Political economy and the social disciplines: the modern life of Das Adam Smith Problem

2013 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 623-641 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. Dixon ◽  
D. Wilson
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
The Social

THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF INCLUSION: THE RISE AND FALL OF THE WORKHOUSE SYSTEM

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (4) ◽  
pp. 453-481 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cosma Orsi
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
David Hume ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Economic Thought ◽  
The Political ◽  
George Berkeley ◽  
Institutional Reforms ◽  
The Social ◽  
Policy Shift ◽  
The Rose

The aim of this article is to describe the rise and fall of the workhouse system in connection with the developments that took place in economic thought in the transition from mercantilism to the Classical tradition. By examining the economic debate about wages, efficiency, labor market, workers’ mobility, and unemployment, we discuss whether the social policy shift epitomized by institutional reforms like the Gilbert Act (1782), the Rose Act (1793), and the Speenhamland system (1795) was accompanied and eventually inspired by a change in the perception of major political economy issues. In doing so, we review the writings of Jacob Vanderlint (d. 1740), George Berkeley (1685–1753), Malachy Postlethwayt (1707?–1767), Josiah Tucker (1713–1799), David Hume (1711–1776), and Adam Smith (1723-1790), among others. Although a direct influence by these writers cannot be proven, the originality of the present work rests on the effort to put into perspective the arguments elaborated by economic thinkers and the proposals made by social reformers so as to identify possible connections between economic theorizing and social legislation.

Adam Smith and Rousseau

2018 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Philosophy ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
History And Literature ◽  
Edinburgh Review

Jean-Jacques Rousseau and Adam Smith are two of the foremost thinkers of the European Enlightenment, thinkers who made seminal contributions to moral and political philosophy and who shaped some of the key concepts of modern political economy. Among Smith’s first published works was a letter to the Edinburgh Review where he discusses Rousseau’s Discourse on the Origin of Inequality. Smith continued to engage with Rousseau’s work and to explore many shared themes such as sympathy, political economy, sentiment, and inequality. This collection brings together an international and interdisciplinary group of Adam Smith and Rousseau scholars to provide an exploration of the key shared concerns of these two great thinkers in politics, philosophy, economics, history, and literature.

Lord Dacre and the Politics of the Scottish Enlightenment

2005 ◽  
Vol 84 (2) ◽  
pp. 202-220 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Kidd
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Cultural History ◽  
Economic Transformation ◽  
Scottish Enlightenment ◽  
North East ◽  
The Social ◽  
Romantic Movement ◽  
Scottish History

Hugh Trevor-Roper (Lord Dacre) made several iconoclastic interventions in the field of Scottish history. These earned him a notoriety in Scottish circles which, while not undeserved, has led to the reductive dismissal of Trevor-Roper's ideas, particularly his controversial interpretation of the Scottish Enlightenment, as the product of Scotophobia. In their indignation Scottish historians have missed the wider issues which prompted Trevor-Roper's investigation of the Scottish Enlightenment as a fascinating case study in European cultural history. Notably, Trevor-Roper used the example of Scotland to challenge Weberian-inspired notions of Puritan progressivism, arguing instead that the Arminian culture of north-east Scotland had played a disproportionate role in the rise of the Scottish Enlightenment. Indeed, working on the assumption that the essence of Enlightenment was its assault on clerical bigotry, Trevor-Roper sought the roots of the Scottish Enlightenment in Jacobitism, the counter-cultural alternative to post-1690 Scotland's Calvinist Kirk establishment. Though easily misconstrued as a dogmatic conservative, Trevor-Roper flirted with Marxisant sociology, not least in his account of the social underpinnings of the Scottish Enlightenment. Trevor-Roper argued that it was the rapidity of eighteenth-century Scotland's social and economic transformation which had produced in one generation a remarkable body of political economy conceptualising social change, and in the next a romantic movement whose powers of nostalgic enchantment were felt across the breadth of Europe.

Prophets and Profits of Racial Science

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruha Benjamin
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Social Construction ◽  
Precision Medicine ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Racial Science ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Racial Ethnic

In this response to Terence Keel and John Hartigan’s debate over the social construction of race, I aim to push the discussion beyond the terrain of epistemology and ideology to examine the contested value of racial science in a broader political economy. I build upon Keel’s concern that even science motivated by progressive aims may reproduce racist thinking and Hartigan’s proposition that a critique of racial science cannot rest on the beliefs and intentions of scientists. In examining the value of racial-ethnic classifications in pharmacogenomics and precision medicine, I propose that analysts should attend to the relationship between prophets of racial science (those who produce forecasts about inherent group differences) and profits of racial science (the material-semiotic benefits of such forecasts). Throughout, I draw upon the idiom of speculation—as a narrative, predictive, and financial practice—to explain how the fiction of race is made factual, again and again. 

Different Resources, Different Conflicts? The Subnational Political Economy of Armed Conflict and Crime in Colombia

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Conflict Behavior ◽  
Drug Trade ◽  
Academic Literature ◽  
Economic Context ◽  
Sustainable Peace ◽  
The Social ◽  
Scholarly Attention

This book explores some of the risks associated with sustainable peace in Colombia. The book intentionally steers away from the emphasis on the drug trade as the main resource fueling Colombian conflicts and violence, a topic that has dominated scholarly attention. Instead, it focuses on the links that have been configured over decades of armed conflict between legal resources (such as bananas, coffee, coal, flowers, gold, ferronickel, emeralds, and oil), conflict dynamics, and crime in several regions of Colombia. The book thus contributes to a growing trend in the academic literature focusing on the subnational level of armed conflict behavior. It also illustrates how the social and economic context of these resources can operate as deterrents or as drivers of violence. The book thus provides important lessons for policymakers and scholars alike: Just as resources have been linked to outbreaks and transformations of violence, peacebuilding too needs to take into account their impacts, legacies, and potential

Comparative Political Economy

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Menz
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Political Institutions ◽  
International Political Economy ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Industrial Relations ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Comparative Political Economy ◽  
Technological Parameters ◽  
Private Debt

This new and comprehensive volume invites the reader on a tour of the exciting subfield of comparative political economy. The book provides an in-depth account of the theoretical debates surrounding different models of capitalism. Tracing the origins of the field back to Adam Smith and the French Physiocrats, the development of the study of models of political-economic governance is laid out and reviewed. Comparative Political Economy (CPE) sets itself apart from International Political Economy (IPE), focusing on domestic economic and political institutions that compose in combination diverse models of political economy. Drawing on evidence from the US, the UK, France, Germany, Sweden, and Japan, the volume affords detailed coverage of the systems of industrial relations, finance, welfare states, and the economic role of the state. There is also a chapter that charts the politics of public and private debt. Much of the focus in CPE has rested on ideas, interests, and institutions, but the subfield ought to take the role of culture more seriously. This book offers suggestions for doing so. It is intended as an introduction to the field for postgraduate students, yet it also offers new insights and fresh inspiration for established scholars. The Varieties of Capitalism approach seems to have reached an impasse, but it could be rejuvenated by exploring the composite elements of different models and what makes them hang together. Rapidly changing technological parameters, new and more recent environmental challenges, demographic change, and immigration will all affect the governance of the various political economy models throughout the OECD. The final section of the book analyses how these impending challenges will reconfigure and threaten to destabilize established national systems of capitalism.

THE EARLY MODERN ORIGINS OF BEHAVIORAL ECONOMICS

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (1) ◽  
pp. 30-54
Author(s):  
Richard Boyd
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Cognitive Biases ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Francis Bacon ◽  
Economic Rationality ◽  
Homo Economicus ◽  
Behavioral Psychology ◽  
Human Conduct ◽  
The Social

AbstractFor all the recent discoveries of behavioral psychology and experimental economics, the spirit of homo economicus still dominates the contemporary disciplines of economics, political science, and sociology. Turning back to the earliest chapters of political economy, however, reveals that pioneering figures such as Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, and Adam Smith were hardly apostles of economic rationality as they are often portrayed in influential narratives of the development of the social sciences. As we will see, while all three of these thinkers can plausibly be read as endorsing “rationality,” they were also well aware of the systematic irrationality of human conduct, including a remarkable number of the cognitive biases later “discovered” by contemporary behavioral economists. Building on these insights I offer modest suggestions for how these thinkers, properly understood, might carry the behavioral revolution in different directions than those heretofore suggested.

Moral Sentiments in Modern Society

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gabriël Brink
Keyword(s):  
Civil Society ◽  
Global Financial Crisis ◽  
Adam Smith ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Moral Values ◽  
Dutch Society ◽  
Modern Life ◽  
Moral Sentiments ◽  
Contemporary Life ◽  
Novel Theory

Since the time of Adam Smith, scholars have tried to understand the role moral sentiments play in modern life, an issue that became especially urgent during and after the 2008 global financial crisis. Previous explanations have ranged from the idea that modern society is built on moral values to the notion that modernisation results in moral decay. The essays in this interdisciplinary volume use the example of Dutch society and a wealth of empirical data to propose a novel theory about the ambivalent relation between contemporary life and human nature. In the process, the contributors argue for the need to reject simplistic explanations and reinvent civil society.

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