The Well-Informed Critique of the Economy: A Study of Lay Economic Reasoning in Ukraine

Abstract

This article provides insight into the lay economic reasoning process through a qualitative gamification-method study conducted in Ukraine. Rather than economically naive individuals, laypeople in the study present themselves as Schützean well-informed citizens who are aware of expert knowledge and capable of using a metapragmatic register of critique in the discussion of the economic reality at hand. The doxic elements of lay economic knowledge, as an obstacle for metapragmatic reasoning, were also revealed in the study. The Ukrainian context of the research ensured that the respondents' economic claims were, on the one hand, largely separated from their political opinions, and on the other, problematized the functioning of the economic institutions, which would remain uncontested in other conditions. The paper engages in discussion with the recent literature on lay economic knowledge and advocates the abandonment of reductionist perspectives on the subject in further research.