We need to talk about ‘alienation’
It was all the rage in the 1960s and 1970s … “Alienation is one of the most frequently encountered concepts in social science. Indeed, the amorphous, global concept of alienation has been used as a catchword to explain nearly every kind of aberrant behavior from drug abuse to political demonstrations.” (Mackey & Ahlgren, 1977). And […]
The special theory of relationships – or why you accidently called your teacher ‘mum’
The desire to understand and classify different types of human relationships isn’t new; we’ve been pondering it for thousands of years. What rules govern our interactions? And how do relationships shape us into the people we become? The answers aren’t immediately straight forward, because the way we interact with each other is influenced by many […]
Food for thought: how values affect our food choices
We in the West are living in an age of food plenty: faced with dizzying choice in our supermarket aisles, with foods from across the globe available – whatever the season – at prices that would have been unthinkable 50 years ago. How do we navigate this? What guides our decision to pick one product over another, […]
What have the immigrants ever done for us?: Five reasons why the economic argument for immigration is destined to fail
“Immigration is like trade. It makes us rich” – The Times (paywall), May 27th 2013 “Immigrants: don’t you just love ‘em? They travel to Britain from far-flung lands, coming here to toil away in our shops and offices and homes, paying their taxes and generally making us all better off.” – The Telegraph, June 13th […]
The Mouse Paradigm: how markets affect our morals
The life of a mouse is entrusted to your care. You can either save this mouse, and receive no money. Or play the market to bargain for its life, and accept that it will be killed. This is the Mouse Paradigm, and it’s the subject of a recent study into how economic markets affect our moral […]
Money talks: the impact of economic framing on how we act and feel
We’re ‘consumers’ or ‘taxpayers’ and we care about things like ‘pay-off’, ‘return on investment’ and ‘growth’: that’s the bottom line. Right? Well, I’d put my money on it. But, actually, when did that happen? When did we start to pepper our meetings, our work, and even dinner conversations with such words and phrases? Sometimes, our […]