Homo economicus is a masculine ideological fiction, not a description of real actors

Evidence

Homo economicus, a term first coined by John Stuart Mill in the early nineteenth century, has typically sought to capture dominant characteristics of capitalism’s economic subjectivity. It has been social scientists’ prevailing explanatory model, used to describe dominant views of the archetypal economic agent, rather than a description of the person itself. Homo economicus has long been a creature “fantasized about and fulfilled by the liberal imagination and its doctrinaires,” as Verónica Gago (2017, 235) puts it—a universalized ruse despite being accessible only to a small minority (Haiven 2020, 139). It is also a gendered figure, inherently masculine and sexist, free of the so-called pathologies, irrationalities, and vulnerabilities historically associated with women (Brown 2015; de Goede 2005). — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 27

Categorization

• DEFINE: Establishes the genealogy and ideological critique of homo economicus that homo speculans is set against.
• XREF: Connects to the reader’s stated goal of defining homo speculans against its predecessor figure; the gender critique echoes Brown and de Goede cited here.