Summary Of Bourgeois Dignity

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In the book ‘Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics can’t explain the Modern World’ (November, 2010), Deirdre N. McCloskey takes a strong stance in favor of the view that ‘it is merely a change in talking and thinking about dignity and liberty’ (p. 33) that ignited a change in economic conditions around the 1700s and that from then onwards, this change has been leading towards economic growth in its significant form. Traditional ways of explaining economic growth in terms of investment and trade or capital accumulation have been criticized. She has tried to explain growth more from a social or behavioral side and less from the concepts of advancement in commerce and innovation. Thus she has aimed this book at an audience with distinct backgrounds including economics, history, sociology, behavioral science and so on.
Frequently, in this book, it is seen that the author takes an interest in describing ‘people’ and uses that to unfold the reasons behind the modern-world growth. While Economics tags human beings as rational economic agents, McCloskey points out that this view ‘excludes all other virtues that characterize humans’ (p. 6). However, what I think is that ‘thinking and talking’ that have usually gone productive are all outcomes of human prudence. She states that ‘even the best economists fail to notice that humans are talking animals and that human animals put more of meaning into their talk’ (p. 43). The economist Friedrich Hayek had expressed a similar, but clearer, point that ‘economies are unpredictable because they are the outcome of human conversation’ (p. 89).
Some aspects that characterize human behavior, upheld in this book, are justice, hope, faith, liberty, dignity and such. The author mentions ‘dignity without liber...

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...World’. The modern world is a cluster of economies, with different elements --- trade and commerce, resources, technological advancement, people (thinking and talking), socio-economic freedom and may be many more --- all present in a unique blend for each economy. While trade and commerce or resources can be easily incorporated into economic models it is not very easy to find a credible explanation for ‘an increase in the power of resources due to technological advancement’ or the effects of ‘thinking and talking’ and ‘socio-economic freedom’ in terms of economic or scientific models. However economists often forcefully try to incorporate these variables into their models, using fancy terms for the not-so-convincing methods or for the normative outcomes or for any anomaly. And Economics fails to reach an explanation for the modern world owing to these shortcomings.

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