Reconsidering Identity Economics

This book presents an unorthodox identity economics that approaches social identity through a non-classical psychology. Garai applies the modern physics concept of wave-particle duality to economic psychology, finding a corresponding duality in object-oriented activity and historically generated social identity. These two factors interconnect to create a double-storied structure of social identity and its behavioral manifestations. The book then presents a calculation device for mediating between behavioral and identity economics. Garai then applies all these factors to two socioeconomic systems developed during the second modernization: Bolshevik-type 'socialism' and post-Bolshevik 'capitalism.' In this context, he examines the Eastern Bloc nomenklatura as a duality of bureaucratic and patron-client organization ('state and party') and the establishment of both today's material capitalism and its other half: human capital economics.