Download or read book Cultures Merging written by Eric L. Jones and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-06-28 with total page 315 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Economists agree about many things--contrary to popular opinion--but the majority agree about culture only in the sense that they no longer give it much thought." So begins the first chapter of Cultures Merging, in which Eric Jones--one of the world's leading economic historians--takes an eloquent, pointed, and personal look at the question of whether culture determines economics or is instead determined by it. Bringing immense learning and originality to the issue of cultural change over the long-term course of global economic history, Jones questions cultural explanations of much social behavior in Europe, East Asia, the United States, Australia, and the Middle East. He also examines contemporary globalization, arguing that while centuries of economic competition have resulted in the merging of cultures into fewer and larger units, these changes have led to exciting new syntheses. Culture matters to economic outcomes, Jones argues, but cultures in turn never stop responding to market forces, even if some elements of culture stubbornly persist beyond the time when they can be explained by current economic pressures. In the longer run, however, cultures show a fluidity that will astonish some cultural determinists. Jones concludes that culture's "ghostly transit through history" is much less powerful than noneconomists often claim, yet it has a greater influence than economists usually admit. The product of a lifetime of reading and thinking on culture and economics, a work of history and an analysis of the contemporary world, Cultures Merging will be essential reading for anyone concerned about the interaction of cultures and markets around the world.

Download or read book Foundations of Economic Evolution written by Carsten Herrmann-Pillath and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2013-01-01 with total page 695 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: ÔThis book is an ambitious intellectual enterprise to build a naturalistic foundation for economics, with amazingly vast knowledge of physical, biological, social sciences and philosophy. Readers will discover that approaches and insights emergent in institutional studies, (social)-neuroscience, network theory, ecological economics, bio-culture dualistic evolution, etc. are persuasively placed in a grand unified frame. It is written in a good Hayekian tradition. I recommend this book particularly to young readers who aspire to go beyond a narrowly specified discipline in the age of expanding communicability of knowledge and ideas.Õ Ð Masahiko Aoki, Stanford University, US ÔCarsten Herrmann-PillathÕs new book is an in-depth application of natural philosophy to economics that draws up an entirely new framework for economic analysis. It offers path-breaking insights on the interactions between human economic activity and nature and outlines a convincing solution to the long-standing reductionism controversy. A must-read for everyone interested in the philosophical underpinnings of economics as a science.Õ Ð Ulrich Witt, Max Planck Institute of Economics, Jena, Germany ÔÒBig pictureÓ philosophy of economics drifted into a dull cul-de-sac as it became obsessively focused on falsifiability and rationality. In this book Carsten Herrmann-Pilath pushes the field back onto the open highway by locating economics in the larger frameworks of metaphysics, evolutionary dynamics and information theory. This is large-scale, ambitious synthesis of ideas of the kind we expect from time to time to see devoted to physics and biology. Why should economics merit anything less? But of course this kind of intellectual tapestry must await the appearance of an unusually devoted scholar with special patience and eccentric independence from the pressure for quick returns that characterizes academic life. In the person of Hermann-Pilath this scholar has appeared. No one who wants to examine economics whole and in its richest context should miss his virtuoso performance in this book.Õ Ð Don Ross, University of Cape Town, South Africa and Georgia State University, US ÔHerrmann-PillathÕs work attempts to bring to bear upon the discipline of economics perspectives from other discourses which have been burgeoning recently Ð namely, thermodynamics, evolutionary biology, and semiotics, aiming at a consilience contextualized by economic activity and problems. This marks the work as a contemporary example of natural philosophy, which is now at the doorstep of a revival. The overall perspective is that human economic activity is an aspect of the ecology of the earthÕs surface, viewing it as an evolving physical system mediated through distributed mentality as expressed in technology evolution. Knowledge is taken to be ÔphysicalÕ with a performative function, as in PeirceÕs pragmaticism. Thus, the social meanings of expectations, prices, and credit are found to be rooted in energy flows. The work draws its foundation from Hegel and C.S. Peirce and its immediate guidance from Hayek, Veblen and Georescu-Roegen. The author generates an energetic theory of economic growth, guided by OdumÕs maximum power principle. Economic discourse itself is reworked in the final chapter, in light of the examinations of the previous chapters, naturalizing economics within an extremely powerful contemporary framework.Õ Ð Stanley N. Salthe, Binghamton University, US ÔAn Oscar-winning performance in the Òtheatre of consilience.Ó ItÕs hard to know which to praise first: Carsten Herrmann-PillathÕs humility or his ambition. He says his book Òis not a great intellectual featÓ because he pursues the Òhumble taskÓ of putting together Òthe ideas of others.Ó When he finally gets to economics he tries to Òbe as simple as possibleÓ and to conceive of economics in terms of the basics, at Òundergraduate level, so to say.Ó On the other hand, the scale of his ambition is to rethink the foundations of economics from first principles, while, at the same time, holding a running dialogue between contemporary sciences and classic philosophy. HeÕs much too modest, of course, because Foundations is a major achievement, but his modesty points to what makes it such a powerful treatise: the book is not about his preferences or prejudices; it is a Òscientific approach that aims at establishing truthful propositions about reality.Ó That is much harder to achieve than grand theories or Òcomplicated mathematics,Ó because it amounts to a new modern synthesis of the field Ð an achievement on a par with Julian HuxleyÕs, whose own modern synthesis of evolutionary theories in the 1940s allowed for the explosive growth of the biosciences over the next decades. The structure of the book is simple enough, providing a framework for the Ònaturalistic turnÓ in economics. Starting from material existence, causation and evolution, Herrmann-Pillath takes us through four fundamental concepts Ð individuals, networks, institutions and technology Ð before coming finally to the Òrealm of economics proper,Ó i.e. markets. However, Herrmann-Pillath believes that the Òfoundations of economics cannot be found within economicsÓ but only in dialogue with other sciences, or what he calls the Òtheatre of consilience.Ó ItÕs a theatre in which various characters come and go, where dialogue ebbs and flows, conflicts arise and are resolved, and where individual actions can be seen as concepts as, leading to higher levels of meaning as the plot unfolds. The magic of theatre, of course, is that the point of intelligibility, where the characters, actions and narrative resolve into meaningfulness, is projected out of the drama itself, into the spectator. ThatÕs you, dear reader. So it is with economics as a discipline. Economics is a player in a much larger performance about what constitutes knowledge, and how we know that. It is also a player in the economy it seeks to explain. To understand why money, firms, growth, prices, markets and other staples of economic thought emerge and function the way they do, it is necessary situate the analysis beyond economics (and the economy), and to engage with developments across the human, evolutionary and complexity sciences. This is what Herrmann-Pillath does, analyzing a breathtaking range of illuminating and sometimes challenging work along the way. We are treated to new ideas about the externalized brain, the evolution of knowledge in the Earth System (i.e. not just among humans), the role of signs and performativity in these processes, as well as that of Òenergetic transformations.Ó But Herrmann-Pillath is not satisfied with the ÒmodestÓ task of bringing the best of modern scientific thought to bear on economic concepts and performances; he really does harbor a deeper purpose. The clue is in his apparently quixotic desire to hang on to philosophical insights associated with pre-evolutionary thinkers like Aristotle and Hegel, and his apparently eccentric desire to place the semiotic philosophy of C.S. Pierce at center stage. But the patient observer will see that he is not seeking to change the facts by imposing idealist notions on them after the event. Instead, he is arguing for a change in the way we perform ourselves in the face of these facts. He is looking for a modern-day equivalent of Confucius or Socrates: one who can imagine values and beliefs that Òdefine the human species in a new way.Ó For those who have eyes to see, as the drama unfolds, it may be that we have found such a figure in Carsten Herrmann-Pillath himself, modesty, ambition and all. This is ÒCultural ScienceÓ as it should be done.Õ Ð John Hartley, Curtin University, Australia and Cardiff University, UK

Download or read book Cultural Products and the World Trade Organization written by Tania Voon and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2007-06-28 with total page 39 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Debate about trade and culture has a long history, but the application of WTO rules to cultural products such as films, radio, and books remains one of the most divisive issues in the organization. After assessing the economic and social arguments for treating cultural products differently from things like steel or wheat, this 2007 book explains how the vastly different views of WTO members in earlier negotiations led to an outcome that is disappointing for all. It goes on to provide a comprehensive evaluation of possible solutions, including evolution of the law through WTO dispute settlement, an agreement outside the WTO, and reforms to improve the balance between trade liberalization and cultural policy objectives.

Download or read book Institutions Property Rights and Economic Growth written by Sebastian Galiani and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-04-17 with total page 339 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume showcases the impact of the work of Douglass North, winner of the Nobel Prize and father of the field of new institutional economics. Leading scholars contribute to a substantive discussion that best illustrates the broad reach and depth of Professor North's work. The volume speaks concisely about his legacy across multiple social sciences disciplines, specifically on scholarship pertaining to the understanding of property rights, the institutions that support the system of property rights, and economic growth.

Download or read book A History of Livestock and Wildlife written by Eric Jones and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2023-08-01 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The use of wildlife products, together with advances in livestock feeding, were essential in propelling Western economic growth. Extraordinarily, these early modern and early industrial features are side-lined relative to the role of manufacturing. This book restores the balance, detailing how many species were relocated around the world and how late natural products persisted into the age of synthetics. This text describes how animals were driven immense distances to market and harnessed for transportation and to power machines; even after industrialisation, animals were employed for innumerable purposes, besides being co-opted as pets. The recent rebound from a wholesale persecution of wild nature, and how the plundering of the animal kingdom and the development of livestock farming jointly created the Smithian Growth that ushered in the Industrial Revolution, are also described.

Download or read book Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics written by and published by . This book was released on 2007 with total page 422 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Economics Culture and Development written by Eiman O. Zein-Elabdin and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2017-09-19 with total page 282 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines the treatment of culture and development in the discipline of economics, thereby filling a conspicuous gap in current literature. Economics has come a long way to join the ‘cultural turn’ that has swept the humanities and social sciences in the last half century. This volume identifies some of the issues that major philosophies of economics must address to better grasp the cultural complexity of contemporary economies. This book is an extensive survey of the place of culture and development in four theoretical economic perspectives—Neoclassical, Marxian, Institutionalist, and Feminist. Organized in nine chapters with three appendices and a compendium of over 50 interpretations of culture by economists, this book covers vast grounds from classical political economy to contemporary economic thought. The literatures reviewed include original and new institutionalism, cultural economics, postmodern Marxism, economic feminism, and the current culture and development discourse on subjects such as economic growth in East Asia, businesswomen entrepreneurs in West Africa, and comparative development in different parts of Europe. Zein-Elabdin carries the project further by borrowing some of the insights from postcolonial theory to call for a more profound rethinking of the place of culture and of currently devalued cultures in economic theory. This book is of great interest for those who study Economic development, International relations, feminist economics, and Economic geography

Download or read book Revealed Biodiversity written by Eric L. Jones and published by World Scientific. This book was released on 2014 with total page 292 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Revealed Biodiversity: An Economic History of the Human Impact aims to show that for several centuries environmental conditions have been substantially the product of economic fluctuations. It contests the notion of perpetual decline in species composition. The arguments are supported by far more precise historical detail than is usual in books about ecology. The need to take the gains to human society into account when assessing environmental change is strongly emphasized. The book features case studies including England, the Netherlands, USA, East Asia, Brazil, and the areas of modern agricultural OCyland grabOCO. This book is important for its close attention to the documented historical record of environmental change in several countries over several centuries; for its demonstration of how much wildlife populations have been influenced by fluctuations in market activity; for revealing the need to be sensitive to historical baselines; and for emphasizing the imperative of taking the gains to human society into account when assessing environmental change. It, therefore, has considerable significance for environmental and conservation policies as well as for future studies in ecological history.

Download or read book Barriers to Growth written by Eric L. Jones and published by Springer Nature. This book was released on 2020-04-04 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book deals sequentially with major impediments to economic growth and their slow dissolution. It is original and quite different from standard economic history, which has always sought for one prime mover of the industrial revolution after another. These supposed positive forces are usually depicted as novel and little reference is made to inertia. Instead the barriers dealt with here run, in the first section, from early misallocations of resources to nineteenth-century reforms which of their nature indicate the problems to be overcome. The second section deals with more physical impediments and shocks, such as floods and settlement fires. These too are ignored in ordinary treatments, which this book will supplement or even replace. It will be of interest to academic economic historians and practitioners of neighbouring subjects such as economists, historians, historical geographers, and of course their students.

Download or read book Waking the Asian Pacific Co operative Potential written by Morris Altman and published by Academic Press. This book was released on 2020-06-21 with total page 413 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Replete with case studies, Waking the Asian Pacific Cooperative Potential applies a novel theoretical framework to aid in understanding meaningful change in cooperative firms, mutual firms, collectives, and communes, focusing in particular on the underexamined Asia Pacific region. It explores the common, albeit competing, objectives of transformational cooperatives that deliver a range of social benefits and corporative coops where the cooperative exhibits the characteristics of a competitive investor firm. The book provides examples of successful cooperatives in eleven countries across the Asia Pacific and reviews the theoretical framework of cooperatives, including issues pertaining to socio-economic, politico-legal, and domestic and international factors. Waking the Asian Pacific Co-operative Potential provides early-career researchers and graduate students with a systematic resource of cooperatives in the Asia Pacific, highlighting core lessons from case studies regarding the ideal role of cooperatives in a modern economy and on the enabling factors of the role of the state, the market potential for scale-up, the mitigation of poverty, and civil society. - Provides numerous case studies drawn from successful co-operative organizations across the Asia Pacific region - Advances a theoretical framework to help readers access and understand the reasons for co-operative success in the Asia Pacific region - Develops tools for practitioners to establish effective co-operatives and restructure them to optimal goals

Download or read book Religion in International Relations Theory written by Nukhet Sandal and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2013-06-19 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There is a growing realization among international relations scholars and practitioners that religion is a critical factor in global politics. The Iranian Revolution, the September 11 attacks, the ethno-religious conflicts such as the ones in the former Yugoslavia and Sri Lanka are among the many reasons for this increased focus on religion in international affairs. The rise of religious political parties across the world ranging from the Christian Democrats in Europe to Bharatiya Janata Party in India similarly illustrated religion's heightened international profile. Despite all this attention, it is challenging to situate religion within a discipline which has been dominantly secular from its inception. Only a few existent works have ventured to integrate religion into core international relations theories such as Classical Realism, Neorealism, Neoliberalism, Constructivism and the English school. This work is the first systematic attempt to comparatively assess the place of religion in the aforementioned theoretical strands of international relations with contemporary examples from around the world. Written in an accessible and systematic fashion, this book will be an important addition to the fields of both religion and international relations. Nukhet A. Sandal is Assistant Professor in the Political Science Department at Ohio University. Jonathan Fox is Professor in the Department of Political Studies at Bar Ilan University, Israel.

Download or read book A Culture of Growth written by Joel Mokyr and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2016-10-25 with total page 418 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Why Enlightenment culture sparked the Industrial Revolution During the late eighteenth century, innovations in Europe triggered the Industrial Revolution and the sustained economic progress that spread across the globe. While much has been made of the details of the Industrial Revolution, what remains a mystery is why it took place at all. Why did this revolution begin in the West and not elsewhere, and why did it continue, leading to today's unprecedented prosperity? In this groundbreaking book, celebrated economic historian Joel Mokyr argues that a culture of growth specific to early modern Europe and the European Enlightenment laid the foundations for the scientific advances and pioneering inventions that would instigate explosive technological and economic development. Bringing together economics, the history of science and technology, and models of cultural evolution, Mokyr demonstrates that culture—the beliefs, values, and preferences in society that are capable of changing behavior—was a deciding factor in societal transformations. Mokyr looks at the period 1500–1700 to show that a politically fragmented Europe fostered a competitive "market for ideas" and a willingness to investigate the secrets of nature. At the same time, a transnational community of brilliant thinkers known as the “Republic of Letters” freely circulated and distributed ideas and writings. This political fragmentation and the supportive intellectual environment explain how the Industrial Revolution happened in Europe but not China, despite similar levels of technology and intellectual activity. In Europe, heterodox and creative thinkers could find sanctuary in other countries and spread their thinking across borders. In contrast, China’s version of the Enlightenment remained controlled by the ruling elite. Combining ideas from economics and cultural evolution, A Culture of Growth provides startling reasons for why the foundations of our modern economy were laid in the mere two centuries between Columbus and Newton.

Download or read book Communication and the Globalization of Culture written by S. Nick Mohammed and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2011-09-16 with total page 211 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Communication and the Globalization of Culture: Beyond Tradition and Borders, by Shaheed Nick Mohammed, examines the modern and historical evolution of conceptualizations of culture as well as the concept of culture itself. The book suggests that modern corporate globalized me...

Download or read book Birth Death and Religious Faith in an English Dissenting Community written by Albion M. Urdank and published by Lexington Books. This book was released on 2015-12-17 with total page 151 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This study lies at the intersection of three principal areas of social history: demography, religion, and quantitative methods. It is a microanalysis of an English population at the level of the Anglican parish, during the era of the evangelical revival, which includes, unusually, Protestant dissenters from the Established church, in this case Particular Baptists, who were moderate Calvinists. It goes a step beyond previous studies by giving Anglicans and Dissenters co-equal status in a comparative demographic analysis and by demonstrating how religious values informed procreative activity. It does so through a combination of advanced statistical methodologies and an innovative treatment of data collection forms as readable texts. The study concludes that the likelihood of another birth increased following a religious conversion experience, especially among both Anglican and Baptist wives following marriage. Mortality too had a less constraining effect on procreative activity which, in conformity with the English experience, was driven largely by fertility.

Download or read book Policy written by and published by . This book was released on 2006 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Why Culture Matters Most written by David Charles Rose and published by . This book was released on 2019 with total page 217 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Introduction -- The cultural commons -- Culture as moral beliefs -- Culture as instrument -- The rise of flourishing societies -- The free market democracy dilemma -- The fall of flourishing societies -- Family, religion, government, and civilization -- Conclusion

Download or read book History and Economic Life written by Georg Christ and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2020-02-27 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: History and Economic Life offers students a wide-ranging introduction to both quantitative and qualitative approaches to interpreting economic history sources from the Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century. Having identified an ever-widening gap between the use of qualitative sources by cultural historians and quantitative sources by economic historians, the book aims to bridge the divide by making economic history sources more accessible to students and the wider public, and highlighting the need for a complementary rather than exclusive approach. Divided into two parts, the book begins by equipping students with a toolbox to approach economic history sources, considering the range of sources that might be of use and introducing different ways of approaching them. The second part consists of case studies that examine how economic historians use such sources, helping readers to gain a sense of context and understanding of how these sources can be used. The book thereby sheds light on important debates both within and beyond the field, and highlights the benefits gained when combining qualitative and quantitative approaches to source analysis. Introducing sources often avoided in culturally-minded history or statistically-minded economic history courses respectively, and advocating a combined quantitative and qualitative approach, it is an essential resource for students undertaking source analysis within the field.