Ethics, Economy and Social Science

Balihar Sanghera is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Kent. His research has focused on neoliberal reforms in post-Soviet Central Asia, and charitable giving and philanthropy in the UK. In both areas, he uses moral economy to emphasise the ethical dimensions of economic and social life. His book is Rentier Capitalism and Its Discontents: Power, Morality and Resistance in Central Asia (2021), co-authored with Elmira Satybaldieva. Gideon Calder is Associate Professor of Social Philosophy and Policy at Swansea University. His ten books include, most recently, How Inequality Runs in Families: Unfair Advantage and the Limits of Social Mobility (2016) and the co-edited Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Childhood and Children (2018). He has written extensively on issues in social, political and ethical theory and their application to various issues of policy and practice, and is co-editor of the journal Ethics and Social Welfare.

Introduction

Part I: The Nature and Scope of Realism

1. Why Andrew Sayer Matters

2. Andrew Sayer: Human Nature and Social Critique

3. Objectivity and Normativity

4. Abstract and Concrete: Some (More) Groundwork

Part II: Dimensions of Moral Economy

5. Critical Realism and Moral Economy: Sympathetic Reflections on Andrew Sayer’s Work

6. Why (Mundane) Things Matter: From Moral Economy to Foundational Economy

7. Moral Economy: A Framework and a Manifesto

8. Putting Resistance Back in Moral Economy

Part III: Applications in Political Economy

9. Andrew Sayer on Inequality, Climate Emergency and Ecological Breakdown: Can We Afford the Rich?

10. Hard Work: Restructuring, Realism, and Regions

11. Varieties of Unfreedom

12. The Persistent Radicalism of Andrew Sayer

Part IV: Social Theory, Normativity and Class

13. A Social Scientist for Our Times: Unravelling the Moral Morass of Class, Wealth, Profit

and Oppression

14. The Elephant in the Room: Sayer on Social Class

15. From Dispositions to Interaction and Relations

16. Ordinary Inequality: Sayer, Political Theory and the Human Good

Part V: Responses

17. Responses to the Contributors