Culture and Enterprise: The Development, Representation and Morality of Business: 26 (Routledge Studies in the Modern World Economy) - Softcover

Chamlee-Wright, Emily

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0415233593 ISBN 13: 9780415233590

Publisher: Routledge, 2001

Synopsis

What is the animating 'spirit' behind what may appear to be the coldly calculating world of markets and business enterprise? Though often mathematically modelled in dry terms, markets can be looked at instead as meaningful domains of human activity. To economists, markets have been seen as nothing but objective 'forces' or allocation 'mechanisms'. This book, however, argues that they can be seen as involving the human spirit, personal expression and moral commitments. It presents the view that markets are not so much things that need to be measured as meanings that need to be narrated and interpreted. The aim of this book is to introduce two scholarly fields to one another, economics and cultural studies, in order to pose the question: how does culture matter to the economy? When we look at the economy as a legitimate domain of culture, it transforms our understanding of the nature of business life. By viewing markets as an integral part of our culture, filled with the drama of human creativity, we might begin to better appreciate their role in the world.

About this title

Review:

"Though both are trained economists, their effort is not the usual "imperialistic" project of economics colonizing another discipine with its methods and modes of analysis. Instead, they go into the field to learn and bring what they have learned back to economics to see how economists could study culture and incorporate that knowledge so we may learn how culture shapes economic outcomes. In the process they bring economic logic to a cultural studies discipline too often enamored with loose and impressionistic reasoning, and they breath the life of human drama and creativity into an economics which is too often sterile and unconnected to the world it is supposed to be studying."
-Peter J. Boettke, Editor -- The Review of Austrian Economics.

About this edition

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 0415233593
• ISBN 13: 9780415233590
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 158