Edited by Robert F. Garnett Jr., Paul Lewis and Lenore T. Ealy
Pages: 352
Pages: 352
Since the end of the Cold War, the human face of economics has gained renewed visibility and generated new conversations among economists and other social theorists. The monistic, mechanical "economic systems" that characterized the capitalism vs. socialism debates of the mid-twentieth century have given way to pluralistic ecologies of economic provisioning in which complexly constituted agents cooperate via heterogeneous forms of production and exchange. Through the lenses of multiple disciplines, Commerce and Community examines how this pluralistic turn in economic thinking bears upon the venerable social–theoretical division of cooperative activity into separate spheres of impersonal Gesellschaft (commerce) and ethically thick Gemeinschaft (community).
Drawing resources from diverse disciplinary and philosophical traditions, the essay in this book offer fresh, critical appraisals of the Gemeinschaft / Gesellschaft segregation of face-to-face community from impersonal commerce. Some authors issue urgent calls to transcend this dualism, whilst others propose to recast it in more nuanced ways or affirm the importance of treating impersonal and personal cooperation as ethically, epistemically, and economically separate worlds. Yet even in their disagreements, our contributors paint the process of voluntary cooperation – the space commerce and community – with uncommon color and nuance by traversing the boundaries that once separated the thin sociality of economics (as science of commerce) from the thick sociality of sociology and anthropology (as sciences of community).
Commerce and Community facilitates critical exchange among economists, philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists, and other social theorists by exploring the overlapping notions of cooperation, rationality, identity, reciprocity, trust, and exchange that emerge from multiple analytic traditions within and across their respective disciplines.
About Robert F. Garnett, Paul Lewis & Lenore T. Ealy
- Robert F. Garnett, Jr. is Professor of Economics at Texas Christian University, USA.
- Paul Lewis is Reader in Economics and Public Policy at King’s College London, UK.
- Lenore T. Ealy is President of The Philanthropic Enterprise, USA.
Table of Contents of Commerce and Community
- Introduction (Robert F. Garnett Jr., Paul Lewis and Lenore T. Ealy)
I. Social Cooperation
- The Evolution of Human Cooperation (Samuel Bowles and Herbert Gintis)
- The Theory of Social Cooperation Historically and Robustly Contemplated (Peter J. Boettke and Daniel J. Smith)
- Commerce and Beneficence: Adam Smith’s Unfinished Project (Robert F. Garnett, Jr.)
- Comment: Entering the "Great School of Self-Command": The Moralizing Influence of Markets, Language and Imagination (Sandra J. Peart)
II. Identity and Association
- Commerce, Reciprocity and Civil Virtues: The Contribution of the Civil Economy (Luigino Bruni)
- What Does True Individualism Really Involve? Overcoming Market-Philanthropy Dualism in Hayekian Social Theory (Paul Lewis)
- Methodological Individualism and Invisible Hands: Richard Cornuelle’s Call to Understand Associations (Steven Grosby)
- Comment: Don’t Forget the Barter in "Truck, Barter And Exchange"! (Shaun P. Hargeaves Heap)
III. Human(e) Economics
- Between Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft: The Stories We Tell (Emily Chamlee-Wright and Virgil Henry Storr)
- Community, the Market and the State: Insights from German Neoliberalism (Samuel Gregg)
- Bourgeois Love (Deirdre McCloskey)
- Comment: Behind the Veil of Interest (Laurent Dobuzinskis)
IV. Entangled Spheres
- How is Community Made? (Colin Danby)
- Commerce, Community, and Digital Gifts (David Elder-Vass)
- Classical Liberalism and the Firm: A Troubled Relationship (David Ellerman)
- Comment: Exploring the Liminal Spaces between Commerce and Community (Martha A. Starr)
V. Not by Commerce Alone
- Reciprocity, Calculation, and Non-Monetary Exchange (Steven Horwitz)
- Kidneys, Commerce, and Communities (Neera Badhwar)
- Banks and Trust in Adam Smith (Maria Pia Paganelli)
- Comment: Bankers, Vampires, and Organ Sellers: Who Can You Trust? (John Thrasher and David Schmidt)
ENVOI
- The Apologia of Mercurius Frederick Turner
