Download or read book The Soul's Economy written by Jeffrey P. Sklansky and published by Univ of North Carolina Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 340 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Sklansky traces a shift in American social thought as the gradual demise of the household economy rendered proprietary independence an increasingly embattled ideal. Amid the widening class divide, nineteenth-century social theorists devised a new science of American society that reconceived freedom in terms of psychic self-expression instead of economic self-interest, and they redefined democracy in terms of cultural kinship rather than social compact.