Overview

The notion of capital has enjoyed a rich career in the social sciences, its use across a range of subjects and in diverse academic and professional contexts having served to establish its conceptual status as 'given'. With particular attention to human and social capital - including cultural capital - this book traces the roots of this theoretical and conceptual trend to economics, revealing the proliferation of various forms of capital to be based upon an encroachment of the conceptual apparatus of economics into other social sciences. Offering an in-depth, critical analysis of the concepts of human and social capital, as well as their surrounding theories, Anti-Capital: Human, Social and Cultural proposes an alternative theoretical framework, whilst better explaining the realities that they mask in economic terms. A rigorous exploration of the most popular forms of 'capital' in the contemporary social sciences, this book will be of interest to scholars and students of sociology, political and social theory, demography and economics.

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9781409452553

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'In Anti-Capital: Human, Social and Cultural, Tittenbrun unmasks this unholy trinity, showing that Bourdieu was wrong: trust and solidarity cannot be bought and we are not capitalist entrepreneurs when developing relationships. Engaging with Sandel, Skidelsky and Gorz, the author offers a comprehensive critique of these misnomers, promising to break the vicious hold of neoliberal ideologies on social imagination.' Slawomir Magala, Rotterdam School of Management, The Netherlands, and author of Class Struggle in Classless Poland 'It is worth taking some time to pay tribute to the potency of Tittenbrun's critique. ... it must be said that the book does a wonderful job in getting its readers to stop and give the utility and merit of human, social, and cultural capitals a real hard think. The book aims for a readership somewhat knowledgeable of these concepts, but it will inform heavily - and critically - anyone who is interested in them. A rigorous engagement that is passionately written, Tittenbrun's book certainly touches the core of theoretical debates over human, social, and cultural capital.' Sociological Research Online

'In Anti-Capital: Human, Social and Cultural, Tittenbrun unmasks this unholy trinity, showing that Bourdieu was wrong: trust and solidarity cannot be bought and we are not capitalist entrepreneurs when developing relationships. Engaging with Sandel, Skidelsky and Gorz, the author offers a comprehensive critique of these misnomers, promising to break the vicious hold of neoliberal ideologies on social imagination.'Slawomir Magala, Rotterdam School of Management, The Netherlands, and author of Class Struggle in Classless Poland

Author Information

Jacek Tittenbrun is Professor of Sociology and Chair of Economic Sociology at the University of Poznan, Poland. He is author of Economy in Society: Economic Sociology Revisited; Private Versus Public Enterprise; and The Collapse of Real Socialism in Poland.

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