CiteULike: heraclitus' common-good

Human Well-Being and Economic Goals (Frontier Issues In Economic Thought)

2008-06-01T11:04:37-00:00

What are the ends of economic activity? According to neoclassical theory, efficient interaction of the profit-maximizing "ideal producer" and the utility-maximizing "ideal consumer" will eventually lead to some sort of social optimum. But is that social optimum the same as human well-being? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals addresses that issue, considering such questions as: * Does the maximization of individual welfare really lead to social welfare? * How can we deal with questions of relative welfare and of equity? * How do we define, or at least understand, individual and social welfare? * And how can these things be measured, or even assessed? Human Well-Being and Economic Goals brings together more than 75 concise summaries of the most significant literature in the field that consider issues of present and future individual and social welfare, national development, consumption, and equity. Like its predecessors in the Frontier Issues in Economic Thought series, it takes a multidisciplinary approach to economic concerns, examining their sociological, philosophical, and psychological aspects and implications as well as their economic underpinnings. Human Well-Being and Economic Goals provides a powerful introduction to the current and historical writings that examine the concept of human well-being in ways that can help us to set goals for economic activity and judge its success. It is a valuable summary and overview for students, economists, and social scientists concerned with these issues.

For the Common Good: Redirecting the Economy Toward Community, the Environment, & a Sustainable Future

Herman Daly — 2008-06-01T10:45:46-00:00

(01 November 1991)

Updated and Expanded Edition Winner of the Grawemeyer Award for Ideas Improving World Order 1992, Named New Options Best Political Book Economist Herman Daly and theologian John Cobb, Jr., demonstrate how conventional economics and a growth-oriented industrial economy have led us to the brink of environmental disaster, and show the possibility of a different future.

Economics for the Common Good: Two Centuries of Economic Thought in the Humanist Tradition (Advances in Social Economics)

Mark Lutz — 2008-06-01T10:42:14-00:00

(25 February 1999)

This volume provides an introduction to economics in terms of human rather than material welfare. Building on a social economics tradition, it proposes a more rational economic order and develops new principles of economic policy. The issues covered include: the inadequacy of individualistic economics in guiding policy formation; a logical critique of economic rationality; rethinking of the modern business corporation; a critique of modern trade theory and unregulated international competition; and how standard economic theory encourages major ecological problems. _Economics for the Common Good_ introduces social economic concepts and demonstrates their continuing relevance to the ills of an increasingly global society. In approaching problems generally conceived to be purely economic, from a social and ecological perspective, the author explores the vital interface between economics, ethics and politics.

Against the Romance of Community

Miranda Joseph — 2006-06-20T22:01:26-00:00

(01 July 2002)

Community is almost always invoked as an unequivocal good, an indicator of a high quality of life, caring, selflessness, belonging. Into this common portrayal, Against the Romance of Community introduces an uncommon note of caution, a penetrating, sorely needed sense of what, precisely, we are doing when we call upon this ideal. Miranda Joseph explores sites where the ideal of community relentlessly recurs, from debates over art and culture in the popular media, to the discourses and practices of nonprofit and nongovernmental organizations, to contemporary narratives of economic transformation or "globalization." She shows how community legitimates the social hierarchies of gender, race, nation, and sexuality that capitalism implicitly requires. Joseph argues that social formations, including community, are constituted through the performativity of production. This strategy makes it possible to understand connections between identities and communities that would otherwise seem to be disconnected: gay consumers in the U.S. and Mexican maquiladora workers; Christian right "family values" and Asian "crony capitalism." Exposing the complicity of social practices, identities, and communities with capitalism, this truly constructive critique opens the possibility of genuine alliances across such differences. Miranda Joseph is associate professor of women's studies at the University of Arizona.

Economics for the Common Good: Two Centuries of Economic Thought in the Humanistic Tradition (Advances in Social Economics)

Mark Lutz — 2008-05-03T15:12:33-00:00

(16 April 1999)

This volume provides an introduction to economics in terms of human rather than material welfare. Building on a social economics tradition, it proposes a more rational economic order and develops new principles of economic policy. The issues covered include: the inadequacy of individualistic economics in guiding policy formation; a logical critique of economic rationality; rethinking of the modern business corporation; a critique of modern trade theory and unregulated international competition; and how standard economic theory encourages major ecological problems. Economics for the Common Good introduces social economic concepts and demonstrates their continuing relevance to the ills of an increasingly global society. In approaching problems generally conceived to be purely economic, from a social and ecological perspective, the author explores the vital interface between economics, ethics and politics.