Political economic theory is undergoing a discipline-shaping turning point that involves a Nachkonstruktion of the metatheoretical foundation that provided the guide to determining what type of theoretical knowledge should be regarded as scientifically acceptable, i.e., warranted. While in the context of discussions of a metatheoretical Nachkonstruktion of political economy the question of reflexivity is coming to prominence. There is also serious conjecture on the application of post-modernist approaches to political economy. And while, it is argued that reflexivity in political economic theory is a crucial contribution to a postpositivist metatheoretical Nachkonstruktion, post-modernist appreciations are worth examining because post-modernism (with its focus on the role of rhetoric in constructing both power relations and bodies of knowledge) may offer insights into the role of meaning construction in the political economic system itself, and into the growing dissensus regarding the metatheoretical and disciplinary foundations of political economy. Our Nachkonstruktion is attentive to interpretative approaches from the humanities and a critical examination of the positivist notions of science that had previously been brought into the discipline from the natural sciences. As we shall presently see it is also more than merely this. The Nachkonstruktion could have a profound influence on political economy; that it is more than simply adding an interest in the uniquely human activity of meaning-construction to, for instance, a behaviorist focus, because it has implications for the ethics, ontology, epistemology, and methodology of the discipline. Let it be noted that our commitment herein to a metatheoretical discourse is not one argued out of a veiled interest in demonstrating either an essentiality or necessity of economic and social patterns as distinct from seeking to explain them.
Before proceeding to a development the main arguments of this work it is useful to note the specificity of the exercise represented here. This is an exercise in political economic metatheory. Perhaps the best way to clarify the meaning of metatheory is by analogy. Consider, for example, the discipline's treatment of empirical evidence. Although there is a disciplinary concern with incorporating facts into descriptive and explanatory accounts, political economy has generally not subscribed to barefoot empiricism.(1) That is to say, political economists, while they have too casually accepted the facticity-of-the-given, have generally not subscribed to the view that facts speak for themselves. Rather, it is generally held that facts require interpretation in order to have meaning—interpretation that is the product of the application of theory to facts; for the meaning of facts is not a factual, but a theoretical question.
Indeed, the separation of theoretical questions from metatheoretical ones about explanation is chronic. Problems of theory construction and their application arise within fields of inquiry which have a distinct and coherent metatheoretical framework that delineates a discourse. Domains of intellection contain ontological beliefs (both well- and ill-founded; explicit and implicit), general concepts about the nature of the objects of inquiry within the domain, general methodological principles, and a collection of linguistic explanatory tools, such as metaphors, analogies, similes, and reference images. Scientific theories employ these beliefs, principles, tools, and models to construct putative causal explanations of types of phenomena and processes so that particular phenomena and processes can be explained. However, this is only one of several approaches of theory prevalent in the social and human studies.
Any theory involves an isolation of a specific set of entities from all others in a total situation....