The Sociology Of Greed

The Sociology of Greed examines crises in financial institutions such as banks from the vantage point of the greed of the people at their helm. It offers an intensive analysis of the banking crises under the conditions of colonial capitalism in early twentieth-century Bengal that led to institutional and social collapse. Breaking new ground, the book looks at the moral economy of capitalism and money culture by focusing on the victims of banking crises, hitherto unexplored in Western empirical research. Through sociological analyses of political economy, it seamlessly combines archival records, survey and statistical data with literary narratives, realist fiction and performing arts to recount how the greed of bank owners and managers ruined their institutions as well as common people. It argues that greed turns perilous when the state and the market facilitate its agency, and it examines the contexts and histories, the indifference of the fledgling colonial state, feeble political response, and the consequences for those who were impacted and the losses, especially the refugees, the lower-middle class and women. The volume also re-composes relevant elements of Western sociological scholarship from classical theories to early twenty-first-century financial sociology. An insightful account of the social history of banking in India, this book will greatly interest researchers and scholars in sociology, economics, history and cultural studies.

This collection examines how greed should be understood and appraised. Roundly condemned by virtually all religions, greed receives mixed appraisals in the domains of business and economics. The volume examines these mixed appraisals and how they fare in light of their implications for greed in our everyday world. Greed in children is uniformly criticized by parents, other adults, and even children’s peers. However, in adulthood, greed is commended by some as essential to profit-seeking in business and for offering the greatest promise in promoting economic prosperity for everyone. Those who advocate a more permissive position on greed in the adult world typically concede that some constraints on greed are needed. However, the supporting literature offers little analysis of what greed is (as distinct from, for example, the effort to meet modest needs, or the pursuit of ordinary self-interested ends). It offers little clarification of what sorts of constraints on greed are needed. Nor is careful attention given to difficulties children might have in making a transition without moral loss from regarding greed as inappropriate to its later qualified acceptance. Through a secular approach, this book attempts to make significant inroads in remedying these shortcomings.

'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.

When Stanford M. Lyman authored The Seven Deadly Sins: Society and Evil in 1978 it was hailed by Alasdair MacIntyre as "a book of absorbing interest and importance...[that] places us all in his debt." By Nelson Hart as "a masterful and thought-provoking book...[that] is the only scholarly treatment of sin that is so well-informed by the best of ancient through modern perspectives." By James A. Aho as a work whose "abstract hardly does justice to the scholarly and detailed analysis of sin." And by Harry Cohen as a "book...[that] stands as a beautiful illustration of what holistic, idiosyncratic, interdisciplinary, and creative thinking and writing can bring to bear on the age-old problem of society and evil." The American Sociological Association's section on the Sociology of the Emotions selected this book as one of the works that laid the foundations for the study of pride, lust, envy, and anger—basic sentiments embedded in the social process. For this revised and expanded edition Lyman has written a new chapter, "Sentiments, Sin, and Social Conflict: Toward a Sociology of the Emotions." The new edition will be a valuable work for courses in social psychology, ethics, deviance, and the sociology of morals and of religion.

"Bartley and Radnitzky have done the philosophy of knowledge a tremendous service. Scholars now have a superb and up-to-date presentation of the fundamental ideas of evolutionary epistemology." --Philosophical Books

This book builds an essential bridge between climate change and social policy. Combining ethics and human need theory with political economy and climate science, it offers a long-term, interdisciplinary analysis of the prospects for sustainable development and social justice. Beyond ‘green growth’ (which assumes an unprecedented rise in the emissions efficiency of production) it envisages two further policy stages vital for rich countries: a progressive ‘recomposition’ of consumption, and a post-growth ceiling on demand. An essential resource for scholars and policymakers.

In Progress or Collapse, Roberto De Vogli guides us through the multiple converging global crises of economic progress. He explores the connections between the environmental crisis and the psychological, social, cultural, political and economic emergencies affecting modern societies. It is not a coincidence, the author argues, that global ecological destruction is occurring in tandem with other crises: rising mental disorders, mindless consumerism, rampant conformism, status competition, civic disengagement, startling social inequalities, global financial instability, and widespread political impasse.

Elites have always ruled – wielding inordinate power and wealth, taking decisions that shape life for the rest. In good times the ‘1%’ can hide their privilege, or use growing social mobility and economic prosperity as a justification. When times get tougher there’s a backlash. So the first years of the twenty-first century – a time of financial crashes, oligarchy and corruption in the West; persistent poverty in the south; and rising inequality everywhere – have brought elites and ‘establishments’ under unprecedented fire. Yet those swept to power by this discontent are themselves a part of the elite, attacking from within and extending rather than ending its agenda. The New Power Elite shows how major political and social change is typically driven by renegade elite fractions, who co-opt or sideline elites’ traditional enemies. It is the first book to combine the politics, economics, sociology and history of elite rule to present a compact, comprehensive account of who’s at the top, and why we let them get there.