Economy and Society

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Edited by Fikret Adaman and Pat Devine

Black Rose Books

Due/Published June 2001, 224 pages, paper

ISBN 1551641860

In resistance to the prevailing "seductive" market, and as part of the process of creating, organizing and stimulating an alternative to it, this volume of essays reinterprets the history of economic thought and a re-examines monetary theory in general. The authors challenge the idea that money is primarily a "medium of exchange" that developed as a response to the inconvenience of barter. They argue that historically money predates (market) exchange and should be seen fundamentally as a means of payment in discharge of a social obligation.

Due to the continued widening of inequality between developed countries and the rest of the world, the growing instability of the economies and social structure, and the intensifying global ecological crisis, discussion of possible "transformations," great or small, has lost none of its urgency. The discussion of alternatives needs to emerge from the marginalized underworld and move increasingly towards centre stage. The contributors strongly argue for the necessity of re-embedding the economy in the community, by a deepening of democracy, by the creation of a society in which economic, social and cultural rights take their place alongside universal civil and political rights.

Contributors include: Laszlo Andor, Jeffrey Carpenter, Gibin Hong, Bob Jessop, Tadeusz Kowalik, Roger Krohn, Larissa Lomnitz, Yahya Madra, Sina Mandalinci, Jerome Maucourant, Patrice Meyer-Bisch, Jean-Yves Moisseron, Surendra Patel, Helene Pellerin, James Stodder, Ngai-Ling Sum, and Behzad Yaghmaian