This introductory article calls for a critical re-examination of a plethora of phenomena relating to choice and decision-making, occasionally addressed by anthropologists, but more regularly studied by economists, political scientists, psychologists and organization scholars. By means of a bird's eye research overview, we identify certain weak spots pertaining to a formalistic uni-central view of human rationality, and argue that ethnographic approaches casting light on cultural contexts for thought, reason and action can explain how choices are framed and constituted from horizons of perceptions and expectations. A positive account of socially and culturally embedded decision-making heralds a mode of anthropology with a broad, integrating capacity to address public policy and administration and its interactions with everyday experience and practice.