Some researchers, hailing from the Northern hemisphere as well as from Latin America, Africa and Asia, observe that the notion of "economy" is simply absent from societies which have retained a strong link with their own holistic tradition. In such societies, "economic" activities are seen as social activities. Today, however, dominant thinking tends to look at society as "an economy". This is new. Even though markets and merchants have been in existence for a long time in different places, never (before 1830-1850) was there an internally integrated market capable of ruling all aspects of life. It led to the habit of looking at society primarily from an economic point of view. This modern habit tends to reduce people and nature to their potential for the accumulation of money.

Yet, people want to be treated as being worth on their own terms, independently of their usefulness to others. They do not accept to be judged according to what they can be used for.

Alas, complex social and spiritual processes, such as those unfurling in Ghanaian villages, are brutally "reduced to economics and matter" (Akpokavie). Society is seen and managed as if it were one gigantic market place (Carmen).

Yet, it is an illusion to think that economic bonds alone can sustain human beings. People need economic activities that support social bonds which are more than economic (Santinkaro).

A more humane and at the same time more realistic approach is to think of society as consisting of people who, among many other pursuits (e.g. social relations, religious experiences, learning, political action) are "also" engaged into processes of production and consumption of goods and services.

Limits to competition

Other participants delve into the presently dominant economic thinking. Its triumph since the collapse of communism in Europe led to unprecedented levels of "economism", an obsession with things related to market and competition. One author referred to the Group of Lisbon's "Limits to Competition" manifesto (1995). Headed by Prof. Riccardo Petrella, this group agrees that competitiveness has been an important ingredient of material improvement and of technological innovation in the recent past. It is a driving force behind new levels of human achievement.

Under the sway of new economic thinking however, competition has more and more taken on the character of a test of strength between rivals. Its bellicose language ("beating the competitor; invade and control markets") indicates its perverse propensity to seek not just success over but elimination of the competitor.

From a means, competition became an end in itself. From a modality (a manner in which economic actors tend to behave on the market), competition has become an objective. It generates exclusion and legitimizes at world level the fact that "right" is on the side of the technologically, industrially and commercially strongest (CARMEN).

This "gospel of competitiveness" according to Petrella can be captured in four basic principles :
- We are engaged in a technological, industrial and economic war on a world scale;
- Competition is the sole guarantee for survival ("not to be killed");
- Outside competition, there cannot be any economic or social well-being nor any independence or autonomy;
- The principal role of States is to create an environment which is favourable to enterprise so as to become or remain competitive.
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