Sensemaking in economics : economic activity from a social - philosophical perspective

The purpose of this project is to formulate the theoretical fundamentals of an economic philosophy that is understood as a component of a practically oriented social philosophy. I start by recapitulating the major critiques of the traditional framework of economic theory, in particular of the concepts of rational choice and 'methodological individualism'. The limited scope of these concepts for explaining social phenomena such as markets, cooperation, and trust is emphasized. These phenomena come about as results of the mutually dependent interactions of multiple actors and cannot be adequately analyzed with the agent-centered concepts of traditional economics. For example, it remains unclear how a market could arise from the isolated pursuit of individual interests. Against the backdrop of this critique, ways of theorizing about economic activity as genuine social activity are sought on the level of economic philosophy. As the agent-centered rational choice model cannot serve as the starting point for such an economic philosophy, I opted for 'sensemaking' (the creation of meaning) as an alternative key concept. In the first part of this dissertation, however, my analysis of sensemaking as an isolated activity demonstrates that not every sensemaking concept fulfills the requirement of understanding economic phenomena as genuinely social phenomena. For example, Max Weber's 'subjective meaning', Alfred Schütz's 'construction of meaning' and the hermeneutical understanding of sense, as well as their relation to economic theory, are explored in detail. All conceive of sense as an ends-means relationship or as an individual intention and are incapable of providing an adequate tool for analyzing an economic action as a social one. In the second part of the dissertation, the concept of 'social sensemaking' is introduced against the backdrop of systems theory and