Social Provisioning within a Culture-Nature Life-Process (original) (raw)

The article seeks to contribute to the literature on developing the concept of social provisioning as an organizing concept of heterodox economic analysis. Social provisioning is formulated as an amalgamation of social processes within a broader culture-nature life-process. The objective is to provide analytical details into the scope of social provisioning analysis that further enables a critical and contextual inquiry about capitalism. First, the article provides a theoretical and methodological context of social provisioning analysis. The article proceeds to delineate three main categories of processes: biological and geographical processes; processes that are usually analyzed as personal characteristics or as social categories (e.g. gender), and processes defined around social activities (e.g. consumption). The delineated system of processes offers diverse entry points into analysis of social provisioning, that is, beyond consumption, production, and distribution. Further, it transcends the culture-economy, nature-economy, nature-culture, and micro-macro dualisms in heterodox economic theory.