Economists use to cut their scientific object of studies out of the reality by bring-ing into focus the sphere of production and distribution of goods and services leaving all the other social fields out though they are in reality of economic rele-vance. Economics is a specific approach to understand and explain the core prin-ciples, processes and structures within its limited focus.
The perspective of this textbook, however, is holistic and aims at describ-ing and interpreting the economic reality in its integration in social, environ-mental, political, technical, and legal networks resumed under the perspective of the all-embracing term culture. From a methodological point of view this per-spective does not deny the analytic results of economics nor does it replace them by a new scientific approach, but offers a complementary, in its center historic view that tries to take into account that the economy is never isolated from the societal and natural environment. This book is directed to all who want to know the economy but need not study economics for that reason.