Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner?

a story about women and economics
Katrine Marçal (trans. Saskia Vogel)

‘Incisive and witty, Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? seeks to restore a sense of humanity, empathy and care to our picture of economic and gender relations. Katrine Marçal’s book is instructive, angry and funny: economic man has met his match.’

Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman

‘This is economics through a wholly different — and feminist — prism … Challenging and illuminating’

Will Hutton

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‘Who cooked Adam Smith’s dinner? His mother, of course. From this compelling insight, Katrine Marçal builds her critique of economic man, exposing him for the sham he really is. Erudite, furious, and eminently readable, this book will send a great many economists running for cover.’

Philip Roscoe, author of I Spend, Therefore I Am

A feminist critique of new-liberalism.

How do you get your dinner? That is the basic question of economics. It might seem easy, but it is actually very complicated. When economist and philosopher Adam Smith proclaimed that all our actions were motivated by self-interest, and that the world turns because of financial gain, he laid the foundations for 'economic man’.

Selfish and cynical, 'economic man' has dominated our thinking ever since — he is the ugly rational heart of modern day capitalism. But, every night, Adam Smith's mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest, but out of love. Even today, the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning, and cooking is not part of our economic models. All over the world, there are economists who believe that if women are paid less, it’s because their labour is worth less.

In this engaging, popular look at the mess we're in, Katrine Marçal charts the myth of economic man, from its origins at Adam Smith's dinner table, its adaptation by the Chicago School, and, finally its disastrous role in the 2008 Global Financial Crisis — and invites us to kick out economic man once and for all.

Nina Power, author of One Dimensional Woman

‘This is economics through a wholly different — and feminist — prism … Challenging and illuminating’

Will Hutton

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Details

Format:Paperback

Size: 210mm × 135mm

Extent:224pp

ISBN (13):9781925106527

RRP:$27.99

Pub date:22 Apr 2015

Rights Held: ANZ

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AUTHOR

Katrine Marçal

Katrine Marçal is a Swedish writer living in London. She writes a weekly column about politics and economics for Aftonbladet, Scandinavia's largest daily newspaper.Her book, The Only Sex, was shortlisted for the August Prize in 2012. Her writing has appeared in Swedish, Norwegian, Danish, German, and British publications — one of her most acclaimed texts won her a bold compliment from Ed Miliband in person.In 2013 she was awarded 'Lagercrantzen', a prestigous award sponsored by Dagens Nyheter, for writing in ”a bold and personal style that entices and challenges the reader with the audacity and intimacy of her intellectual landscape.”Marçal was discovered by a Swedish editor through a blog she wrote while studying at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor. She started writing for Swedish national newspapers at the age of 22 and published her first book, Rape and Romance when she was 25. After working for the centre-left think tank Arenagruppen, she joined Aftonbladet in 2009. The Only Sex is her second book and has been described as a ”feminist Freakonomics”.Marçal has been invited to speak about economics and politics in Barcelona, Berlin, London, Saint Petersburg, Stockholm, Oslo, and Copenhagen. She lives in London.

TRANSLATOR

Saskia Vogel

Saskia Vogel is a writer and translator from Swedish and German. Her stories have appeared in the White Review, the Erotic Review, SCARF, and Zocalo Public Square. She is completing her first novel. She blogs at saskiavogel.com.