Overview

Tracing the evolution of social capital since his highly acclaimed contribution of 2001 (Social Capital Versus Social Theory), Ben Fine consolidates his position as the world's leading critic of the concept. Fine forcibly demonstrates how social capital has expanded across the social sciences only by degrading the different disciplines and topics that it touches: a McDonaldisation of social theory. The rise and fall of social capital at the World Bank is critically explained as is social capital's growing presence in disciplines, such as management studies, and its relative absence in others, such as social history. Writing with a sharp critical edge, Fine not only deconstructs the roller-coaster presence of social capital across the social sciences but also draws out lessons on how (and how not) to do research.

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Reviews

Ben Fine is the world's most thorough and indefatigible critic of the abuse of the concept of capital that follows from adding 'social' to it. ... Here he ... explore[s] the reasons behind the chaos this causes and the consequences of the penetration of notions of profit into every nook and cranny of our lives. A must-read for all irritated and irritable thinkers in social science. -- Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University

Ben Fine is the world's most thorough and indefatigible critic of the abuse of the concept of capital that follows from adding 'social' to it. ... Here he ... explore[s] the reasons behind the chaos this causes and the consequences of the penetration of notions of profit into every nook and cranny of our lives. A must-read for all irritated and irritable thinkers in social science. -- Barbara Harriss-White, Oxford University

Author Information

Ben Fine is Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London. He is the author of the critical texts, Macroeconomics and Microeconomics (Pluto, 2016), co-author of Marx's 'Capital' (Pluto, 2016) and co-editor of Beyond the Developmental State (Pluto, 2013). He was awarded both the Deutscher and Myrdal Prizes in 2009. Ben Fine is Emeritus Professor of Economics at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and Visiting Professor, Wits School of Governance, University of Witwatersrand, South Africa. He has published over thirty books (one of which won the Deutscher Prize and another the Myrdal Prize) and three hundred articles. He is the founding Chair of IIPPE (the International Initiative for Promoting Political Economy) and has acted as economic advisor to many organisations. He is an acknowledged international authority across fields such as Marxist political economy, history of economic thought, heterodox economics, economics imperialism, social capital, social choice theory, development economics and studies, the British economy and coal industry, consumption studies and South Africa.

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