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