Cooperation, conflict, and the social organization of human activity

.

Chapter 3 in Rethinking Economics as Social Theory, 2022, pp 37-58 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Economic theory has conventionally emphasized how societies are arenas for trade and cooperation in organizing human activity. Adam Smith's reference to a natural tendency to truck and barter reflects this feature of social organization. But this is only one feature of the human nature that entails many, oft-contradictory features. When writ large, human nature must be described as a manifold paradox where conflict, envy, and concerns about status also figure in the social organization of human activity. A theorist can always stipulate a model where conflict and envy are abolished from society, leaving only trade and cooperation. This would be to substitute a caricature of society for the reality. In contrast, this chapter recognizes that conflict and cooperation are inseparable twins within the continuing cosmic drama that is human society.

Keywords: Economics and Finance; Politics and Public Policy Sociology and Social Policy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/view/9781802204766.00007.xml (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:21161_3

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().