Ethics, Economy and Social Science (Routledge Advances in Sociology)

This book is a collection of critical engagements with Andrew Sayer, one of the foremost postdisciplinary thinkers of our times, with responses from Sayer himself.

Sayer’s ground-breaking contributions to the fields of geography, political economy and social theory have reshaped the terms of engagement with issues and debates running from the methodology of social science through to the environment, and industrial development to the ethical dimensions of everyday life. Transatlantic scholars across a wide range of fields explore his work across four main areas: critical realism; moral economy; political economy; and relations between social theory, normativity and class.

This is the first full-length critical assessment of Sayer’s work. It will be of interest to readers in sociology, economics, political economy, social and political philosophy, ethics, social policy, geography and urban studies, from upper-undergraduate levels upwards.

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.