Theorizing the 'Third Sphere': A Critique of the Persistence of the 'Economistic Fallacy.'

The paper seeks to investigate, from a methodological and ontological perspective, different ways of theorizing the third sphere--the set of activities that can be captured by neither the price mechanism of the markets nor by governmental transactions. The first aim is to elucidate the constitutive elements of the third sphere by deploying Polanyi's forms of integration (reciprocity, redistribution, and exchange). The second is to survey the ontologically individualist and methodologically formalist literature on the third sphere. After elucidating the coexisting sets of behavioral essences in contemporary ontologically individualist and methodologically formalist models of third-sphere activities, the paper claims that this proliferation of behavioral essences can only lead to a methodological impasse. The paper concludes that only with a committed recognition of the heterogeneity of the economy and the endogeneity of the economic subject will it become possible to better grasp the richness of third sphere activities.