Data, methods and theories of contemporary social science can be applied to resolve how political outcomes in democratic societies determine the quality of life that citizens experience. Radcliff seeks to provide an objective answer to the debate between left and right over what public policies best contribute to people leading positive and rewarding lives. Radcliff offers an empirical answer, relying on the same canons of reason and evidence required of any other issue amenable to study through social-scientific means. The analysis focuses on the consequences of three specific political issues: the welfare state and the general size of government, labor organization, and state efforts to protect workers and consumers through economic regulation. The results indicate that in each instance, the program of the Left best contributes to citizens leading more satisfying lives and, critically, that the benefits of greater happiness accrue to everyone in society, rich and poor alike.

This book tests the critical potential of happiness research to evaluate contemporary high-performance societies. These societies, defined as affluent capitalist societies, emphasize competition and success both institutionally and culturally. Growing affluence improves life in many ways, for a large number of people. We lead longer, safer, and more comfortable lives than previous generations. But we also live faster, and are competition-toughened, like top athletes. As a result, we suspect limits and detect downsides of our high-speed lives. The ubiquitous maximization principle opens up a systematic gateway to the pleasures and pains of contemporary life. Using happiness as a reference point, this book explores the philosophical and empirical limits of the maximization rule. It considers the answer to questions such as: Precisely, why did the idea of (economic) maximization gain so much ground in our Western way of thinking? When, and in which life domains, does maximization work, when does it fail? When do qualities and when do quantities matter? Does maximization yield a different (un)happiness dividend in different species, cultures, and societies? ​

Multi-disciplinary examination of the role of ordinary African people as agents in the generation and distribution of well-being in modern Africa. What are the fundamental issues, processes, agency and dynamics that shape the political economy of life in modern Africa? In this book, the contributors - experts in anthropology, history, political science, economics, conflict and peace studies, philosophy and language - examine the opportunities and constraints placed on living, livelihoods and sustainable life on the continent. Reflecting on why and how the political economy of life approach is essential for understanding the social process in modern Africa, they engage with the intellectual oeuvre of the influential Africanist economic anthropologist Jane Guyer, who provides an Afterword. The contributors analyse the politicaleconomy of everyday life as it relates to money and currency; migrant labour forces and informal and formal economies; dispossession of land; debt and indebtedness; socio-economic marginality; and the entrenchment of colonial andapartheid pasts. Wale Adebanwi is the Rhodes Professor of Race Relations at the University of Oxford. He is author of Nation as Grand Narrative: The Nigerian Press and the Politics of Meaning (University of Rochester Press).

During the last few decades, the gap between the incomes, wealth and living standards of rich and poor people has increased in most countries. Economic inequality has become a defining issue of our age. In this book, leading political economist Frank Stilwell provides a comprehensive overview of the nature, causes, and consequences of this growing divide. He shows how we can understand inequalities of wealth and incomes, globally and nationally, examines the scale of the problem and explains how it affects our wellbeing. He also shows that, although governments are often committed to ‘growth at all costs’ and ‘trickle down’ economics, there are alternative public policies that could be used to narrow the gap between rich and poor. Stilwell’s engaging and clear guide to the issues will be indispensable reading for all students, general readers and scholars interested in inequality in political economy, economics, public policy and beyond.

This book is about places - cities, suburbs and towns - and happiness of people living there. Taking an interdisciplinary approach, Okulicz-Kozaryn examines the relations between human happiness and the infrastructure of the places they live. This thought-provoking book argues for the overlooked idea that we are happiest in smaller areas.

Drawing on international comparisons of data on happiness, this book offers both general and academic audiences a simple, deep, and honest answer to the timeless question: "What makes people happy"? The conventional recipe for happiness has long included money, marriage, and parenthood as basic ingredients. What research is telling us, however, is that these elements don't relate to happiness in quite the way we might expect them to. Redistributing Happiness: How Social Policies Shape Life Satisfaction explores the factors that determine "life satisfaction" and demonstrate how an individual's happiness is largely shaped by social context—by where they live and local policies, norms and attitudes about religious beliefs, economic and political security, income redistribution, and more. The book begins with a review of the contributions of other disciplines—such as economics, psychology, and political science—to common explanations of the sources of happiness. Next, the authors offer an international comparison based on their own research on what makes people happy, taking into consideration factors such as marriage, children, money, and job status. Most importantly, special attention is paid to how social policies and social context directly affect people's happiness. All readers high school age and up will enjoy the book's comprehensive—and fascinating—answer to the happiness question because of how the authors connect an individual's experience to the broader environment of the social system and situation in which that person resides.

Why was Wollstonecraft's landmark feminist work, the Vindication of the Rights of Woman, categorised as a work of political economy when it was first published? Taking this question as a starting point, Mary Wollstonecraft and Political Economy gives a compelling new account of Wollstonecraft as critic of the material, moral, social, and psychological conditions of commercial modernity. Offering thorough analysis of Wollstonecraft's major writings - including her two Vindications, her novels, her history of the French Revolution, and her travel writing - this is the only book-length study to situate Wollstonecraft in the context of the political economic thought of her time. It shows Wollstonecraft as an economic as much as a political radical, whose critique of the emerging economic orthodoxies of her time anticipates later Romantic thinkers. This title is part of the Flip it Open Programme and may also be available Open Access. Check our website Cambridge Core for details.

'The captivating nature of these contributions to political economy - which were all published between 1976 and 1996, but mostly in the last decade - is a clear reflection of Sir Alan's authoritative standing both as an academic economist and a government economic advisor. . . . the book addresses a wide range of philosophical questions and practical policy issues, thus offering plenty of stimulating material for both the theoretical and applied economist, as well as other social scientists.' - M. Teresa Lunati, The Economic Journal '. . . many of the papers are worth reading, and each paper has a useful introduction explaining the context in which it was written. The best part of the book is the selection of papers in the last part, especially his [Alan Peacock's] discussions of the regulation of broadcasting. There is much for an economist to learn from these papers: the role economists can play in public policy debates, the inner workings of committees, the role of information control in policy decisions.' - William Sjostrom, Kyklos The Political Economy of Economic Freedom brings together a timely selection of Sir Alan Peacock's views on economic freedom, its philosophy, its influence on the critique of economic policy and the problems encountered in expanding it.

This edited collection offers analyses of ‘global citizenship education’ within and across different national contexts. This book illustrates the contingency of definitions, the complexities of juxtaposing demands and priorities in different educational contexts, and the difficulties and tensions of asking a question that is arguably one of the most pressing of our time: how should we live together in interdependent ecologies in a finite planet? In the discipline of education, where market imperatives and the dictatorship of 'effective replicable results' have laid siege to independent debates, this book aims to emphasize the importance of raising our intellectual game as educators to interrupt new and old problematic patterns of engagements, representations, uncomplicated solutions and conceptual straightjackets. Contributors to this volume address the tensions between homogenizing universalisms and parochial specifisms, ethnocentrisms and relativisms, deficit theorizations and romanticizations of difference, fantasies of supremacy and paralyses in guilt, the 'global' and the 'local'. The chapters take different approaches to map the origins, meanings, workings, ethics, politics and implications of initiatives, approaches, and conceptual frameworks related to the ideas of globalization, citizenship and education in different sites of knowledge production. This book was originally published as a special issue of Globalisation, Societies and Education.

This book offers a new and unique assessment of the theoretical analysis of work, challenging some common preconceptions and promoting an original approach to the field, contemplating its nature, development and its impact on human well-being.