Autumn 2017 Schedule

Fall 2017

The Bourgeois Virtues

Bourgeois Dignity

WHY ECONOMICS CAN'T EXPLAIN THE MODERN WORLD

(The Bourgeois Era, vol. 2)

The big economic story of our times is not the Great Recession. It is how China and India began to embrace neoliberal ideas of economics and attributed a sense of dignity and liberty to the bourgeoisie they had denied for so long. The result was an explosion in economic growth and proof that economic change depends less on foreign trade, investment, or material causes, and a whole lot more on ideas and what people believe. Or so says Deirdre N. McCloskey inBourgeois Dignity, a fiercely contrarian history that wages a similar argument about economics in the West. Here she turns her attention to seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Europe to reconsider the birth of the industrial revolution and the rise of capitalism. According to McCloskey, our modern world was not the product of new markets and innovations, but rather the result of shifting opinions about them. During this time, talk of private property, commerce, and even the bourgeoisie itself radically altered, becoming far more approving and flying in the face of prejudices several millennia old. The wealth of nations, then, didn’t grow so dramatically because of economic factors: it grew because rhetoric about markets and free enterprise finally became enthusiastic and encouraging of their inherent dignity. An utterly fascinating sequel to her critically acclaimed bookThe Bourgeois Virtues, Bourgeois Dignityis a feast of intellectual riches from one of our most spirited and ambitious historians—a work that will forever change our understanding of how the power of persuasion shapes our economic lives.

Friday September 29, 12:00-1:00

  • Information Session
  • Pick up book

Location: CHN 1137

Friday, Oct 6 12:00-2:00

  • Reading Chapters 1-15
  • Dr. McCloskey will be in attendance
  • Lunch will be served

Location: Freed Orman Centre *** Hosted by President Alan Wildeman

Friday, Oct 20, 12:00-2:00

  • Reading: Chapters 16-23
  • A light lunch will be served

Location: CHN 1137

Friday, Nov 3 12:00-2:00

  • Reading:Chapters 24-32
  • A light lunch will be served

Location: CHN 1137

Friday, Nov 17, 12:00-2:00

  • Reading: Chapters 33-39
  • A light lunch will be served

Location: CHN 1137

Friday, Dec 8, 6:00-9:00

  • Reading:Chapters 40-46
  • Dinner meeting

Location -TBA

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