Between Citizen and State: An Introduction to the Corporation
David A. Westbrook, BETWEEN CITIZEN AND STATE: AN INTRODUCTION TO THE CORPORATION, Paradigm Publishers, 2007
Posted: 4 Oct 2011
Date Written: 2007
Abstract
From the Forward written by Charles Lemert, Professor of Sociology, Wesleyan University. David Westbrook's Between Citizen and State: An Introduction to the Corporation, with its eye-opening clarity, its verve and humor, and its overall brilliance will serve readers who desire, as one should, to understand the corporations. In a world in which transnational corporations seem to hold upper hand, this would exclude practically no one.
It is this sort of thinking for which Weber and Durkheim, even Marx, were reaching when they established the modern social sciences on the loose sand of the Between of structures and individuals.
The service this book renders is all the more cultivated by its astonishing kindness. I mean nothing sentimental by this. But it must be noted that this wonderful book takes the long tradition and vexed meditations of social scientists by the scruff of the neck and washes away their failures with fresh warm water.
I do not assume that David Westbrook is the only lawyer who understands these things. But surely he is among the best at exposing them in ways that we occasional outlaws and regular innocents as to the nature of the Law can understand. Not only that but anyone who tries to figure out what is wrong with most social sciences as they are taught and written would do well to study this book for its contributions to a kind but serious theory of the social Between.
Keywords: business associations, capitalism, civil society, corporate law, corporations, institutional economics, political economy, social theory
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