The DOI matches its Crossref record; 50 of the 50 references it cites were found in a registry or an index.
The hidden persuaders: institutions and individuals in economic theory
Open accessAbstract
In his classic book The Hidden Persuaders, Vance Packard claimed that large corporations manipulated consumers, using advertising techniques. John Kenneth Galbraith and others have repeated a similar view. Against this, Gary Becker and George Stigler have claimed that advertising is essentially informative rather than manipulative. In contrast, it is argued here that both of these opposed accounts of human agency neglect the more subtle and undesigned processes by which institutions bear upon and mould individuals. This paper proposes a concept of ‘reconstitutive downward causation’ in which institutions act upon individual habits and dispositions. The mechanisms involved do not fall foul of past critiques of ‘holism’ or methodological collectivism. This argument involves a rehabilitation of the concept of habit in social science, with far‐reaching implications.
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Cites
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Cited by
Hodgson, G. M. (2006) · Journal of Economic Issues · doi:10.1080/00213624.2006.11506879 · Cited by 2,108
Self-citationPattern of global cyber war and crime: A conceptual framework
Kshetri, N. (2005) · Journal of International Management · doi:10.1016/j.intman.2005.09.009 · Cited by 103
Conceptualizing Future Labour Markets
Fleetwood, S. (2014) · Journal of Critical Realism · doi:10.1179/1476743014z.00000000029 · Cited by 9
Metadata
- Authors
- Hodgson, G. M.
- Venue
- Cambridge Journal of Economics
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press (OUP)
- Published
- 2003-03-01
- Volume
- 27
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 159-175
- ISSN
- 0309-166X (ISSN-L)
- 1464-3545
- OpenAlex
- W2166258536
- Cited by
- 339
- References
- 50
- FWCI
- 27.04
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- green
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Data sources
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Contains information from the Semantic Scholar Academic Graph Datasets, made available under the ODC Attribution License (ODC-BY 1.0).
Semantic Scholar’s data is described in: Kinney, R., et al. (2023). The Semantic Scholar Open Data Platform. arXiv:2301.10140.
