Economic Lives: How Culture Shapes the Economy

by Viviana A. Zelizer

Overview

Revealing the human side of economic life

Over the past three decades, economic sociology has been revealing how culture shapes economic life even while economic facts affect social relationships. This work has transformed the field into a flourishing and increasingly influential discipline. No one has played a greater role in this development than Viviana Zelizer, one of the world's leading sociologists. Economic Lives synthesizes and extends her most important work to date, demonstrating the full breadth and range of her field-defining contributions in a single volume for the first time.

Economic Lives shows how shared cultural understandings and interpersonal relations shape everyday economic activities. Far from being simple responses to narrow individual incentives and preferences, economic actions emerge, persist, and are transformed by our relations to others. Distilling three decades of research, the book offers a distinctive vision of economic activity that brings out the hidden meanings and social actions behind the supposedly impersonal worlds of production, consumption, and asset transfer. Economic Lives ranges broadly from life insurance marketing, corporate ethics, household budgets, and migrant remittances to caring labor, workplace romance, baby markets, and payments for sex. These examples demonstrate an alternative approach to explaining how we manage economic activity—as well as a different way of understanding why conventional economic theory has proved incapable of predicting or responding to recent economic crises.

Providing an important perspective on the recent past and possible futures of a growing field, Economic Lives promises to be widely read and discussed.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780691139364
Publisher:	Princeton University Press
Publication date:	10/17/2010
Edition description:	New Edition
Pages:	496
Product dimensions:	6.50(w) x 9.30(h) x 1.50(d)

About the Author

Viviana A. Zelizer is the Lloyd Cotsen ‘50 Professor of Sociology at Princeton University. She is the author of The Purchase of Intimacy, The Social Meaning of Money, Pricing the Priceless Child (all Princeton), and Morals and Markets: The Development of Life Insurance in the United States.

Table of Contents

Preface ix

Introduction: The Lives behind Economic Lives 1

Part one: Valuation of Human Lives

Introduction 13

Chapter 1: Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in Nineteenth-Century America 19

Chapter 2: The Price and Value of Children: The Case of Children's Insurance in the United States 40

Chapter 3: From Baby Farms to Baby M 61

Chapter 4: The Priceless Child Revisited 72

Part Two: The Social Meaning of Money Introduction 89

Chapter 5: The Social Meaning of Money: "Special Monies" 93

Chapter 6: Fine Tuning the Zelizer View 128

Chapter 7: Payments and Social Ties 136

Chapter 8: Money, Power, and Sex 150

Part Three: Intimate Economies

Introduction 165

Chapter 9: Do Markets Poison Intimacy? 171

Chapter 10: The Purchase of Intimacy 181

Chapter 11: Kids and Commerce 213

Chapter 12: Intimacy in Economic Organizations 237

Part Four: The Economy of Care

Introduction 269

Chapter 13: Caring Everywhere 275

Chapter 14: Risky Exchanges 288

Part Five: Circuits of Commerce

Introduction 303

Chapter 15: Circuits within Capitalism 311

Chapter 16: Circuits in Economic Life 344

Part Six: Appraising Ec onomic Lives: Critiques and Syntheses

Introduction 355

Chapter 17: Beyond the Polemics on the Market: Establishing a Theoretical and Empirical Agenda 363

Chapter 18: Pasts and Futures of Economic Sociology 383

Chapter 19: Culture and Consumption 398

Chapter 20: Ethics in the Economy 440

Published Works of Viviana A. Zelizer on Economic Sociology 459

Index 465

What People are Saying About This

Burt

No one else does what Viviana Zelizer does, or in the way she does it. With attractively rigorous scholarship, she reveals hidden meanings in things we otherwise take for granted. Spanning Zelizer's career to date, Economic Lives is welcome for bringing key contributions together in one volume.
— Ronald S. Burt, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

Richard Swedberg

This excellent, attractive, and very welcome collection contains some truly wonderful pieces.
— Richard Swedberg, Cornell University

Rakesh Khurana

Economic Lives is an outstanding collection by one of the most original thinkers in economic sociology. In addition to bringing together some of her most brilliant papers, Viviana Zelizer provides an integrative analysis of her work and how it relates to the thinking of others who want to understand the fundamental nature of the economy. I know of no one else who can so thoughtfully describe everything from the beginnings of the cultural turn in economic sociology to leading-edge interpretations of what is happening in capitalism today. No serious student of economic sociology will want to neglect this book.
— Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School

From the Publisher

"Economic Lives is an outstanding collection by one of the most original thinkers in economic sociology. In addition to bringing together some of her most brilliant papers, Viviana Zelizer provides an integrative analysis of her work and how it relates to the thinking of others who want to understand the fundamental nature of the economy. I know of no one else who can so thoughtfully describe everything from the beginnings of the cultural turn in economic sociology to leading-edge interpretations of what is happening in capitalism today. No serious student of economic sociology will want to neglect this book."—Rakesh Khurana, Harvard Business School

"Behind GNP statistics, stock market figures, and profit-loss statements lies a seething tapestry of human social relations. In this exciting collection of her writings on the sociology of economic life, Viviana Zelizer brings this tapestry to life and in focus, stressing the tense synergy of calculation and emotion and the tacit but ever-changing boundaries between market exchange and human intimacy. Zelizer records the psychodynamics of moving boundaries and mutual redefinitions between the worlds of impersonal exchange, money, and wealth on the one hand, and the private worlds of love, friendship, child rearing, and caring on the other. A must-read for anyone interested in the mutual constitution of objective and subjective realities in both history and contemporary life."—Herbert Gintis, Santa Fe Institute and the Central European University

"No one has done more to change the way social scientists think about economic life than Viviana Zelizer. This definitive volume, which pulls together her central contributions, is the best introduction to the work of one of today's most influential scholars."—Donald MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh

"No one else does what Viviana Zelizer does, or in the way she does it. With attractively rigorous scholarship, she reveals hidden meanings in things we otherwise take for granted. Spanning Zelizer's career to date, Economic Lives is welcome for bringing key contributions together in one volume."—Ronald S. Burt, University of Chicago Booth School of Business

"This excellent, attractive, and very welcome collection contains some truly wonderful pieces."—Richard Swedberg, Cornell University

Donald MacKenzie

No one has done more to change the way social scientists think about economic life than Viviana Zelizer. This definitive volume, which pulls together her central contributions, is the best introduction to the work of one of today's most influential scholars.
— Donald MacKenzie, University of Edinburgh

Herbert Gintis

Behind GNP statistics, stock market figures, and profit-loss statements lies a seething tapestry of human social relations. In this exciting collection of her writings on the sociology of economic life, Viviana Zelizer brings this tapestry to life and in focus, stressing the tense synergy of calculation and emotion and the tacit but ever-changing boundaries between market exchange and human intimacy. Zelizer records the psychodynamics of moving boundaries and mutual redefinitions between the worlds of impersonal exchange, money, and wealth on the one hand, and the private worlds of love, friendship, child rearing, and caring on the other. A must-read for anyone interested in the mutual constitution of objective and subjective realities in both history and contemporary life.
— Herbert Gintis, Santa Fe Institute and the Central European University

Editorial Reviews

As a compilation of three decades of Zelizer's contributions to economic sociology, the book will help economists and sociologists see how the discipline has evolved over the years. For other readers, the book is a fascinating introduction to the subject.
— Karunesh Tuli

Foreword

[T]his collection is an excellent introduction to, and summary of, [Zelizer's] impressive oeuvre, and makes a strong case for economists studying transactions within their cultural context.
— Natalie Gold

Times Higher Education

Zelizer (sociology, Princeton Univ.) is one of the earliest and most prolific contributors to the field of economic sociology, which has only recently come into the spotlight as traditional economic theory has failed to predict or explain repeated crises and downturns. This is a collection of Zelizer's previously published essays in five thematic areas: valuation of human lives, the social meaning of money, intimate economies, the economy of care, and circuits of commerce. The sixth section includes general essays on the relationship of social life and economic activity. Each section begins with a brief introduction that provides background, underlying theory, and summaries of the essays included. Other recent titles in the field include Alex Preda's Information, Knowledge, and Economic Life: An Introduction to the Sociology of Markets and Richard E. Wagner's Mind, Society, and Human Action: Time and Knowledge in a Theory of Social Economy. VERDICT Immensely interesting and thought-provoking—essential for academic collections and for fans of the Freakonomics series looking for meatier fare.—Sara Holder, McGill Univ., Montreal

Library Journal

"This collection is an excellent introduction to, and summary of, [Zelizer's] impressive oeuvre, and makes a strong case for economists studying transactions within their cultural context."—-Natalie Gold, Times Higher Education

"As a compilation of three decades of Zelizer's contributions to economic sociology, the book will help economists and sociologists see how the discipline has evolved over the years. For other readers, the book is a fascinating introduction to the subject."—-Karunesh Tuli, Foreword Reviews

From the Publisher

Economic Lives reveals . . . Zelizer's brilliant craftsmanship in knitting together innovative narratives about the ceaseless interplay between money and social relations, means and meaning, objective and subjective, material and symbolic. . . . [H]er work still reigns supreme in the description and analysis of the careful economic strategies individuals anxiously deploy to find meaning and a moral ground.

Sociological Forum - Marion Fourcade

As a compilation of three decades of Zelizer's contributions to economic sociology, the book will help economists and sociologists see how the discipline has evolved over the years. For other readers, the book is a fascinating introduction to the subject.

Foreword Reviews - Karunesh Tuli

[T]his collection is an excellent introduction to, and summary of, [Zelizer's] impressive oeuvre, and makes a strong case for economists studying transactions within their cultural context.

Times Higher Education - Natalie Gold

Economic Lives reveals . . . Zelizer's brilliant craftsmanship in knitting together innovative narratives about the ceaseless interplay between money and social relations, means and meaning, objective and subjective, material and symbolic. . . . [H]er work still reigns supreme in the description and analysis of the careful economic strategies individuals anxiously deploy to find meaning and a moral ground.
— Marion Fourcade

Sociological Forum