The Economy of Esteem

An Essay on Civil and Political Society
Erscheinungsjahr 2005
ISBN: 978-0-19-928981-3
Verlag: OUP Oxford

Buch, Englisch, 352 Seiten, Format (B × H): 156 mm x 234 mm, Gewicht: 535 g

However much people want esteem, it is an untradable commodity-- there is no way that you can buy the good opinion of another or sell to others your good opinion of them. And yet esteem is allocated in society according to systematic determinants: people's performance, publicity, and presentation relative to others will help to fix how much esteem they enjoy and how much disesteem they avoid. In turn, rational individuals are bound to compete with one another, however tacitly, in the attempt to increase their chances of winning esteem and avoiding disesteem. And this competition shapes the environments in which they each pursue esteem, setting relevant comparators and benchmarks, and determining the cost that a person must bear for obtaining a given level of esteem.

Hidden in the multifarious interactions and exchanges of social life, then, there is a quiet force at work -- a force as silent and powerful as gravity -- which molds the basic form of people's relationships and associations. This force was more or less routinely invoked in the writings of classical theorists like Aristotle and Plato, Locke and Montesquieu, Mandeville and Hume and Madison. Although Adam Smith himself gave it great credence, however, the rise of economics proper coincided with a sudden decline in the attention devoted to the economy of esteem. What had been a topic of compelling interest for earlier authors fell into relative neglect throughout the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This book is designed to reverse the trend. It begins by outlining the psychology of esteem and the way the working of that psychology can give rise to an economy. It then shows how a variety of social patterns that are otherwise anomalous come to make a lot of sense within an economics of esteem. And it looks, finally, at the ways in which the economy of esteem may be reshaped to improve overall social outcomes. While making connections with older patterns of social theorising, it offers a novel orientation for contemporary thought about how society works and how it may be made to work. It puts the economy of esteem firmly on the agenda of economics and social science and of moral and political theory.

Zielgruppe

Academics and graduate students of economics, philosophy, political science, and law.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Brennan, Geoffrey

Pettit, Philip

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Psychologie Allgemeine Psychologie Sozialpsychologie
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftswissenschaften Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Wirtschaftswissenschaften Volkswirtschaftslehre Volkswirtschaftslehre Allgemein Wirtschaftstheorie, Wirtschaftsphilosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Wirtschaftsgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Spezielle Soziologie Familiensoziologie

Über Autor(innen)

Geoffrey Brennan trained originally as a public economist, but increasingly works in rational actor political theory. He was at the Australian National University for ten years, before he took up a Professorship in the Public Choice Center at Virgina Tech. In 1983, he returned to the ANU to become head of the Economics Department and in 1988 joined the Research School of Social Science, of which he was Director from 1991 to 1997. He is currently the Editor of Economics and Philosophy.

Philip Pettit teaches political theory and philosophy at Princeton University, where is William Nelson Cromwell Professor of Politics. Prior to taking up this post in 2002, he had been at the Australia National University, Canberra for many years. Irish by background and training, he has previously held positions at University College, Dublin; Trinity Hall, Cambridge; and Bradford University. His interests include the philosophy of cognitive and social science as well as moral and political theory.