Conflitto sociale e incomparabilità dei beni (Social conflict and incomparability of goods)

Nicolò Bellanca ()

Working Papers Series from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche

Abstract: According to mainstream economics, rational agents choose among alternatives that are supposed to be ranked and compared. This assumption is strongly criticized by sociologists and anthropologists; it may partly hold true only when the commercial transactions sphere establishes a uniform measure: money. But what happens when a community compares social goods supplied by different institutional spheres? The rigorous equalization of any rate of exchange is replaced by a system of conventional equivalences. This system is temporary, since it changes as collective beliefs evolve; it is conflictual, because the "rates of conversion" between social goods often express relations of power among the groups themselves; and finally it is unstable, because individuals tend to develop private "rates of conversion” that are different from the collective ones. This system, despite its fragility, is a crucial tool of reproduction of a complex society. This essay discusses and analyzes some aspects of the issue.

Keywords: Incomparability; Rational Choice; Money; Conflict; Participation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D01 D63 P51 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.dse.unifi.it/upload/sub/WP02_2008.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: http://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:frz:wpaper:wp2008_02

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers Series from Universita' degli Studi di Firenze, Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche
Address: Via delle Pandette 9 50127 - Firenze - Italy
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Giorgio Ricchiuti ().