I'm with Sumitra on this issue. Insisting that economics is about how agents make choices may widen its scope in some respects, but it (i) narrows its scope in other ways (i.e. social phenomena not evidently grounded in choice are out of bounds); and (ii) narrows the range of legitimate methods (if you're not analyzing a problem in choice theoretic terms, you're not doing economics). Fred's definition would, for example, cut Marx, or a good part of what he was about, out of the discipline; Sraffa. Obviously most of what constitutes modern economics IS indeed about how agents and communities make choices; and, equally obviously, economists of all stripes ought to be interested in such issues. But why should that be the only lens through which economists look at social phenomena? What's a non-material choice, anyway? Gary