Overview of Perspectives

Attempting to navigate the vast and diverse landscape of economics is a challenging task even at at its simplest. Traditionally it has been viewed as part of the social sciences. Significantly, there are ongoing efforts to view it as a science. Even so, viewing it as an engagement that has elements of both science and art does not seem to provide an adequate explanation of its contours and nuances.

In more recent times, the performative nature of economics has become a point of discussion.

Perhaps the only thing that one can assert with any certainty is that any discussion of the relationship between science, technology and society would be incomplete without engaging with the question of economics. Indeed, the Marxist theory of historical materialism may be interpreted as suggesting that the history of human beings is the history of material objects or the objects or artifacts of technology and the relations of production of those artifacts. The relations of production, suggests the theory, also point to and are related with social and political structures such as feudalism, capitalism, socialism and so on.