I Spend Therefore I Am: How Economics Has Changed the Way We Think and Feel

A powerful exploration of how economic thinking has infiltrated every aspect of modern life, even our understanding of who we are and what it means to be a person.
     Economics is the academic success story of the 20th century, a potent force not just in markets and government, but in our everyday lives. It affects our decisions as consumers, of course, but also our education, our health, our social lives and our family relationships. In his trenchant book, Philip Roscoe argues that the justifications of economics allow us to set aside social or moral obligations and to act instead within a limited, short-term definition of self-interest. This attitude, and these justifications, are responsible for the gravest problems we face, from global financial meltdown to environmental threat. I Spend Therefore I Am shows how our daily activities, our values, and even our understanding of what it is to be a person have been changed for the worse by economics, a discipline, he writes, "at war with the goods of life."

PHILIP ROSCOE is a reader (associate professor) in Management at the School of Management, University of St. Andrews, in Scotland. He holds a PhD in Management from Lancaster University; his research has examined online dating, organ transplantation, private investors and alternative currencies. Before becoming an academic, he worked as a financial journalist and entrepreneur for six years, after completing undergrad and post-grad studies in theology in Leeds and medieval Arabic thought at Oxford. He was one of the 10 winners of BBC Radio 3's 2011 competition to discover the "public intellectuals of the future." The author lives in St Andrews, Fife, Scotland.