IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/cambje/v49y2025i6p1469-1494..html

The ontology of Original Institutional Economics and Social Positioning Theory

Author

Listed:
  • Beliza Borba de Almeida
  • William Waller

Abstract

Original Institutional Economics (OIE) begins with the work of Thorstein Veblen, who built on evolutionary theorizing to articulate a combined biological and social ontology. Human beings evolved as social animals with propensities that shaped human relations, but the dominant factor in the constitution of social relations was the development of culture, including language. William Dugger’s 1980 article on power introduced a framework for analysing institutions in clusters. While interesting for various reasons, we note that this aspect of his analysis lacks a theory of social constitution and a framework for systematically examining the internal structure of these clusters and accurately describing their interrelationships. We argue that Social Positioning Theory (SPT) can offer a theory of social constitution that aligns with Dugger’s framework and enriches the theory of power he articulates by considering power at all levels of society, not just within institutions.

Suggested Citation

  • Beliza Borba de Almeida & William Waller, 2025. "The ontology of Original Institutional Economics and Social Positioning Theory," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 49(6), pages 1469-1494.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:49:y:2025:i:6:p:1469-1494.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/cje/beaf043
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:oup:cambje:v:49:y:2025:i:6:p:1469-1494.. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/cje .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.