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Series Foreword The University of Michigan Press is pleased to offer A Civil Economy: Transforming the Market in the Twenty-First Century as the second volume in its series Evolving Values for a Capitalist World. The series, edited by Neva R. Goodwin, Co-director of the Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University, is based on the following beliefs. Capitalism is the socioeconomic system that will prevail for the foreseeable future, not only because it appears to be an irresistible force, but also because there is no known system that works better. At the same time, capitalism is not a single, monolithic system but is rather a concept on which a number of variants are possible. There may well be better variants than any now prevailing; there is good reason to investigate how we might move toward such improvements. The basic assumption of the series is that the ultimate source of change in any human system is the set of values that dominate the system’s culture. These values are beliefs about what matters, what “good” means, what makes life worth living. They are, critically, shared values; they have much to do with self-respect, which partially reflects the respect accorded by others. Evolving Values for a Capitalist World examines the interplay between economics and values, taking a hard-headed look at shifts in values or in emphasis that could provide the foundation for improvements in the world’s dominant socioeconomic systems. The first volume in the series is As if The Future Mattered: Translating Social and Economic Theory into Human Behavior, edited by Neva R. Goodwin and including articles by a number of broad-thinking sociologists, economists, and other scholars and activists such as Michael Porter, Robert McNamara, and Alisa Gravitz. It is based on the premise that the longer the time horizon of each actor in an economy, the more likelihood there is of a convergence of interest among different groups and individuals. Convergence of interests is an essential theme for a market society, which operates on Adam Smith’s principle that socially desirable outcomes can be achieved while everyone rationally pursues his or her own self-interest. The second volume, A Civil Economy: Transforming the Market in the Twenty-First Century, pushes Smith’s principle in some very interesting ways. On the one hand, its author is optimistic regarding the ability of private, forprofit institutions to regulate themselves in a manner that is cooperative, rational for a particular industry, and often (though not always) good for the larger society. This optimism is based on a wealth of illustrations of businesses that have already acted in just such a manner. On the other hand, however, Dr. Bruyn strongly emphasizes that the legal/institutional/ethical context makes a great difference in whether and how business self-regulation will actually occur . The author stresses the regulatory environment and the forms that enterprises are encouraged to take as crucial to outcomes that, at best, will include worker empowerment as well as identification of a firm’s interests with the health of its surrounding community and the natural environment. Also in press, due for release by the University of Michigan Press in spring 2000, is the third volume in the series, Rethinking Sustainability: Power, Knowledge, and Institutions, edited by Jonathan Harris. Development ––the dynamic form of capitalism––is commonly understood to harness market systems to deliver material progress, with the goals of reducing poverty and improving the general quality of life. Through lively examples from many parts of the world, the essays assembled in Rethinking Sustainability probe the ways in which development depends on webs of relationships, structured according to how power and knowledge are allocated and used in different institutional contexts. They illuminate the critical, too-little-understood socioeconomic and politicl requirements for sustaining progress. x Series Foreword ...

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