The Human Economy

by Keith Hart, Jean-Louis Laville, Antonio David Cattani

The global financial crisis has renewed concern about whether capitalist markets are the best way of organizing economic life. Would it not be better if we were to treat the economy as something made and remade by people themselves, rather than as an impersonal machine?

The object of a human economy is the reproduction of human beings and of whatever sustains life in general. Such an economy would express human variety in its local particulars as well as the interests of all humanity.

The editors have assembled here a citizen’s guide to building a human economy. This project is not a dream but is part of a collective effort that began a decade ago at the first World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and has gathered pace ever since.

Over thirty original essays address topics that range from globalization, community participation and microcredit to corporate social responsibility and alternative energy. Each offers a critical guide to further reading.

The Human Economy builds on decades of engaged research to bring a new economic vision to general readers and a comprehensive guide for all students of the contemporary world.

Genres: Anthropology, Economics, History

320 pages, Paperback

First published November 1, 2010

About the author

Keith Hart is a British anthropologist and writer living in Paris. His main research has focused on economic anthropology, Africa and the African diaspora, and money. He has taught at universities including East Anglia, Manchester, Yale and the Chicago, as well as at Cambridge University where he was director of the African Studies Centre. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World and Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes. His written work focuses on the national limits of politics in a globalised economy.

Reviews

[S. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Going after informality again by heart (pun 'very' intended), and I have come across what I can define as his most history of informality from an economic point view. In fact, it is some sort of humanizing informality. Telling the story of the economy, the policy and even foreign affairs that might have contributed ot the emergence of informality in both its negative and positive connotation.

I was surprised by him comparing formal/informal duality to the Cold War era, between state socialims and the free market ... (respectivement) And this gives this topis all the political weight I was indifferent to.

"In order to be human, the economy must be at least four things:
1. It is made and remade by people; economics should be of practical use to us all in our daily lives.
2. It should address a great variety of particular situations in all their institutional complexity.
3. It must be based on a more holistic conception of everyone’s needs and interests.
4. It has to address humanity as a whole and the world society we are making.