Abstract
The last chapter set out the framework within which this book will discuss cultural policy. In that chapter, I argued that the central claims being made in the debate about culture can be categorised as market-based and community-based approaches. This chapter and the next will move on to show how these are actually ethical positions, stemming from different conceptions of individual self-understanding, of the location of value in society, and from different visions of the good life and how it can be achieved.
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Notes
See, among others, Tibor R. Machan (ed.), Business Ethics in the Global Market (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1999); Ian Jones and Michael Pollitt (eds), The Role of Business Ethics in Economic Performance (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998); and Thomas Donaldson and Thomas W. Dunfee (eds), Ethics in Business and Economics (Aldershot: Dartmouth Publishers, 1997).
See, for example, Partha Dasgupta, ‘Trust as a Commodity’, in Diego Gambetta (ed.), Trust: Making and Breaking Cooperative Relations (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1988), pp. 49–72, reprinted in Frank Ackerman, David Kiron, Neva R. Goodwin, Jonathan M. Harris, and Kevin Gallagher (eds), Human Well-Being and Economic Goals (Washington, DC: Island Press, 1997), pp. 231–3.
See, for example, Charles R. Beitz, Political Theory and International Relations (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1979), and John Rawis, A Theory of/ustice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1973).
For an approach that is similar in its overt consideration of the ethical adequacy of theory, see, among others, Mark Neufeld, The Restructuring of International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995).
Steven E. Rhoads, The Economist’s View of the World: Government, Markets, and Public Policy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 62.
Robin Hahnel and Michael Albert, Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990), p. 15.
Rhoads, The Economist’s View of the World, p. 62. On this point, see also Hahnel and Albert, Quiet Revolution in Welfare Economics, p. 15.
See W. Kip Viscusi, John M. Vernon, and Joseph E. Harrington, Jr, Economics of Regulation and Antitrust, second edition (Cambridge, Mass.: The MIT Press, 1995), pp. 73–6.
Neva R. Goodwin, ‘Overview Essay to Part I: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Well-Being’, in Ackerman, Kiron, Goodwin, Harris, and Gallagher (eds), Human Well-Being and Economic Goals, p. 2, emphasis added. Amartya Sen has made similar criticisms. For a brief version of this argument, see his On Ethics and Economics (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987), pp. 45–6. Although he is usually perceived to be within the broad ‘school’ of welfare economics, Sen criticises many of the ideas that underlie this school. Since proponents of market-based approaches to cultural policy do not discuss Sen’s work, this chapter will focus only on mainstream welfare economics. It will incorporate Sen’s critiques of the mainstream where they are relevant, with the recognition that Sen’s position on welfare economics is vastly more sympathetic than that taken by this book.
See, for example, Armen A. Alchian and William R. Allen, University Economics: Elements of Inquiry (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth Publishing, 1972), pp. 6–7.
Charles Taylor, ‘Atomism’, in Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences: Philosophical Papers 2 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985), p. 206.
See, for example, Geoffrey Hodgson, ‘Economics, Environmental Policy and the Transcendence of Utilitarianism’, in John Foster (ed.), Valuing Nature? Economics, Ethics, and Environment (London: Routledge, 1997), p. 49.
Milton Friedman, ‘The Methodology of Positive Economics’, in Friedman, Essays in Positive Economics (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1953), p. 7. Quoted in Hodgson, ‘Economics, Environmental Policy and the Transcendence of Utilitarianism’, p. 49.
Russell Keat, ‘Values and Preferences in Neo-classical Environmental Economics’, in Foster (ed.), Valuing Nature?, p. 45.
Charles Taylor, ‘Irreducibly Social Goods’, in Charles Taylor, Philosophical Arguments (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 135.
See, for example, ibid. See also Hodgson, ‘Economics, Environmental Policy and the Transcendence of Utilitarianism’, p. 53, and Kenneth Arrow, The Limits of Organization (New York: Norton, 1974), p. 23. For a contrary argument, see Dasgupta, ‘Trust as a Commodity’.
Elizabeth Anderson, Value in Ethics and Economics (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1993), p. 4.
For details of this distinction, see Robert Cox, ‘Social Forces, States, and World Orders’, in Robert W. Cox with Timothy J. Sinclair, Approaches to World Order (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 88.
Ibid.
See, for example, Steve Smith, ‘Positivism and Beyond’, in Steve Smith, Ken Booth and Marysia Zalewski (eds), International Theory: Positivism and Beyond (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), pp. 11–44; Mark Neufeld, The Restructuring of International Relations Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), especially Chapter 1, pp. 9–21; and Jim George, Discourses of Global Politics: a Critical (Re)Introduction to International Relations (Boulder, Colo.: Lynne Rienner, 1994), especially pp. 1–39.
Daniel M. Hausman and Michael S. McPherson, ‘Taking Ethics Seriously: Economics and Contemporary Moral Philosophy’, Journal of Economic Literature, Vol. 31, No. 2 (1993), p. 675.
It should be noted that these are not the only ethical critiques of welfare economics. However, they are the most important ones for the argument of this book, since they most clearly highlight the cultural difficulties of welfare economics. Another very important critique of economic thinking is that provided by rights-based theories. See, for example, John Rawls, A Theory of Justice (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1971).
See, for example, the critiques made by Sen, On Ethics and Economics. See also Amartya Sen, ‘The Impossibility of a Paretian Liberal’, Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 78, No. 1 (1970), pp. 152–7, and Charles K. Rowley and Alan T. Peacock, Welfare Economics: a Liberal Restatement (New York: John Riley, 1975).
On the importance of freedom in economics more generally, see Alan Peacock, The Political Economy of Economic Freedom (Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 1997), especially pp. 19–24. Clearly, freedom was also an important concern for classical economists. On the ‘scientisation’ of economics in the twentieth century and the corresponding separation of ethics and economics, see Kurt W. Rothschild, Ethics and Economic Theory: Ideas — Models — Dilemmas (Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1993), especially pp. 11–17.
Steven Globerman, Cultural Regulation in Canada (Montreal: The Institute for Research on Public Policy, 1983), p. 37, and Alan Peacock, ‘Economics, Cultural Values and Cultural Policies’, in Ruth Towse and Abdul Khakee (eds), Cultural Economics (Berlin: Springer-Verlag, 1992), p. 10.
See, among others, Chandran Kukathas, Hayek and Modern Liberalism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1989); John Gray, Hayek on Liberty, third edition (London: Routledge, 1998); Calvin Hoy, A Philosophy of Individual Freedom: the Political Thought ofF.A. Hayek (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984); Roland Kley, Hayek’s Social and Political Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994); Andrew Gamble, Hayek: the Iron Cage of Liberty (Cambridge: Polity Press, 1996); Steve Fleetwood, Hayek’s Political Economy: the Socio-Economics of Order (London: Routledge, 1995); Graham Walker, The Ethics of F.A. Hayek (London: University Press of America, 1986); Richard Bellamy, “‘Dethroning Politics”: Liberalism, Constitutionalism and Democracy in the Thought of F.A. Hayek’, British Journal of Political Science, Vol. 24, No. 4 (1994), pp. 419–41; Theodore A. Burczak, ‘The Postmodern Moments of F.A. Hayek’s Economics’, Economics and Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1994), pp. 31–58; Bruce Caldwell, ‘Hayek’s Scientific Subjectivism’, Economics and Philosophy, Vol. 10, No. 1 (1994), pp. 305–13; Razeen Sally, ‘Review of F.A. Hayek, Hayek on Hayek’, Government and Opposition, Vol. 30, No. 1 (1995), pp. 131–5; and Lionel Robbins, ‘Hayek on Liberty’, in Lionel Robbins, Politics and Economics: Papers in Political Economy (London: Macmillan, 1963), pp. 91–112.
F.A. Hayek, The Road to Serfdom (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 1944); F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty (London: Routledge for the University of Chicago, 1960), and F.A. Hayek, ‘Individualism: True and False’, in F.A. Hayek, Individualism and Economic Order (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1949), pp. 1–32.
This critique parallels those made by other critics of liberalism. See, for example, Chantal Mouffe, The Return of the Political (London: Verso, 1993); Anne Phillips, ‘Dealing with Difference’, in Seyla Benhabib (ed.), Democracy and Difference: Contesting the Boundaries of the Political (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), pp. 139–52; and Michael J. Sandel, Liberalism and the Limits of Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982).
This point is very closely related to the argument about the priority of the right over the good. For a summary, see Stephen Mulhall and Adam Swift, Liberals and Cornmunitarians, second edition (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996), pp. 31–3, 119–21, and 124–6.
Ibid., p. vii.
On this point, see, for example, David Miller, On Nationality (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995), p. 347.
This point is made in a different way by John Gray, The Moral Foundations of Market Institutions (London: The IEA Health and Welfare Unit, 1992), pp. 16–17.
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© 2003 Sarah Owen-Vandersluis
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Owen-Vandersluis, S. (2003). Welfare Economics and the Moral Relevance of Culture. In: Ethics and Cultural Policy in a Global Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403943781_3
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