Author Archives: Jeremy Adelman

About Jeremy Adelman

Jeremy Adelman studied at the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics and completed a doctorate in modern history at Oxford University (1989). He is currently the Henry Charles Lea Professor of History and the Director of the Global History Lab at Princeton University. His recent books include Worlds Together, Worlds Apart: A History of Humankind from the Beginning to the Present (W. W. Norton, 5th ed., 2016), and the acclaimed global life-history Worldly Philosopher: The Odyssey of Albert O. Hirschman (Princeton, 2013).

Introduction: The Moral Economy, The Careers of a Concept

Abstract: This essay explores the history of the idea of the moral economy—and the moral economy as an idea. It shows the ways in which debates about the market since the eighteenth century have been shadowed by debates and concerns about the ethical foundations of economic life. The history of capitalism has contained within it an internal tension between a romance with the market and nostalgia for worlds it dissolved. Moral economy has been a concept with many, global origins and different temporalities, depending on Continue reading → Continue reading →

Albert Hirschman and the Social Sciences: A Memorial Roundtable

Introduction Michele Alacevich Albert O. Hirschman died on December 10, 2012, after a long, eventful, and at times truly adventurous life. Born in 1915 Berlin as Otto Albert Hirschmann, he belonged to the last generation of upper-crust, assimilated Jews in democratic interwar Germany. As a young social democrat, he observed with increasing concern the polarization of the political life in postwar Germany before the collapse of the Weimar Republic. When Adolf Hitler seized power in 1933, seventeen-year-old Hirschman went to Paris and did not return Continue reading →