Political Economy And The Novel

Political Economy and the Novel: A Literary History of ‘Homo Economicus’ provides a transhistorical account of homo economicus (economic man), demonstrating this figure’s significance to economic theory and the Anglo-American novel over a 250-year period. Beginning with Adam Smith’s seminal texts – Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations – and Henry Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, this book combines the methodologies of new historicism and new economic criticism to investigate the evolution of the homo economicus model as it traverses through Ricardian economics and Jane Austen’s Sanditon; J. S. Mill and Charles Dickens’ engagement with mid-Victorian dualities; Keynesianism and Mrs Dalloway’s exploration of post-war consumer impulses; the a/moralistic discourses of Friedrich von Hayek, and Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged; and finally the virtual crises of the twenty-first century financial market and Don DeLillo’s Cosmopolis. Through its sustained comparative analysis of literary and economic discourses, this book transforms our understanding of the genre of the novel and offers critical new understandings of literary value, cultural capital and the moral foundations of political economy.

Drawing together leading scholars, the book provides a revealing new map of the US political economy in cross-national perspective.

This volume aims to understand why some economies succeed and some fail, and why some communities prosper while others stagnate, so economics must be seen as embedded in politics and society. It is a study of this embeddedness.

Defining a just economy in a tenuous social-political time. If we can agree that our current social-political moment is tenuous and unsustainable—and indeed, that may be the only thing we can agree on right now—then how do markets, governments, and people interact in this next era of the world? A Political Economy of Justice considers the strained state of our political economy in terms of where it can go from here. The contributors to this timely and essential volume look squarely at how normative and positive questions about political economy interact with each other—and from that beginning, how to chart a way forward to a just economy. A Political Economy of Justice collects fourteen essays from prominent scholars across the social sciences, each writing in one of three lanes: the measures of a just political economy; the role of firms; and the roles of institutions and governments. The result is a wholly original and urgent new benchmark for the next stage of our democracy.

The Handbook on the Political Economy of War highlights and explores important research questions and discusses the core elements of the political economy of war.

Although much of the world still lives today, as always, under dictatorship, the behaviour of these regimes and of their leaders often appears irrational and mysterious. In The Political Economy of Dictatorship, Ronald Wintrobe uses rational choice theory to model dictatorships: their strategies for accumulating power, the constraints on their behavior, and why they are often more popular than is commonly accepted. The book explores both the politics and the economics of dictatorships, and the interaction between them. The questions addressed include: What determines the repressiveness of a regime? Can political authoritarianism be 'good' for the economy? After the fall, who should be held responsible for crimes against human rights? The book contains many applications, including chapters on Nazi Germany, Soviet Communism, South Africa under apartheid, the ancient Roman Empire and Pinochet's Chile. It also provides a guide to the policies which should be followed by the democracies towards dictatorships.

This book addresses the notorious split between the two fields of cultural studies and political economy. Drawing on the works of Harold Innis, Theodor Adorno, Raymond Williams, Richard Hoggart, E.P. Thompson, and other major theorists in the two fields, Robert E. Babe shows that political economy can be reconciled to certain aspects of cultural studies, particularly with regards to cultural materialism. Uniting the two fields has proven to be a complex undertaking though it makes practical sense, given the close interaction between political economy and cultural studies. Babe examines the evolution of cultural studies over time and its changing relationship with political economy. The intersections between the two fields center around three subjects: the cultural biases of money, the time/space dialectic, and the dialectic of information.

Henry George died fighting one of the most corrupt political organizations of the civilized world — a sufficient epitaph for any worthy man. But he has larger claims to respect and consideration. He made a creditable attempt to solve the root-problem of material life — poverty, — and his just-published posthumous book, " The Science of Political Economy," excites that pathetic interest which attaches to the memory of one who tried to aid his fellowman. He was eloquent, but he was free from the hysteria of demagogy. His sympathies, born of bitter vicissitude, were acute, but they were tempered with reason. He believed in the equality of opportunity ; but he believed also (as an American and an individualist) in the natural inequality of capacity. When he saw the industrial evils of the Old World reappear in one of the richest and fairest parts of the New — commercial depression, involuntary idleness, wasting capital, pecuniary distress, want, suffering, anxiety, — he was startled, and he set about to discover the cause. We value him for what he tried to do. "Progress and Poverty " was an immensely interesting and attractive book on a seemingly sapless science. It struck fire from flint, and lifted the author from obscurity to world-wide celebrity. Emerson says that every man is eloquent in that which he understands. It would be, perhaps, truer to say that every man is eloquent in that in which he fervently believes, and George believed that he had given a message. To quote his own words: " On the night on which I finished the final chapter of 'Progress and Poverty,' I felt that the talent entrusted to me had been accounted for — was more fully satisfied, more deeply grateful, than if all the Kingdoms of the earth had been laid at my feet." No one doubts his sincerity, his intellectual integrity, the cleanliness of his soul. His expectations were infinite, his faith simple. The poverty of the world lay not in Nature but in a vicious economic system ; and he thought that he had found a "sovereign remedy" which would "raise wages, increase the earnings of capital, extirpate pauperism, abolish poverty, give remunerative employment to whoever wishes it, afford free scope to human powers, lessen crime, elevate morals and taste and intelligence, purify government, and carry civilization to yet nobler heights."

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.