Suny Press
Works Like a Charm : Incentive Rhetoric and the Economization of Everyday Life
Product Code:
9781438494081
ISBN13:
9781438494081
Condition:
New
$44.42
Works like a Charm addresses a simple question: Why are "incentives" everywhere now? From inducements to work harder at our jobs to tax rebates for corporations, "incentive" names a general theory of motivation--according to economists, we are incentive-driven creatures. Yet far from being a neutral generalization, this understanding of human behavior smuggles in a quintessentially economic way of seeing the world. Works like a Charm applies Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic concept of retroactive causality to explain the metastasis of the language and logic of incentives: To discover an incentive is to place in the untouchable past an economic cause for a contextual, historical force. Tracing "incentive" from its roots in antiquity to its uptake by neoclassical and then Chicago-school economists, Robert O. McDonald diagnoses the spread of incentives across the social, cultural, and political field and warns readers of the dangers of handing over causality to the economists.
| Author: Robert O. McDonald |
| Publisher: Suny Press |
| Publication Date: Feb 02, 2024 |
| Number of Pages: NA pages |
| Language: English |
| Binding: Paperback |
| ISBN-10: 1438494084 |
| ISBN-13: 9781438494081 |
Works Like a Charm : Incentive Rhetoric and the Economization of Everyday Life
$44.42
Works like a Charm addresses a simple question: Why are "incentives" everywhere now? From inducements to work harder at our jobs to tax rebates for corporations, "incentive" names a general theory of motivation--according to economists, we are incentive-driven creatures. Yet far from being a neutral generalization, this understanding of human behavior smuggles in a quintessentially economic way of seeing the world. Works like a Charm applies Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic concept of retroactive causality to explain the metastasis of the language and logic of incentives: To discover an incentive is to place in the untouchable past an economic cause for a contextual, historical force. Tracing "incentive" from its roots in antiquity to its uptake by neoclassical and then Chicago-school economists, Robert O. McDonald diagnoses the spread of incentives across the social, cultural, and political field and warns readers of the dangers of handing over causality to the economists.
| Author: Robert O. McDonald |
| Publisher: Suny Press |
| Publication Date: Feb 02, 2024 |
| Number of Pages: NA pages |
| Language: English |
| Binding: Paperback |
| ISBN-10: 1438494084 |
| ISBN-13: 9781438494081 |
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