleviate suspicions. At the same
time, institutional arrangements separating the private from the public sphere (often charac-
teristic of organizational settings, too) may heighten the sense of mystery behind the scenes
precisely because so much is assumed to be private and unknown despite time spent together.
The specific patterns and contexts of economic relationships may thus mitigate the phenom-
enological gridlock in some ways and reinforce it in others, introducing variation to what, I
argue, is normatively sanctioned at the societal level.

Potential Bypass 2: Alternative Interpretive Schemes

In everyday life, we tend to bracket the possibility that the world could be otherwise than it
appears to us (Schutz and Luckmann 1973:36). However, access to alternative ways of inter-
preting holds the potential to contest this bracketing and thus render what we think we know
problematic or questionable from the outset. This potential is highly dependent on the ques-
tion of relevance. As noted earlier, interpretation is bound by a social “relevance structure”
(Schutz 1953; Schutz and Luckmann 1973). Only a part of a person’s stock of knowledge is
brought to bear in the interpretation of any given situation, and the selection of this part is
based on the “relevance structure” that is itself a part of the stock of knowledge. Whatever
is deemed interpretationally irrelevant to the situation at hand will likely not pose a substan-
tial threat to people’s sense of reality within it.
Accordingly, let us begin our assessment of the potential to contest the bracketing with
an exploration of alternative ways of thinking about the economic. Obviously, such alter-
natives abound. The history of capitalism is a history not merely of triumph and expan-
sion but also of ongoing and often quite vociferous social criticisms about mainstream
economic beliefs and ideas (Hirschman 1982). But the important question as far as the
phenomenological gridlock is concerned is whether these criticisms contradict the com-
monsensical attitude of moral and social suspicion that is the interpretive core of homo
economicus.
Apparently, the answer to this question has for decades been predominantly “no.”
Critical perspectives informed by diverse thinkers ranging from Marx to Nietzsche in the
nineteenth century and from the Frankfurt School to Bourdieu in the twentieth (to name
but a few) share an “unmasking” attitude (Sloterdijk 1987; Turner 2010:144–47), suspi-
ciously treating claims to the highest ideals as naive illusions that conceal elusive and
distrustful motives, forces, or interests. This “intellectual style” is of course not the only
one in existence (Turner 2010), and some contemporary writers have sought to introduce
new grounds for critical social thinking (e.g., Sayer 2011).15 Still, in the realm of critical
social thinking, the term critical typically designates a “hermeneutics of suspicion”
(Ricoeur 1977) with regard to intentions and moral claims. Indeed, even critical thinkers
who are on the lookout for economic alternatives (e.g., Gibson-Graham’s [2006:xxii] pur-
suit of “intentional community economies”) attest to the intensity of the “skepticism and
suspicion” that has been mounted against them by their own “familiar anticapitalist milieu”
(Gibson-Graham 2006:3).
I do not wish to trivialize the differences between conventional economics and the bulk
of critical thought. It is important to remember that even at its most radical, critique always
“shares ‘something’ with what it seeks to criticize” (Boltansky and Chiapello 2005:40). A
critical text may reveal important gaps between economic rhetoric and practice, between the
46 Sociological Theory 38(1)

rationalizations and the actual implications of economic policy or action. But if critique is
disposed to also attribute the gaps it identifies to hidden motives or selfish interests, then in
this act of attribution it reaffirms the interpretive drive to assume categorically a suspicious
detachment between outward appearances and submerged motives and forces. In this spe-
cific but crucial sense, critique manifests a spirit of interpretation that is broadly consistent
with the one characteristic of homo economicus.
Moreover, in market society, this spirit of interpretation seems to be reaffirmed on a much
greater cultural scale. As some accounts suggest, economic suspicion about intentions has
become a meaning structure of very wide scope. Pragmatic sociologists Boltansky and
Chiapello (2005:450), for example, write that “[s]uspicion of a generalized simulacrum, of
a commodification of everything, including the seemingly most noble and disinterested sen-
timents, does indeed form part of our contemporary condition,” and they describe a net-
worked capitalist world that blurs the once foundational distinction between strategic and
personal relationships.16
In the phenomenological terms discussed earlier, such an account indicates that current
developments are accompanied by a shift in the “relevance structure,” wherein the eco-
nomic is rendered interpretationally relevant to interactions and relationships that were
previously deemed noneconomic. The consequent (re)interpretations of what once
appeared disinterested sometimes take the form of narratives of disillusionment:
“[R]ealizing that the apparent affection of a dear friend, to whom one is devoted, in fact
conceals self-interested motives and strategic designs is the paradigmatic instance—often
dramatized in literature—of disillusionment, paving the way for disenchantment”
(Boltansky and Chiapello 2005:464; emphasis in original).
Realizations of this sort are dramatized elsewhere as well. Stories of figures who attest to
moral virtue but turn out to be motivated by strategic intentions that they manipulatively
hide behind masks of sincerity prevail in diverse sites of cultural production, including the
media. To a great extent feeding on a contemporary cultural logic of epistemological doubts,
ontological insecurities, and disenchantment (Aupers 2012), human reality is represented in
diverse genres of expression as shaped by hidden, selfish motives.
This cultural dynamic, described here in very broad strokes, does not imply that noneco-
nomic interpretive schemes of Others have become utterly meaningless. It does, however,
seem to indicate that the potential of these schemes to pose a threat to people’s economic
sense of reality is limited. A cultural universe replete with interpretive spectacles where
expectations for disinterestedness are subsumed under the mark of naivety erodes the plau-
sibility of such expectations. To a great extent, then, this cultural universe undermines such
alternative ways of interpreting Others and substantially delimits their relevance.

Conclusions
Alfred Schutz (1970:111) maintained that “[w]hat is taken for granted is, until invalidation,
believed to be simply ‘given’ and ‘given-as-it-appears to me.’” Invalidation problematizes
the taken for granted, leading to its revision. Taking seriously the assertions that homo eco-
nomicus is an “imaginary,” “fictitious” (Schutz 2011:87, 91), “arbitrary,” and “absurd” (Mill
1844:144, 139) definition of human nature, I asked how this definition survives the reality
tests of everyday economic interactions between real humans. What hinders the perception
of its everyday invalidations and absurdity?
The answer, I argued, is that the model itself interpretively “works” to obstruct actors’
view of these invalidations. Constituting a taken-for-granted interpretive scheme in mar-
ket societies, homo economicus gives rise to phenomenological gridlock by turning signs
Ailon 47

of care into suspicious indications of manipulation, appropriating interpretive doubts,

and discouraging attempts to socially affect the Other in ways that could attest to the
Other’s sociality. People may behave in ways that come closer to or remain quite distant
from the model of homo economicus. But once their interaction partners rely on this
model as a taken-for-granted interpretive scheme, the challenges that could have been
posed to its commonsensical validity by incongruent behaviors will have been mostly
obscured or reversed.
Consequently, as members of market society go about their daily lives, they participate in
economic interactions that tend to fall short of bringing invalidations of homo economicus
to the reflective fore. Past acts become part of the context of experience that a person refers
back to when formulating future projects (see Schutz 1967:90), so the more cases in which
homo economicus seemed successful, the more it will serve as a taken-for-granted basis for
such formulations. Moreover, because a person’s knowledge of others whom they do not
directly interact with is in large part derived from their previous experiences of other people
in face-to-face situations, gridlocked face-to-face experiences will affect their perceptions of
interaction partners they cannot see or meet, such as those in the online marketplace.
Gridlocked experiences will also affect a person’s perceptions of the economic writ large: It
seems plausible that at least a part—and I would argue a substantial part—of the persistent
“epistemic privilege” (Somers and Block 2005:265) of the foundational ideas of market
society draws potency from gridlocked reaffirmations of the cornerstone belief in homo
economicus in day-to-day life.
Phenomenological gridlock thus signals a great historical irony. Arguably, one of the
most powerfully immune misbeliefs of our time concerns not some supernatural or mys-
tical force that is far removed from our life-world but rather the inner nature of people.
A person might feel more complex than homo economicus: more caring, more socially
committed, less calculating and instrumental. But this preexisting and taken-for-granted
interpretive scheme will nonetheless often entrap their interactional experiences of the
Otherness of Others. Even when potential refutations surface, even when they are viv-
idly performed before a person’s eyes, they are basically destined to be interpreted in
terms of separateness and suspicion. “Arbitrary” and “absurd” from the outset but
obscuring concrete invalidations, homo economicus has taken on a cultural life rooted
in mundane interactions.
This sedimentation of the taken-for-granted experience of homo economicus, I further
argued, is dependent not only on the interaction itself but also on broader societal norms and
cultural discourses. In a market society, norms of economic practicality and of privacy limit
the accessibility of information that could transcend the phenomenological gridlock.
Although their effects are subject to contextual variations that may be consequential and—at
least as far as privacy is concerned—although they are important in their own right, these
norms create a broad societal impetus toward gridlocked experiences. Moreover, critical
discourses abound, but their spirit of interpretation is often, in a specific but crucial sense,
consistent with the interpretive scheme of homo economicus, and the same seems true of
broader cultural discourses. The norms and cultural discourses of market society do not
make people asocial; rather, they make it more difficult to grasp people’s sociality. In this
way, these norms and cultural discourses help turn homo economicus into one of history’s
most persistent and influential fictions.

Acknowledgments
I thank the anonymous reviewers for their insightful, thorough, and helpful reviews. I also thank Hadas
Mandel for her perceptive reading of an early draft and Chen Sirkis for his valuable remarks.
48 Sociological Theory 38(1)

Notes
1. Mill’s (1844:140) original formulation focuses on “the desire of obtaining the greatest quantity of
wealth with the least labour and self-denial.”
2. According to Persky (1995:222), although Mill never actually used this designation in his writings,
the term emerged in reaction to his work, and he is thus “generally identified as the creator of eco-
nomic man.”
3. According to Morgan (2006:15, 22), Mill’s explicitly reductionist model of humans was modified by later
generations of economists to become a “purely impersonal utility maximizing agent” and later a mathemati-
cally based “artificial character.” Other changes and adaptations of the model, such as those of behavioral
economics, challenged notions of rational utility maximization (Morgan 2006:24–25), and more socially
oriented economists challenged the assumption of asocial egoism (e.g., Cohen 2014; Sen 1977).
4. As Hirschman (1982:1466) notes, the notion that capitalist society is morally erosive has “a fairly
numerous ancestry, among both Marxist and conservative thinkers.”
5. A phenomenological reduction relies on a change of attitude whereby knowledge of the natural world
is suspended and analysis focuses on the constituting Ego (see Schutz 1967:43–44). For Husserl, the
“transcendental-phenomenological reduction” is the ultimate level of phenomenological reduction,
designed to reveal the fundamental structure of consciousness (Wagner 1970:6).
6. In Schutz’s 1953 publication of ”Common-Sense and Scientific Interpretation of Human Action,” the
author’s name appeared as Schuetz. In all other publications that are cited here, the name is spelled Schutz.
To avoid confusion, I cite this 1953 publication as Schutz throughout the text and in the References.
7. Thus, people may think of others in certain situations (e.g., in close circles of family and friends)
through schemes that are richer than homo economicus, but these would not be brought into relief in
economic situations.
8. See Schutz and Luckmann (1973:105–11, 135–37) for a discussion of types of habitual knowledge,
especially “habitual knowledge of recipes.” See also Atkinson (2002), Crossley (2001), Myles (2004),
and Throop and Murphy (2002) for further discussions about the links and tensions between phenom-
enology and theories of habitual action (primarily that of Bourdieu).
9. For Schutz, social action means an “action whose in-order-to motive contains some reference to anoth-
er’s stream of consciousness” (Walsh 1967:xxvii).
10. That is, the act is pictured as complete even while it is still anticipated (Walsh 1967:xxiv); it is “pic-
tured as if it were simultaneously past and future” (Schutz 1967:61).
11. But not necessarily the experience of Self. As further discussed in the Conclusions section, people may
experience themselves as quite different from homo economicus, and yet this model would arguably
still entrap their experiences of Others.
12. Although Schutz’s work is broadly characterized by a disregard for norms in the conception of action
(Prendergast 1986:3), he did refer to culture (e.g., Schutz 1953:7). To understand why the two bypasses
are often blocked, we must broaden our focus beyond the structure of interactions and examine the
normative and cultural context within which these interactions unfold.
13. Note, though, that this is a knowledge of interaction partners’ current lived experiences “in their conti-
nuity, not in their completeness” (Schutz 1967:106). As explained earlier, we “always fall far short of
grasping the totality” of other people’s lived experiences (Schutz 1967:106).
14. Today’s heightened preoccupation with privacy is apparently accompanied by an equally heightened
impulse to expose, sometimes through social media or video-streaming platforms, that which is consti-
tuted as private. Yet these exposures are communicative even in their most extreme. At least, they are
never fully free from the shadow of having a communicative intent. In contrast, as claimed, the truly
noncommunicative remains largely inaccessible.
15. Sayer (2011) discusses the problematic implications of the relative neglect of elements such as con-
cern, attachment, and moral sentiments in social scientific theory and points to streams of philosophical
thinking that, he argues, could help mend this lacuna (e.g., feminist ethics of care, neo-Aristotelianism,
and Adam Smith’s often disregarded theory of moral sentiments).
16. Although their empirical analysis focuses on France, Boltanski and Chiapello (2005:xxi) write that
“we are . . . persuaded that basically rather similar processes have affected the principal industrialized
countries in the Western world.”
Ailon 49

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Author Biography
Galit Ailon is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at Bar-Ilan
University. She specializes in the study of economic and organizational cultures. Her published research
focuses on topics such as lay financial culture, economic reflexivity, and organizational globalization. Her
current research explores economic intersubjectivity in market society.