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The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life

The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life

by PaulSeabright (Author)

  • Used

    Paperback 2005

    $3.24

  • New

    Paperback 2010

    $40.16
Synopsis

Human beings are the only species in nature to have developed an elaborate division of labor between strangers. Even something as simple as buying a shirt depends on an astonishing web of interaction and organization that spans the world. But unlike that other uniquely human attribute, language, our ability to cooperate with strangers did not evolve gradually through our prehistory. Only 10,000 years ago - a blink of an eye in evolutionary time - humans hunted in bands, were intensely suspicious of strangers, and fought those whom they could not flee. Yet since the dawn of agriculture we have refined the division of labor to the point where, today, we live and work amid strangers and depend upon millions more. Every time we travel by rail or air we entrust our lives to individuals we do not know. What institutions have made this possible? In The Company of Strangers , Paul Seabright provides an original evolutionary and sociological account of the emergence of those economic institutions that manage not only markets but also the world's myriad other affairs. Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and literature, Seabright explores how our evolved ability of abstract reasoning has allowed institutions like money, markets, and cities to provide the foundation of social trust. But how long can the networks of modern life survive when we are exposed as never before to risks originating in distant parts of the globe? This lively narrative shows us the remarkable strangeness, and fragility, of our everyday lives.

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More Information

Format: Paperback
 Pages: 320
 Edition: New edition
 Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 18 Jul 2005
ISBN 10: 0691124523
ISBN 13: 9780691124520
Book Overview: No one, economist or civilian, could turn the pages of this book without spotting, time and again, some unexpected and arresting idea that really wants to be thought about. Paul Seabright takes the evolutionary point of view seriously and asks how human institutions make social life possible at all, especially when the many people on whom we depend for our subsistence are strangers. From biology to banking, it is a lively landscape. -- Robert M. Solow, Institute Professor Emeritus, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Nobel Laureate in Economic Sciences For too long, economists have been talking only to each other. Paul Seabright's achievement is to locate economics firmly in the mainstream of modern intellectual life, and to do so with style and verve. -- John Kay, author of The Truth about Markets , columnist for the Financial Times The Company of Strangers is a gem--an undiluted delight to read. It addresses some of the most central problems of social science with compelling arguments, lightly worn rigor and erudition, and utterly jargon-free language. Seabright has an amazing eye for the telling detail, whether drawn from fiction, biology, social science or current news. I can think of no better introduction to the problem of social order-how is it possible? -- Jon Elster, Robert K. Merton Professor of Social Science, Columbia University, author of Alchemies of the Mind and Ulysses and the Sirens The division of labor among strangers is humankind's most momentous invention, on which all modern society depends. Yet since Adam Smith pointed this out in 1776, the question of how such relations between strangers are possible has continued to puzzle us. Now Paul Seabright deepens, adjusts, and extends the idea in the light of what we now know from psychology, genetics, and economics about human motives. Drawing on an extraordinary breadth of study, he explains how, unique among species, we found ourselves with a nature that equipped us to build this division of labor and so come to treat strangers as honorary friends. -- Matt Ridley, author of Nature Via Nurture and The Origins of Virtue Fascinating. If you really want to understand who we are today, and how we make a living, read The Company of Strangers to learn how, some 200, 500, even 140,000 years ago, we grew and evolved--in rather amazing ways. -- Shlomo Maital, author of Executive Economics: Ten Essential Tools for Managers This is a wonderful book, very well written and accessible to a wide audience. -- Diane Coyle, author of Paradoxes of Prosperity and Sex and Drugs and Economics

Media Reviews
The Company of Strangers is a model of how different disciplines can enrich each other to explain human progress. -- George Peden Times Literary Supplement A welcome and important contribution... The Company of Strangers exemplifies a new breed of economic analysis, seeking answers to fundamental questions wherever they are found and ignoring disciplinary boundaries... [It] is highly readable and will be accessible to a wide audience. bert Gintis, Nature A very unusual new book about economics, and much else besides... Elaborate co-operation outside the family, but within the same species, is confined to humans. The requirements for such co-operation, and hence for modern economic life, which is founded on specialization and an infinitely elaborated division of labor, are more demanding than you might suppose... The fact that things could have turned out so differently makes the modern global economy, with all its awesome productivity, seem even more miraculous. The Economist A clear, thought-provoking and elegant book. -- Howard Davies Times Higher Education Supplement An important and timely book. -- Giles Whittell The Times (London) An entertaining, wide-ranging account about how the economy evolved in a way that allowed strangers, even potentially hostile strangers, to cooperate and even collaborate within market-based institutionsS. Seabright tells the story of how human beings, despite their genetic predisposition toward violent and even murderous behavior, have managed to produce a complex civilization through market-based institutions. Choice We now depend on the efforts of many strangers for our lives. In these days of terror and conflict, Seabright's stunning exploration of this human social experiment is timely... This is a book every concerned citizen should read, along with anybody in business who ever has to tangle with government regulations or the law, and who wants to understand why those relationships are so complex. -- Diane Coyle Strategy and Business A brilliant book. -- Martin Wolf Financial Times In his absorbing book, Seabright ... marvels at how easily we 'entrust our lives to the pilot of an aircraft, accept food from a stranger in a restaurant, enter a subway train packed full of our genetic rivals.' It's not often that an economist provides nuggets for cocktail party conversation. -- Peter Young Bloomberg News Few economists are so sweeping in their ideas as Seabright, and few so anxious to make us look freshly at the world... In The Company of Strangers, Seabright has produced one of those books that lie low, speak quietly, but work a change on the reader. -- Robert Fulford National Post There seems to be no place where Seabright is a stranger. He obviously feels as much at home among classical economists as among evolutionary biologists, quotes modern literature and ancient history with equal aplomb, jumps from experimental psychology to political philosophy and draws liberally on his personal memories of places from Ukraine to India... [His] book is obviously not meant as an exercise in planned economy, but as an excursion, without blinkers and without apprehension, through a tumultuous crowd of ideas. -- Karl Sigmund American Scientist So what does it take to become truly global? In a nutshell, it means learning how to live in The Company of Strangers. In [this] illuminating book ... Paul Seabright, himself an economist, brings together insights from history, biology and sociology to explain the concept of modern civilization. Korea Herald Paul Seabright contends that the Neolithic revolution, which saw the beginning of farming, changed not only the environment but also human nature. Settling down to tend fields promoted societies based on trust. Today, he says, all our economic institutions rely on trust... [I]t is a provocative read. -- Maggie McDonald New Scientist
Author Bio
Paul Seabright is Professor of Economics at the University of Toulouse, France. Formerly a Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and of Churchill College, Cambridge, he is a contributor to the London Review of Books .