In this Book
- The Company of Strangers: A Natural History of Economic Life - Revised Edition
- Book
- 2010
- Published by: Princeton University Press
The Company of Strangers shows us the remarkable strangeness, and fragility, of our everyday lives. This completely revised and updated edition includes a new chapter analyzing how the rise and fall of social trust explain the unsustainable boom in the global economy over the past decade and the financial crisis that succeeded it.
Drawing on insights from biology, anthropology, history, psychology, and literature, Paul Seabright explores how our evolved ability of abstract reasoning has allowed institutions like money, markets, cities, and the banking system to provide the foundations of social trust that we need in our everyday lives. Even the simple acts of buying food and clothing depend on an astonishing web of interaction that spans the globe. How did humans develop the ability to trust total strangers with providing our most basic needs?
Table of Contents
- Acknowledgments
- pp. xv-xvii
- Part I: Tunnel Vision
- 1. Who’s in Charge?
- pp. 17-32
- Prologue to Part II
- pp. 33-34
- Part II: From Murderous Apes to Honorary Friends: How Is Human Cooperation Possible?
- 2. Man and the Risks of Nature
- pp. 37-54
- 3. Our Violent Past
- pp. 55-64
- 6. Money and Human Relationships
- pp. 91-105
- Epilogue to Parts I and II
- pp. 147-150
- Prologue to Part III
- pp. 151-154
- Part III: Unintended Consequences: From Family Bands to Industrial Cities
- 11. Water: Commodity or Social Institution?
- pp. 172-185
- 12. Prices for Everything?
- pp. 186-203
- 13. Families and Firms
- pp. 204-225
- 14. Knowledge and Symbolism
- pp. 226-243
- Epilogue to Part III
- pp. 263-264
- Prologue to Part IV
- pp. 265-268
- Part IV: Collective Action: From Belligerent States to a Marketplace of Nations
- 16. States and Empires
- pp. 271-287
- 17. Globalization and Political Action
- pp. 288-301
- References
- pp. 343-364