Extolling the virtues of ethnography in economic planning and decision-making: Mainstreaming "Econoethnography" in Anthropological Economics

Abstract

The core, chief and central objective of this paper is to extol the virtues of ethnography or what we had called "Econoethnography" in the realms of economic planning and economic decision making. It also discusses and debates the need to mainstream "Econoethnography" in Anthropological Economics so that it may be used by future researchers. We begin this paper by describing what both ethnography and participant observation are, by drawing suitable reference to our previously published papers on the subject, where we had discussed them at a great level of detail, and then explaining their various uses of econoethnography for both economic planning and economic-decision making along with the use of ethnography-revealed preferences also in economic planning and decision making. The various types of econoethnography are also explored as discussed threadbare in our previously published paper on Anthropological Economics, and its myriad and multiple benefits for economic science also explained as it can greatly enrich the living human and economic experience, and open new vistas and horizons for hundreds of millions of people all over the world. We believe that this endeavour and undertaking would goad and encourage future researchers to use these techniques in future research for the benefit of better and more well-rounded economic studies.