Reflections on Commercial Life, an anthology of writings, from the ancient Greeks to contemporary thinkers, provides students, scholars, and general readers an opportunity to develop a more self-conscious and critical relationship to commercial life. Selections are drawn from seminal works of high intellectual and literary quality. Through an inquiry into history, nature, and outcomes, this volume offers the opportunity to explore, as never before, alternatives to modern commercial life.

The nature of ethics has been the subject of much controversy and argument in recent decades. Theological Ethics and Global Dynamics tackles these various debates, offering a wide-ranging, comprehensive, and provocative statement of the nature of theological ethics in global times. Offers an accessible, lively, and provocative statement of the nature of moral philosophy and theological ethics in contemporary times. Tackles various perspectives on debates about distinctly Christian ethics. Argues that we need to reframe the arena in which moral questions are asked. Engages a range of positions, exploring distinctively modern issues such as moral and cultural relativism, globalization, problems of consumption and violence, and religious pluralism. Addresses the complexity of certain ethical decisions, which are difficult and far from clear-cut, and yet presents an ethical understanding which is both humane and deeply religious.

The Italian Enlightenment, no less than the Scottish, was central to the emergence of political economy and creation of market societies. Sophus Reinert turns to Milan in the late 1700s to recover early socialists' preoccupations with the often lethal tension among states, markets, and human welfare, and the policies these ideas informed.

Karl Polanyi’s The Great Transformation is generally acclaimed as being among the most influential works of economic history in the twentieth century, and remains as vital in the current historical conjuncture as it was in his own. In its critique of nineteenth-century ‘market fundamentalism’ it reads as a warning to our own neoliberal age, and is widely touted as a prophetic guidebook for those who aspire to understand the causes and dynamics of global economic turbulence at the end of the 2000s. Karl Polanyi: The Limits of the Market is the first comprehensive introduction to Polanyi’s ideas and legacy. It assesses not only the texts for which he is famous – prepared during his spells in American academia – but also his journalistic articles written in his first exile in Vienna, and lectures and pamphlets from his second exile, in Britain. It provides a detailed critical analysis of The Great Transformation, but also surveys Polanyi’s seminal writings in economic anthropology, the economic history of ancient and archaic societies, and political and economic theory. Its primary source base includes interviews with Polanyi’s daughter, Kari Polanyi-Levitt, as well as the entire compass of his own published and unpublished writings in English and German. This engaging and accessible introduction to Polanyi’s thinking will appeal to students and scholars across the social sciences, providing a refreshing perspective on the roots of our current economic crisis.

In the late 20th century, the world has grown increasingly smaller because of advances in technology and the erosion of the nation-state as a political paradigm. The process of globalization-with its promises of a common culture, a common currency, and a common government-offers a new political model for the world that fosters unity and community. At the same time, however, this process threatens to destroy the values, norms, and ideals that particular cultures have wrought and established and to thereby diminish the power of each culture's unique identity. As globalization occurs, society must decide which values will be normative and what roles that social institutions like religion and education will play in selecting and fostering these values. The contributors to this volume examine both the promise and the threat of globalization using the tools of theological ethics to understand and evaluate the "social contexts of life at the deepest moral and spiritual levels." This inaugural volume of a projected four volume series, Theology for the 21st Century: God and Globalization, examines five spheres of life-economics (Mammon), political science (Mars), psychology and sexuality (Eros), the mass media and the arts (Muses), and religion-that foster normative values for society. As the writers argue, their efforts attempt to determine whether "God is behind globalization in any substantive way." Contributors to the volume include: Roland Robertson, University of Pittsburgh; Yersu Kim, UNESCO; Donald W. Shriver, Jr., New York; William Schweiker, University of Chicago; Mary Stewart Van Leeuwen, Eastern College; David Tracy, University of Chicago. Max L. Stackhouse teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary and is the author of Covenant and Commitments: Faith, Family, and Economic. Peter Paris teaches at Princeton Theological Seminary.

Student projects sponsored by Princeton, Hong Kong, and Tongji universities and reviewed by critics.