(P/B) SHIFTING INVOLVEMENTS

Παρουσίαση

Why does society oscillate between intense interest in public issues and almost total concentration on private goals? In this classic work, Albert O. Hirschman offers a stimulating social, political, and economic analysis dealing with how and why frustrations of private concerns lead to public involvement and public participation that eventually lead back to those private concerns. Emerging from this study is a wide range of insights, from a critique of conventional consumption theory to a new understanding of collective action and of universal suffrage. (From the publisher)

"Original.... Mr. Hirschman, one of our most distinguished economists, is no ordi-nary writer. . . even his offhand ruminations have always been interesting. So is this book." (Peter L. Berger. New York Times Book Review)
"Shifting Involvements can be read over and over again, with each reading disclosing new subtleties, so cunning is its construction and so original its standpoint." (Michael Banton. Times Literary Supplement)
"This interesting essay contains a wealth of ideas. There is a surprising freshness in the treatment of such a well-worn topic as the relation between public and private concerns Intellectually stimulating." (David Berry. Times Higher Education Supplement)

Περιεχόμενα

FOREWORD
PREFACE
INTRODUCTION: A Private-Public Cycle?
1 On Disappointment
The Role of Disappointment in Preference Change
Taking Disappointment Seriously
2 Varieties of Consumer Disappointment
The Privileged Position of Truly Nondurable Goods
Consumer Durables
Services
3 The General Hostility Toward New Wealth
Historical Evidence from the Eighteenth Century in
England and France
The Manifold Case against New Goods
4 From Private Concerns into the Public Arena-I
Exit and Voice Reactions to Consumer Disappointment
Explaining Changes in Life-Styles: Ideology and
Second-Order Volitions
5 From Private Concerns into the Public Arena-II
Collective Action and the Rebound Effect
Why Free Rides Are Spurned
6 The Frustrations of Participation in Public Life-I
The Poverty of Our Imagination
Overcommitment and Addiction
7 The Frustrations of Participation in Public Life-II
The Underinvolvement of Voting
A Historical Digression on the Origins of Universal Suffrage
8 Privatization
Corruption
Public Virtue Debunked
Attractions of the Private Sphere
CONCLUSION
INDEX