{"product_id":"works-like-a-charm-incentive-rhetoric-and-the-economization-of-everyday-life-9781438494098","title":"Works like a Charm: Incentive Rhetoric and the Economization of Everyday Life","description":"\u003ci\u003eWorks like a Charm\u003c\/i\u003e addresses a simple question: Why are \"incentives\" everywhere now? From inducements to work harder at our jobs to tax rebates for corporations, \"incentive\" names a general theory of motivation--according to economists, we are \u003ci\u003eincentive-driven\u003c\/i\u003e creatures. Yet far from being a neutral generalization, this understanding of human behavior smuggles in a quintessentially economic way of seeing the world. \u003ci\u003eWorks like a Charm\u003c\/i\u003e applies Jacques Lacan's psychoanalytic concept of \u003ci\u003eretroactive causality\u003c\/i\u003e to explain the metastasis of the language and logic of incentives: To discover an incentive is to place in the untouchable past an economic cause for a contextual, historical force. Tracing \"incentive\" from its roots in antiquity to its uptake by neoclassical and then Chicago-school economists, Robert O. McDonald diagnoses the spread of incentives across the social, cultural, and political field and warns readers of the dangers of handing over causality to the economists.\u003cbr\u003e","brand":"State University of New York Press","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":50393560187154,"sku":"9781438494098","price":103.99,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0831\/4771\/8930\/files\/img_05676923-1544-4929-b5d2-6e2bf851a565.jpg?v=1728989725","url":"https:\/\/surprise-castle.myshopify.com\/products\/works-like-a-charm-incentive-rhetoric-and-the-economization-of-everyday-life-9781438494098","provider":"Surprise Castle","version":"1.0","type":"link"}