Kenneth Boulding: Economics from a Different Perspective
Among economists, Kenneth Boulding is one of the most imaginative, stimulating, creative, and prolific.' He views much of the efforts of contemporary economists as relatively sterile,2 and he has launched his own efforts to invigorate the discipline and make it more fruitful by the introduction of a new perspective, additional dimensions of economic analysis, and a new proposal for the objective of political economy. Over the years, Boulding has generated a profusion of publications which deal with a wide variety of topics.3 Yet, many of these efforts can be viewed as bits in an emerging mosaic of a broader conceptual context and framework for economics. Although Boulding's work has been widely published and acclaimed, it has not yet been given explicit attention as a system of thought. The purposes of this article are to bring together, in skeletal fashion, some of the major elements in Boulding's emerging system, to present them as components of a different "mega-perspective," and to suggest some possible implications for economics. These tasks are approached