Underdevelopment as meta-axiological dilemma: The socioeconomic implications of African axiology for rational choice determinants of microeconomic agency

The intergenerational problems of indigence, poverty and social dysfunction that plague African societies are inextricably grounded in the broader issue of ethnocentrism in neoclassical microeconomics. Economic anthropology provides a methodological critique of the conceptual limitations of neoclassical microbehavioral assumptions narrowly imposed on non-western economic organization. While recognizing non-western economic praxes, the sociological implications of strict neoclassical microeconomic agency for non-western socioeconomic development is conspicuously ignored. The critique fails to specifically consider the impact of neoclassical ethnocentrism to non-western sociocultural organization and improvement.; This research utilizes an African-centered, social psychological approach to examine the paradigmatic implications of rational choice criteria for microeconomic agency within African sociocultural organization. Rational choice criteria appear incapable of resolving African underdevelopment since they engender normative behavioral expectations that interdict the social reproduction of African cultural praxis. The simultaneity of diametric behavioral expectations and deep structural impetuses establishes meta-axiological dilemma as propagative social conditions for underdevelopment.