Embodied economics, utopian impulse, and societal transformation: conceptual pathways and empirical investigations
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: Embodied economics posits that embodiment grounds and bounds economic life and advances an argument centred on distributed agency and grounded (rather than bounded) rationality. In the present article, the focus is placed on extending one specific strand of this argument by presenting four embodied relational models and examining how they can help navigate utopian visions and societal transformations towards sustainability. More specifically, grounded rationality is understood through four relational models—Community, Reciprocity, Authority, and Market—each underpinned respectively by embodied image schemas: CONTAINER, BALANCE, VERTICALITY, and RESOURCE. This framework is then extended by showing that each embodied relational model can be associated with specific values and worldviews, and by illustrating how these values inform different utopian visions identified in sustainable development. It is shown that the alternative to the neoliberal utopia of market domination, which blends the VERTICALITY and RESOURCE schemas, is a post-growth utopia such as Doughnut economics, which defines a safe and just operating space with an ecological ceiling and a social foundation by drawing on a blending of the CONTAINER and BALANCE schemas. The argument concludes by demonstrating, through psychological studies on values, system-justifying ideologies, and the transformative utopian impulse, how emerging empirical analyses support the embodied economics approach to utopia.
Author: Basso, Frédéric
Language: English
Subfield: Management, Monitoring, Policy and Law
Field: Environmental Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7163128799