Calculating Worth

Edited by Joanna Cohen and Laura F. Edwards

in University of Chicago Press Economics Books from University of Chicago Press

Abstract:

Explores the history of value as a concept, one that we regularly use but tend to take for granted as the monetary expression of market mechanisms.

Calculating Worth, a collection of essays edited by historians Joanna Cohen and Laura F. Edwards, reshapes our concept of what “value” meant in the past. Collectively, the essays reorient conventional narratives and reveal multiple methods of determining value, some traditional, some new, but all based in human agency. Calculating Worth brings together scholars of legal history, Native American history, women’s history, material culture, the history of slavery, and African American history, with topics that range widely over the nineteenth century, across North America and beyond.

Through studying subjects as varied as personal property, land, enslaved people, and intangibles such as prayer, reputation, and suffering, this portrait of value is diverse, humanistic, and far more capacious than what typically fits within the bounds of the concept of capitalism. Rather, value turns out to be a question of power—and how it is used.

Date: 2027
Edition: 1
ISBN: 9780226857442
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ucp:bkecon:9780226857442

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
https://press.uchica ... o/C/bo285073090.html
The price is $115.00.

Access Statistics for this book

More books in University of Chicago Press Economics Books from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Books Division ().