The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life

Eli Cook

Published by Harvard University Press 2017

The Pricing of Progress

Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life

Eli Cook

https://doi.org/10.4159/9780674982529

Overview
Contents

About this book

How did Americans come to quantify their society’s well-being in units of money? In our GDP-run world, prices are the measure of not only goods and commodities but our environment, communities, nation, even self-worth. Eli Cook shows how, and why, we moderns lost sight of earlier social and moral metrics that did not put a price on everyday life.

Author / Editor information

Cook Eli :

Eli Cook is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Haifa.

Reviews

Adam Gaffney:
Eli Cook’s groundbreaking new book, The Pricing of Progress: Economic Indicators and the Capitalization of American Life, traces how health, lives, and land came to be seen as ‘income-generating investments,’ a transformation that has not just shaped how we perceive the costs of catastrophes like the opioid epidemic (or how we market boutique medical care), but that also, Cook asserts, propelled the emergence of capitalism itself.

Jonathan Levy, author of Freaks of Fortune: The Emerging World of Capitalism and Risk in America:
An untold history of the origins of today’s economic indicators, like GDP, The Pricing of Progress offers a fresh account of the history of capitalism from the perspective of ‘capitalization.’ Written with verve, and brimming with brilliance and insight, this book is truly one of a kind.

Jackson Lears, Rutgers University:
Eli Cook poses fundamental moral questions with elegance and authority, illuminating how Americans came to conceive everything—including human beings and whole societies—as capital investments. His compelling and richly detailed account affords an enlightened understanding of how price became a synonym for value, and money became the measure of all things.

Jeffrey Sklansky, author of Sovereign of the Market: The Money Question in Early America:
This boldly original and compelling book demonstrates the centrality to capitalist development of the fiercely contested process of capitalization. Cook richly reveals how land and labor, colonies and cities, farms and factories were transformed into financial assets valued according to their capacity to generate monetary profits. In its political urgency and relevance for the current era of financialization, The Pricing of Progress is a work deeply provocative and inspiring.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Political Arithmetic of Price Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	17
2. Seeing like a Capitalist Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	43
3. The Spirit of Non-Capitalism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	74
4. The Age of Moral Statistics Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	100
5. The Hunt for Growth Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	128
6. The Coronation of King Capital Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	159
7. State of Statistical War Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
8. The Pricing of Progressivism Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	223
Epilogue: Toward GDP Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	255
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	339
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	343

Language: English
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Pages
- Main content: 326

eBook

Published: September 25, 2017
ISBN: 9780674982529