Building on the core foundations of Anthropological Economics: Some important extensions of Anthropological Economics

Description

The objective of our work on anthropological economics was to attempt to merge the concepts and
theoretical frameworks of the disciplines of Anthropology and Economics, thereby creating a new sub-field in Economics called ‘Anthropological Economics’ which was mired in Anthropological concepts and
principles and sought to maximize not only human welfare and happiness but also wealth maximization
across cultures, while considering both the psychic unity of man, universal human needs and cultures pecific factors. Thus, the field of Anthropological Economics was expected to be inter-related to other disciplines of Economics, but remain complementary to them i.e., it was not expected that it would intrude into other sub-fields of economics, replace them, or override their principles in any way. It would therefore we anticipated, draw upon other aspects of economic theory, and enrich them suitably. It was therefore expected that all aspects of Economic theory would be taken into consideration for policy formulation and decision-making, including those of Anthropological economics, and independent, context-specific judgment would always be applied. The new and novel proposed field of Anthropological Economics proposed to take the idea of Human Welfare to its logical conclusion by extending the work already carried out in various subdisciplines of economics such as those proposed by Amartya Sen and others, and integrate it more tightly with various concepts in Anthropology. Many new tools and techniques were therefore, proposed as a part of our overall work, and we believed these would suitably enrich the field of Economics as well. While many attempts have been made in the past to integrate the fields of Anthropology and Economics, we had hoped our endeavour would take this exercise to a much higher level, by creating a new generation of “Anthroeconomists”. We had also hoped it will eventually help move mainstream economics away from Neo-classical approaches (what we prefer to call legacy economics) to Anthropological and human-centric approaches. The present volume presents our additional and auxiliary concepts in anthropological economics. The presented volume must be read after the contents of the previous volume has been fully read and ingested. We say this in the interests of absolute reader clarity. This is because the original paper has not been reproduced here.

About the Author

Sujay Rao Mandavilli is an IT professional (Governance Risk and Compliance) (Still practising as of 2025; Served major clients such as Tata Group, Mahindra Group, NECAM, Verizon and BAT, and also previously worked in IBM) and a born-again Anthropologist, researcher, and post-colonial thinker with major contributions to various fields of Anthropology and Social Sciences. He completed his Masters in Anthropology from the prestigious Indira Gandhi National Open University in New Delhi, India in 2020 with a first class, and with specializations in ethnography and environmental anthropology. He has made major contributions to Anthropological Economics, the Sociology of Science, theories of socio-cultural change, Identity theory, population studies, Historiography, language dynamics, Indo-European studies, the Aryan Problem, and the identity of the Harappans. He has also contributed greatly to scientific method, and the philosophy of science. His hypothesis is that most fields of Social sciences which are based on a study on social and cultural variables, are based on old Eurocentric paradigms, and that better theories can only come from intellectual multipolarity, and Ethnographic data collected from different parts of the world. He believes this will lead to better scientific research, and greatly boost scientific output in different parts of the world that have hitherto lagged behind the West in scientific research. He has also attempted to synthesize Anthropological theory with other fields of Social Sciences such as Economics and Pedagogy, generating several new paradigms as a result. He strongly believes that the ‘Globalization of Science’, with a particular emphasis on the social sciences, must become one of the major movements of the Twenty-first century. He has called for an "Indian Enlightenment" as well as similar renaissances in the developing world through a horizontal collaboration among developing nations. He has published over ninety core research papers, and eight books. All papers have again been republished through Social Sciences Research Network or SSRN. He is the Founder-Director of the Institute for the Study of the Globalization of Science (ISGOS) (Registered in India as the Globalization of Science Trust) which is has already started empaneling a group of researchers and scientists to plan its next course of action. In 2023, he launched the "Scholars and intellectuals for mankind" (SCHIMA) forum, which is reaching out to scholars and intellectuals from throughout the world to draft a common agenda. In 2024, he launched the "Open, transparent, high-quality and ideology-free science movement" (MOTHIS), riding piggyback on his large number of publications on scientific method. In 2024, he also created the blog and the video channel "Abhilasha: This is not Utopia" to discuss burning and pressing issues of the day, particularly in relation to science, knowledge and society. In 2025, he launched the Mandavilli foundation to provide cash-free awards to social science researchers from developing countries who actively engage in globalization of science pursuits. He also launched a scholarship to Ph.D researchers in India whose primary thesis deals with globalization of science in the humanities. He also writes “social and scientific poetry” in order to contribute to the globalization of science movement, albeit humorously.

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