Civil economy is about the way people make a living, create social institutions, and find a common good in a political setting. It is about how people create a public commons in a private market, how people govern themselves in systems of exchange, and how people generate social standards in normative markets. It is about how people invent things to overcome scarcity, how people create hierarchies of oppression, and systems of justice and liberation in market systems. Theory includes postulating the relationship between opposing principles of an economy constructed in society. Opposing principles include individual versus community, public versus private, and unity vs plurality.
Research focuses on the interface of exchange among business, government, and Third sectors.
Cultural economy is about how a symbolic life is generated in midst of scarcity and about the tension of differences among people in everyday life. Culture is linked with the economy through symbolic interaction and broadly, through human history, leading a student back to ancient civilization. This broad inquiry begins with primitive symbols and rituals and moves forward through history to include today's market system. Cultural Studies Cultural studies is an inquiry into paradox and contradiction. These studies are not a subject of any discipline in the university.