Full Description
This book is a collection of critical engagements with Andrew Sayer, one of the foremost postdisciplinary thinkers of our times, with responses from Sayer himself.
Sayer's ground-breaking contributions to the fields of geography, political economy and social theory have reshaped the terms of engagement with issues and debates running from the methodology of social science through to the environment, and industrial development to the ethical dimensions of everyday life. Transatlantic scholars across a wide range of fields explore his work across four main areas: critical realism; moral economy; political economy; and relations between social theory, normativity and class.
This is the first full-length critical assessment of Sayer's work. It will be of interest to readers in sociology, economics, political economy, social and political philosophy, ethics, social policy, geography and urban studies, from upper-undergraduate levels upwards.
Contents
Introduction
Part I: The Nature and Scope of Realism
1. Why Andrew Sayer Matters
2. Andrew Sayer: Human Nature and Social Critique
3. Objectivity and Normativity
4. Abstract and Concrete: Some (More) Groundwork
Part II: Dimensions of Moral Economy
5. Critical Realism and Moral Economy: Sympathetic Reflections on Andrew Sayer's Work
6. Why (Mundane) Things Matter: From Moral Economy to Foundational Economy
7. Moral Economy: A Framework and a Manifesto
8. Putting Resistance Back in Moral Economy
Part III: Applications in Political Economy
9. Andrew Sayer on Inequality, Climate Emergency and Ecological Breakdown: Can We Afford the Rich?
10. Hard Work: Restructuring, Realism, and Regions
11. Varieties of Unfreedom
12. The Persistent Radicalism of Andrew Sayer
Part IV: Social Theory, Normativity and Class
13. A Social Scientist for Our Times: Unravelling the Moral Morass of Class, Wealth, Profit
and Oppression
14. The Elephant in the Room: Sayer on Social Class
15. From Dispositions to Interaction and Relations
16. Ordinary Inequality: Sayer, Political Theory and the Human Good
Part V: Responses
17. Responses to the Contributors
