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Title: The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950
Citation Type: Book, Whole
Publication Year: 2006
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Abstract: A readable and compelling social critique of consumer societyFundamentally questions the assumption that consumer choice maximizes our individual and social well-being. Combines social and economic history with insights from a range of other disciplines, including economics, psychology, sociology, politics, and anthropology. Includes a theoretical analysis of the relationship between affluence and welfare, historical case studies of these concepts in practice, and an investigation of the effects of affluence upon our social and inter-personal relations Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust.Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being.The book falls into three parts. Part one analyses the ways in which economic resources map on to human welfare, why choice is so intractable, and how commitment to people and institutions is sustained. It argues that choice is constrained by prior obligation and reciprocity. The second section then applies these conceptual arguments to comparative empirical studies of advertising, of eating and obesity, and of the production and acquisition of appliances and automobiles. Finally, in part three, Offer investigates social and personal relations in the USA and Britain, including inter-personal regard, the rewards and reversals of status, the social and psychological costs of inequality, and the challenges posed to heterosexual love and to parenthood by the rise of affluence. Readership: Scholars and students of twentieth century history. The general reader interested in politics, economics, and social issues. Economists, economic historians, sociologists, and social anthropologists.Contents Preface1 IntroductionPart One: Evaluating Affluence2 Economic Welfare Measures and Human Well-Being3 Passions and Interests: Self-Control and Well-Being4 Myopic and Rational Choice5 Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of RegardPart Two: In the Marketplace6 The Mask of Intimacy: Advertising and Well-Being7 Epidemics of Abundance: Body-Weight and Self-Control8 Household Appliances and the Use of Time9 The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s10 Driving Prudently: American and EuropeanPart Three: Self and Others11 Affluence and the Pursuit of Status12 Inequality Hurts13 All You Need is Love? Mating since the 1950s14 Women and Children Last: The Ebbing of Commitment15 Conclusion Authors, editors, and contributors Avner Offer, Chichele Professor of Economic History, University of Oxford, Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, and Fellow of the British Academy
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Authors: Offer, Avner
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Publisher Location: Oxford, UK
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Data Collections: IPUMS USA, IPUMS International
Topics: Family and Marriage, Labor Force and Occupational Structure, Poverty and Welfare
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