Postmodern and modern economic thought : exploring the constructive tensions and the 'in-between'

Much of the prevailing wisdom of economists is anchored in a modernist ideology in which it is presumed; there is a knowing subject; a form of cognition that is a "mirror of nature"; and, an unproblematic anthropological view of markets. A postmodernist orientation to the field of economics rejects such presumptions and this paper explores the constructive tension that arises from the juxtaposition of modernist and postmodernist epistemologies. The paper discovers a number of new alternative "truths" that give us cause to pause in the assumptive basis of the field. The implecations for business and organisation studies are also discussed.