When Adam Smith wrote that all our actions stem from self-interest and the world turns because of financial gain he brought to life ‘economic man’. Selfish and cynical, economic man has dominated our thinking ever since and his influence has spread from the market to how we shop, work and date. But every night Adam Smith’s mother served him his dinner, not out of self-interest but out of love.
Today, our economics focuses on self-interest and excludes all other motivations. It disregards the unpaid work of mothering, caring, cleaning and cooking. It insists that if women are paid less, then that’s because their labour is worth less - how could it be otherwise? In the book Who Cooked Adam Smith’s Dinner, Katrine Marçal tackles this myth and invites us to kick out economic man once and for all.
Who Cooked Adam Smith's Dinner? will be sold in the Lecture Hall after the lecture.