SOCIOL 173 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Homo Economicus, Barter, Commodification
Document Summary
Tips on how to read original scholarship: 1. Intro look for clues: what is the argument: make sure you understand what the authors argue against; 3. Pay attention to the building blocks of the arguments (data); 4. Polanyi directly takes up adam smith"s notion that trade and exchange is part of basic human nature. Two famous passages from the smith"s the wealth of nations: This division of labour, from which so many advantages are derived, is not originally the effect of any human wisdom, which foresees and intends that general opulence to which it gives occasion. It is the necessary, though very slow and gradual consequence of a certain propensity in human nature which has in view no such extensive utility; the propensity to truck, barter and exchange one thing for another. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own self-interest.
