Rejecting the orthodox economic model as an inappropriate representation of social reality, Robert Wright proposes an alternative adapted from Foucault's cultural theories. This new perspective leads him to conclude that, within the discipline of Canadian economics, theory should become gestalt rather than pure, methodology should become normative rather than positive, and policy should be directed towards the achievement of economic nationalism rather than continentalism.

Orthodox economics has played a role in the gradual narrowing of the concept of man from a being involved with the fullness of life to "economic man" an efficiently functioning mechanism within present-day technological society. The current subservience to economic and technological efficiency has produced a spiritual malaise that Wright believes must be challenged. He argues that the reconstruction of "economic man" involves the recuperation of both "universal" knowledge from the past and "local" knowledge from within one's own culture. Citing the Bible as the text for universal knowledge...