When Selling Your Soul Isn't Enough
Social Theory and Practice, Vol. 30, No. 4, pp. 599-612, 2004
15 Pages Posted: 9 Aug 2008
Date Written: August 8, 2008
Abstract
Georg Simmel wamed in 1900 that capitalism creates not only a market economy but also a market culture in which money becomes the central and absolute value.' Some cultural critics seem to take the root of all evil claim seriously, asserting with rhetorical flourishes filled with normative hyperbole that commodification is the primary cause of all social problems. Our anxieties about money, however, are often vague and tempered by our sense that it appears to be more or less the best way to organize life and measure value in such a complex and pluralistic world. Somewhere between demonization of the market and blind faith in it lies a clear analysis of precisely what is wrong with the commodification of life.
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