The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain Since 1950OUP Oxford, 9 mar 2006 - 454 páginas Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust. Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being. The book falls into three parts. Part one analyses the ways in which economic resources map on to human welfare, why choice is so intractable, and how commitment to people and institutions is sustained. It argues that choice is constrained by prior obligation and reciprocity. The second section then applies these conceptual arguments to comparative empirical studies of advertising, of eating and obesity, and of the production and acquisition of appliances and automobiles. Finally, in part three, Offer investigates social and personal relations in the USA and Britain, including inter-personal regard, the rewards and reversals of status, the social and psychological costs of inequality, and the challenges posed to heterosexual love and to parenthood by the rise of affluence. |
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The Challenge of Affluence: Self-control and Well-being in the United States ... Avner Offer Vista de fragmentos - 2006 |
The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States ... Avner Offer Vista de fragmentos - 2006 |
The Challenge of Affluence: Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States ... Avner Offer No hay ninguna vista previa disponible - 2006 |
Términos y frases comunes
advertising affluence American appliances Automobile average Body Mass Index body weight Britain British buyers cent choice commitment competition consumer consumption cost countries culture decades decline depreciation diffusion divorce Duke University eating economic growth effect exchange exponential discounting Ford Gender George Loewenstein Gershuny gift gift economy Gini coefficient Glass's Guide Happiness hedonic higher housework hyperbolic discounting Ibid income increased Index individual inequality Intertemporal Choice Journal labour less levels London lower male marital marriage married measure models motherhood Motor myopic National norms Obesity occupational parents percentage political position preferences Product prudence Psychology ranking Rational Addiction reciprocity regard Report rise romantic love satisfaction self-control sexual social indicators Source Statistics status styling subjective well-being Survey technologies television time-using tion Trends trust United welfare women York