A. F. Robertson

'Greed' is a visceral insult. It jabs below the belt, evoking guilty sensations of gluttony and lust. It taunts the rich and powerful, penetrating the cover of modern ideologies and institutions. Today, old-fashioned accusations of greed drag the larger-than-life corporate fat cats down to human bodily proportions, accusing them of gain without genuine growth. This lively new book is a wide-ranging inquiry into how greed works in our lives and in the world at large. Western philosophy has intellectualized human passions, explaining and justifying our expansive desires as 'rational self-interest'. However, an examination of the visceral power of greed tells us something about the apathy of modern theory. It shows us how confused we have become about the meanings of growth, creating false and morally hazardous distinctions between biology on the one hand, and history on the other. With greed as a guide, this book considers how the integrity of these meanings may be restored. This remarkable book will be of interest to anyone concerned about the morality of economic behavior in the modern world. It will be an important text for students in the social sciences, especially in anthropology, sociology, development studies, and business studies.

Gut Feelings, Growth, and History

Greed

This interactive, role-playing case book is an enormously rich and stimulating way of challenging students to think about the problems of development and how development experts go about trying to alleviate them. One of the most innovative and eloquent anthropologists of development, A. F. Robertson has drawn from his extensive field experience to construct a hypothetical scenario of the sort typically encountered by those who are making development decisions.

A Practical Introduction To Development

The Big Catch

Roger Friedland

Beyond the Marketplace is an interdisciplinary view of the relationship between markets and society. Do individuals behave in markets as neoclassical theory assumes they do? Can other social institutions and processes--e.g., family formation and voting behavior--be analyzed with the same analytic tools we use to study markets? How is economic behavior shaped by institutions beyond the marketplace? Do markets themselves have a social and cultural structure which is not adequately explained by the formal tools of neoclassical analysis? In Beyond the Marketplace, economists, sociologists, political scientists, historians, and anthropologists respond to these, and related, questions.

Rethinking Economy and Society

Beyond the Marketplace

Since the 1980s there has been a growing billion dollar business producing porcelain collectible dolls. Avertised in Sunday newspapers and mailbox fliers, even Marie Osmond, an avid collector herself, is now promoting her own line of dolls on the Home Shopping Network and sales are soaring. With average price tags of $100 -- and $500 or more for a handcrafted or limited edition doll -- these dolls strike a chord in the hearts of middle-aged and older women, their core buyers, some of whom create "nurseries" devoted to collections that number in the hundreds. Each doll has its own name, identity and "adoption certificate," like Shawna, "who has just learned to stack blocks all by herself," and Bobby, whose "brown, handset eyes shine with mischief and little-boy plans." Exploring the nexus of emotions, consumption and commodification they represent, A. F. Robertson tracks the rise of the porcelain collectible market; interviews the women themselves; and visits their clubs, fairs and homes to understand what makes the dolls so irresistible. Lifelike but freakish; novelties that profess to be antiques; pricey kitsch: These dolls are the product of powerful emotions and big business. Life Like Dolls pursues why middle-class, educated women obsessively collect these dolls and what this phenomenon says about our culture.

The Collector Doll Phenomenon and the Lives of the Women Who Love Them

Life Like Dolls

"... Provides a unique window into the lives of the women who collect and love these dolls"--P. [4] of cover.

A. F. Robertson

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