As a political theorist, I am always hesitant to post anything to   
this list, but:  
  
Isn't there something ideological in seeing economics as a theory of   
choice?  Marx, whom I have just be reading, might (it depends how you   
read him) rather suggest that perhaps, if economics is to be defined   
in terms of choice, economics should be a study of constrained   
choice, i.e., of the constraints on choice.  
  
Then, for instance, to go to Shah's reading of Becker, what Becker   
finds is women making "choices" that are "rational" given the   
constraints of the American economy (or the American capitalist   
economy).  
  
But what economists should be doing is to study how people's choices   
("rational" or not) are constrained by the circumstances they find   
themselves in; i.e., to focus on the constraints.  That would then   
show (or so a critic of contemporary American would suggest) that the   
many "free" and "rational" choices people make are in fact made under   
circumstances of extensive and multi-faceted constraints.  
  
The Beckerite approach leads us to see American capitalism (and many   
other systems of inequality and constraint) as allowing and   
manifesting free and rational choice;  
an approach emphasizing the constraints on choice would lead us to   
study the constraints in the American economy, constraints that make   
choices limited and unfree.  
  
Peter G. Stillman