Results of Debate

As is often the case, the debate was more productive of heat than light.  It sparked interest, resulted in many conference papers and a few books, but for the most part, people on the two sides talked past each other on issues as basic as the definition of economics.  Therefore, it's impossible to say who "won" or "lost" the debate.

However, the substantivists clearly showed that economics was embedded in critical social institutions and the formalists clearly showed that rational individual decision making occurred in these same institutions.

By the mid 1970s the debate had largely been superceded by analytical positions that applied formal economic reasoning to social institutions from a variety of perspectives. These included Marxism, feminism, ecological anthropology, peasant studies, and development anthropology.

neo-classical