The Challenge of Affluence
Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950
Published on 9. March 2006
Book
Hardback
480 pages
978-0-19-820853-2 (ISBN)
Description
Since the 1940s Americans and Britons have come to enjoy an era of rising material abundance. Yet this has been accompanied by a range of social and personal disorders, including family breakdown, addiction, mental instability, crime, obesity, inequality, economic insecurity, and declining trust.
Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being.
The book falls into three parts. Part one analyses the ways in which economic resources map on to human welfare, why choice is so intractable, and how commitment to people and institutions is sustained. It argues that choice is constrained by prior obligation and reciprocity. The second section then applies these conceptual arguments to comparative empirical studies of advertising, of eating and obesity, and of the production and acquisition of appliances and automobiles. Finally, in part three, Offer investigates social and personal relations in the USA and Britain, including inter-personal regard, the rewards and reversals of status, the social and psychological costs of inequality, and the challenges posed to heterosexual love and to parenthood by the rise of affluence.
Avner Offer argues that well-being has lagged behind affluence in these societies, because they present an environment in which consistent choices are difficult to achieve over different time ranges and in which the capacity for personal and social commitment is undermined by the flow of novelty. His approach draws on economics and social science, makes use of the latest cognitive research, and provides a detailed and reasoned critique of modern consumer society, especially the assumption that freedom of choice necessarily maximizes individual and social well-being.
The book falls into three parts. Part one analyses the ways in which economic resources map on to human welfare, why choice is so intractable, and how commitment to people and institutions is sustained. It argues that choice is constrained by prior obligation and reciprocity. The second section then applies these conceptual arguments to comparative empirical studies of advertising, of eating and obesity, and of the production and acquisition of appliances and automobiles. Finally, in part three, Offer investigates social and personal relations in the USA and Britain, including inter-personal regard, the rewards and reversals of status, the social and psychological costs of inequality, and the challenges posed to heterosexual love and to parenthood by the rise of affluence.
Reviews / Votes
Offer has a profound knowledge and respect for the complex economic structures that have built our capitalist system. * Stephanie Dyer, The Journal of American History * Avner Offer's latest sparkling and intellectually pugnacious contribution to his protean bibliography represents a tour de force of scholarship and provocative argument... this is an enormously rich and highly penetrating and stimulating study, based on vast and perceptive reading and research. It is also novel in its substance and approach. * Barry Supple, The English Historical Review * An intriguing book...one of Britain's most subtle thinkers about how we live now. * Will Hutton, The Observer * [A] powerful argument... This is a book that uses the tools of economics to illuminate the myopic lens through which economics views the world. * Barry Schwartz, London Review of Books * Avner Offer has produced an intelligent, original, provocative, and moralistic book which should make historians think extremely seriously about important questions, even if they find themselves in disagreement with his approach. * M.J. Daunton, Economic History Review * This insightful book provides a fresh and refreshing new look at life in the United States and Britain over the past half century ... provides invaluable insights. * John F Helliwell, EH.NET * A brilliantly argued book. * William Skidelsky, Prospect * always fascinating and thought provoking. Offer's range of reference is remarkably broad. He travels confidently across the social-science spectrum. * Howard Davies, THES * In the 1960s and 1970s, economists started worrying about environmental and social limits to growth. Avner Offer has added a weighty new critique to this tradition. * The Economist * The book is an invaluable source of information on changing attitudes and practices in the US and Britain since the end of the second world war. * Samuel Brittan, Financial Times * an uncompromising work of scholarship * Martin Vander Weyer, The Spectator * ...diligently and readably exposes the extent to which the past 25 years have forced people in the English-speaking world to believe that there is no alternative to dual-income workaholic consumerism, the "hedonic treadmill". * Oliver James, The Guardian * Sceptics who want some political muscle behind the diagnosis of our discontents will enjoy Avner Offer's account of why more means worse... * Boyd Tonkin and Christina Patterson, The Independent * Offer makes many compelling and interesting arguments that are backed by a wealth of data and analysis. * Charles Kenny, Business History Review * Offer's narrative of a complex and difficult topic is masterful. * Barnaby Marsh, Economic and Human Biology * This is a wide, wise, and careful book. * Joy Parr, Journal of Economic History * Offer's analysis of the complex relationship between economic markets and relationships and non-economic dynamics such as love, regard and esteem, and the impact of affluence on these interrelated systems, is superb. * Helen Laville, The Americas * The experience of reading The Challenge of Affluence is suffused with a pervasive suspicion that this might just be one of the most important books you have read. * Tim Jackson, Social Policy and Administration * a fascinating, ambitious, wide-ranging, freewheeling, and sometimes exasperating book about the perils of affluence. * Bruce G. Carruthers, American Journal of Sociology * [This book] presents sustained, immensely learned, and richly suggestive reflections on questions that have troubled social scientists since the 1970s, and social critics and philosophers for even longer... [Avner Offer] offers lucid and wonderfully complex answers in three sections, each with four to five chapters, as well as through an over-arching interpretation. * Daniel Horowitz, International History Review *More details
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Scholars and students of twentieth century history. The general reader interested in politics, economics, and social issues. Economists, economic historians, sociologists, and social anthropologists.
Illustrations
30 figures and 23 tables
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 30 mm
Weight
872 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-19-820853-2 (9780198208532)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Avner Offer
The Challenge of Affluence
Self-Control and Well-Being in the United States and Britain since 1950
Book
11/2007
Oxford University Press
€61.80
Shipment within 15-20 days
Person
Avner Offer is Chichele Professor of Economic History at the University of Oxford and Fellow of All Souls College. Prior to his academic career he spent eight years working as a soldier, farmer, and conservation worker in Israel, where he was born and raised. His other books include In Pursuit of the Quality of Life (1996), also published by Oxford University Press, and he has been researching the question of the quality of life in affluent societies since the early 1990s. He is also a Fellow of the British Academy.
Content
Preface ; 1. Introduction ; PART ONE: EVALUATING AFFLUENCE ; 2. Economic Welfare Measures and Human Well-Being ; 3. Passions and Interests: Self-Control and Well-Being ; 4. Myopic and Rational Choice ; 5. Between the Gift and the Market: The Economy of Regard ; PART TWO: IN THE MARKETPLACE ; 6. The Mask of Intimacy: Advertising and Well-Being ; 7. Epidemics of Abundance: Body-Weight and Self-Control ; 8. Household Appliances and the Use of Time ; 9. The American Automobile Frenzy of the 1950s ; 10. Driving Prudently: American and European ; PART THREE: SELF AND OTHERS ; 11. Affluence and the Pursuit of Status ; 12. Inequality Hurts ; 13. All You Need is Love? Mating since the 1950s ; 14. Women and Children Last: The Ebbing of Commitment ; 15. Conclusion