Rational Choice and Social Exchange: A Critique of Exchange Theory (Themes in the Social Sciences) - Hardcover

When this volume was first published in 1976, exchange theory had recently come into the fore in sociology as an attempt to develop systematic theories of social behaviour comparable to those which economics had developed. In doing so it borrowed from many different intellectual traditions including economics and anthropology, behavioural sociology and on the traditional concerns of sociologists and social psychologists. Dr Heath provides a systematic exposition of the principle components of exchange theory, and goes on to give a critique of these theories, paying particular attention to the success of their empirical applications. He concludes that exchange theory, despite its limitations, has an important part to play in the development of social science and is one of the most promising theories available. Rational Choice and Social Exchange will be of interest to anyone concerned with the development of social science and in particular to students of sociology, anthropology, psychology and political science.

Jack Goody is Emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology at the University of Cambridge and a Fellow of St John's College. Recently knighted by Her Majesty The Queen for services to anthropology, Professor Goody has researched and taught all over the world, is a Fellow of the British Academy and in 1980 was made a Foreign Honorary Member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 2004 he was elected to the National Academy of Sciences and he was elected Commandeur des Arts et Lettres in 2006.

Geoffrey Hawthorn is Professor Emeritus of International Politics, University of Cambridge. He has taught sociology and politics at the Universities of Essex and Cambridge and was twice a visiting professor at Harvard University. He has published books on human fertility, the history of social theory, counterfactual thinking in history and the social sciences and the politics of east Asia. He also studied the wars in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990s, and has written a large number of essays and reviews across a range of subjects in philosophy and politics.

John Dunn is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Cambridge. He is the author of numerous works including" Rethinking Modern Political Theory" (1985)," Modern Revolutions" (1989) and" The Politics of Socialism" (1984).