Over the course of the last ten years the issue of debt has become a serious problem that threatens to destroy the global socio-economic system and ruin the everyday lives of millions of people. This collection brings together a range of perspectives of key thinkers on debt to provide a sociological analysis focused upon the social, political, economic, and cultural meanings of indebtedness.The contributors to the book consider both the lived experience of debt and the more abstrac...

Consumer credit borrowing – using credit cards, store cards and personal loans – is an important and routine part of many of our lives. But what happens when these everyday forms of borrowing go ‘bad’, when people start to default on their loans and when they cannot, or will not, repay? It is this poorly understood, controversial, but central part of both the consumer credit industry and the lived experiences of an increasing number of people that this book explores.Drawing on rese...

The collection explores how sentiment and relations are organised in consumer markets. Social studies of economies and markets have much more to offer than simply adding some ‘context’, ‘culture’ or ‘soul’ to the analysis of economic practices. As this collection showcases, studying markets socially reveals how attachments between people and products are engineered and can explain how, and why, they fail. The contributors explore the tools and techniques used to work with sentiment, aesthe...

Fully updated and carefully revised, this new 2nd edition ofHistory by Numbers stands alone as the only textbook on quantitative methods suitable for students of history. Even the numerically challenged will find inspiration.Taking a problem-solving approach and using authentic historical data, it describes each method in turn, including its origin, purpose, usefulness and associated pitfalls. The problems are developed gradually and with narrative skill, allowing readers ...

World-changing books about finance aren't built in a day. Adam Smith needed 17 years to write The Wealth of Nations. John Maynard Keynes took six years to write The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money. Yes, those are lofty comparisons. And yes, later histories will record whether the socionomic theory of finance actually did replace conventional macroeconomics. Even so: You can read The Socionomic Theory of Finance and make your own judgement, today. The non-textbook style mak...

A collection of essays analyzing the economic factors underlying human decision-making from the Nobel Prize–winning American economist.Since his pioneering application of economic analysis to racial discrimination, Gary S. Becker has shown that an economic approach can provide a unified framework for understanding all human behavior. In a highly readable selection of essays Becker applies this approach to various aspects of human activity, including social interact...

The Oxford Handbook of Project Management presents and discusses leading ideas in the management of projects. Positioning project management as a domain much broader and more strategic than simply 'execution management', this Handbook draws on the insights of over 40 scholars to chart the development of the subject over the last 50 years or more as an area of increasing practical and academic interest. It suggests we could be entering an emerging 'third wave' of analysis and inter...

An accessible description of modern macroeconomics, and a defense of its policy relevance.Macroeconomists have been caricatured either as credulous savants in love with the beauty of their mathematical models or as free-market fundamentalists who admit no doubt as to the market's wisdom. In this book, Kartik Athreya draws a truer picture, offering a nontechnical description of prominent ideas and models in macroeconomics, and arguing for their value as interpretive...

People are using the future to search for better ways to achieve sustainability, inclusiveness, prosperity, well-being and peace. In addition, the way the future is understood and used is changing in almost all domains, from social science to daily life.This book presents the results of significant research undertaken by UNESCO with a number of partners to detect and define the theory and practice of anticipation around the world today. It uses the concept of ‘Futures Literacy’ as ...

This book investigates the issues raised by the vast array of accounting standards and technical rules which have marked the recent history of accounting. It is argued that the accounting profession is beset by an inferior and incomplete notion of quality in its work which emphasises compliance with processing rules, rather than the correspondence

Topical and taking a bold stance in the contentious debate surrounding performance in the public sector, this new edition shows readers how performance thinking has a substantial impact on the management of public organizations.Thoroughly revised and updated, this highly successful text, written by an experienced academic and practitioner is packed full with a wealth of new features. These include:more examples and cases, from a variety of different sectors,...

Traditional studies of the property market have tended to focus solely on commercial and legal issues, but the growing importance of the issue of sustainability means that a different approach is needed.This new textbook provides an overview of property within a market context, examining the complex nature of property rights and issues related to both investors and occupiers. At the same time it assesses property from the perspective of financial, social and environment sustainabil...