Generative Relational Economics - Chapter 21: Relational Dialogue among Economic Theories

This chapter develops a framework for dialogue among heterogeneous traditions of economic thought through the relational vocabulary of Generative Relational Economics (GRE). Its purpose is neither to subsume existing economics within GRE nor to construct a unified replacement theory. Instead, the chapter examines whether economic theories with different objects, methods, historical commitments, normative orientations, and explanatory architectures can be reconstructed within sufficiently explicit relational coordinates to support comparison while preserving theoretically significant differences. The chapter first establishes common coordinates for theoretical dialogue, including economic subjects, relations, resources, capacities, constraints, value, institutions, power, temporality, evidence, and generative consequences. It then reconstructs classical political economy, neoclassical economics, Marxian political economy, Keynesian and Post-Keynesian economics, institutional and historical economics, behavioral and experimental economics, evolutionary and complexity economics, feminist and care economics, capability and human-development approaches, ecological economics, commons, cooperative and solidarity economics, economic sociology and relational economics, and digital, platform, and data-centered economic analysis. Each reconstruction identifies both a tradition's domain of analytical adequacy and the limits of translation into GRE. The later sections make theoretical dialogue itself the analytical object. They distinguish translation from equivalence; develop isomorphism, homomorphism, simulation, bisimulation, functional, manifestational, and role equivalence without reducing equivalence to identity; identify irreducible ontological, epistemic, normative, methodological, historical, and value disagreements; and formulate principles for multi-theoretical explanation. The chapter subsequently turns reflexively toward GRE, specifying how engagement with existing economics can revise its concepts, mechanisms, empirical interfaces, normative distinctions, institutional analysis, and disciplinary boundaries. It also identifies limits of Generative Relational theory as a translation language, including relational overtranslation, theoretical-specificity loss, normative leakage, historical flattening, formal overreach, and domain resistance. The chapter concludes by converting theoretical dialogue into a research-programme formation architecture. Translation-generated questions, unresolved contradictions, empirical, formal, and normative gaps, domain-specific tests, and revision cycles become inputs to an open and versioned GRE research programme. Economic-theoretical plurality thereby becomes a source of disciplined mutual correction and future inquiry rather than an obstacle requiring premature synthesis.