The Culture of Capitalism

As both a historian and an anthropologist, Alan Macfarlane is able to explore capitalist society from a number of original perspectives. It is the essence of his argument that capitalism is more than an economic system: it is a culture that affects not just the material but also the social, familial, and even spiritual bases of existence. Drawing on new research data generated by detailed historical community studies, and literature on non–western societies, he offers searching observations on the origins of modern civilization. He considers, for example, the nature of evil, attitudes towards love and family, the phenomenon of violence, population change and revolution, and how we have come both to dominate and to revere the natural world. His investigations of these subjects lead him towards the answers to two crucial questions: where did capitalism come from, and why?

Alan Macfarlane is Reader in Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge, and Fellow of King′s College.