Assumptions Underlying Theories -- Abundance/Scarcity: From the Garden of Eden to Utopia -- The State of Mature and the Social Contract -- Human Nature and the Human Condition -- Individual versus Communal Property Rights -- Markets -- Economic Growth -- Framing Theories -- Dangerous Assumptions -- Useful Assumptions -- Alternative Models and the Question of Scale -- Current Models -- Contemporary Capitalisms and Their Faults -- The Perils of Globalization -- Remixing and the Knockoff Economy -- Marketing the Sharing Economy -- Refraining Political Economy -- Informative Case Studies -- Moral Framing of Political Economy.
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SUMMARY OR ABSTRACT
Text of Note
Envisioning a different mode of economic relations requires a rethinking of the classical frames of references we commonly take for granted. The implicit assumptions that we carry into critical debates are the stumbling blocks for finding useful solutions to age-old economic problems. And these impediments constrict our political imagination. This book asks what are these frames of references? How many of them are worthy of retaining, while others might be discarded? And what new framings should be adopted in order to bring about a less crisis-prone and morally acceptable mode of human interaction? Each chapter interrogates a different frame of reference, including culturally-embedded concepts of human nature, scarcity and abundance, markets, and the human condition. Examining their historical anchoring and the ways in which they have become confining for the realities of the postmodern world in which we currently live, it is shown that they have become so familiar that they are assumed rather than critically examined in most discussions of political economy. --