ABSTRACT OF PAPER
Title: The implications of the concept of exaptation for a theory of economic change
Author: Bonifati Giovanni
For a long time, the idea that the origin of what exists can be deduced from its actual functionality (or utility) has been dominant. This idea conditioned evolutionary thinking and found its expression in the notion of adaptation through selection. It is only with the contributions of Gould, Lewontin, and Vrba that an interpretative perspective different from the adaptive theory has emerged and a word to identify such a perspective has been coined: the term exaptation. In particular, Gould and Vrba coined the term exaptation to refer to those characters that are useful for survival but that were not selected for this purpose. In socio-economic systems, an exaptation can be defined, in very general terms, as a result of set of processes through which an initial attribution of a new functionality to existing outcomes of human activity – whether they are artifacts, organizations, scientific achievements or cultural models – leads to new outcomes. Exaptations are induced by and induce qualitative changes resulting from interacting social processes. In this paper I will argue that, in order to grasp the implications of the notion of exaptation for the analysis of economic change, it is necessary to focus on processes through which: (a) new emerging functionalities are attributed to existing artifacts; (b) new artifacts are developed which are apt to the new emerging functionalities attributed to them; (c) new systems of relationships between agents and artifacts and new markets emerge. I will provide an essential interaction-based ontology defining three key entities for the analysis of the exaptation process: organizations (and agents as organizations), artifacts and markets. This ontology will be used to put forward a theoretical framework based on multilevel-feedback processes of interactions between agents and artifacts to analyze the overall process of exaptation. Exaptations are the expression of a more general phenomenon: changing functionalities. The main implication of the exaptation-based perspective highlighted in the paper is that it leads us to analyse economic change in terms of processes, through which relationships defining entities involved in economic processes change as a result of human action embedded in such relationships, giving rise to new functionalities and new entities. This implication of the notion of exaptation will be used for a short critical discussion of some contemporary theories of economic change. In the last section of the paper, as an example of analysis of the processes of change of functionalities in an historical perspective, I will discuss Marx’s analysis of the changing characteristics and functions of the division of labour from feudal to mercantile and capitalist society.
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