Cultural Economics and Economic Epistemology: some Preliminary Considerations

The works carried out in the 1980s and 1990s in Cultural Economics were premonitory in the sense that they raised problems that are relevant to question, from an epistemological perspective, the hardcore of the main theoretical matrices, and to analyze the evolutions of current capitalism, especially with respect to the different types of intangible capital and the growing financialization of economies. In this article, I do not intend to analyze in detail the main theoretical debates that characterize the development of economic science. My aim, which is much more modest, is to show to what extent what has been considered to be the specificities of Cultural Economics allows us to contribute to these theoretical debates. In a first part, I will explain the mechanisms that characterize the Cultural Economics, and show how, and to what extent, this economy allows refuting the substantial hypothesis used by the main theoretical matrices. In a second part, I will show to what extent the Cultural Economics implies the introduction of Historicity in economic analysis, and thus contributes to the main epistemological debates that have arisen in Economic Science.