Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics

Jane Jacobs

Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, Jan 13, 1994 - Political Science - 256 pages

With intelligence and clarity of observation, the author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities addresses the moral values that underpin working life.

In Systems of Survival, Jane Jacobs identifies two distinct moral syndromes—one governing commerce, the other, politics—and explores what happens when these two syndromes collide. She looks at business fraud and criminal enterprise, government’s overextended subsidies to agriculture, and transit police who abuse the system the are supposed to enforce, and asks us to consider instances in which snobbery is a virtue and industry a vice. In this work of profound insight and elegance, Jacobs gives us a new way of seeing all our public transactions and encourages us towards the best use of our natural inclinations.

Contents

• ONE Armbrusters Summons: 3
• TWO A Pair of Contradictions: 23
• THREE Kate on the Commercial Syndrome: 37
• FOUR Why Two Syndromes?: 51
• SEVEN Anomalies: 112
• EIGHT Casts of Mind: 123
• ELEVEN Hortense on Castes and Flexibility: 179
• TWELVE Pitfalls if the Methods: 191
• THIRTEEN Hortenses Defense J Moral Flexibility: 205
• FOURTEEN Plans and Champagne: 212
• Notes: 228

About the author

Jane Jacobs was the legendary author of The Death and Life of Great American Cities, a work that has never gone out of print and that has transformed the disciplines of urban planning and city architecture. Her other major works include The Economy of Cities, Systems of Survival, and The Nature of Economies. She died in 2006.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Systems of Survival: A Dialogue on the Moral Foundations of Commerce and Politics; Vintage Series
• Author: Jane Jacobs
• Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, 1994
• ISBN: 0679748164, 9780679748168
• Length: 256 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Business Ethics; Political Science / Public Policy / General; Social Science / Sociology / Social Theory