• 
  
• Brings together exciting and innovative work from the last ten years in the emerging field of cultural economy.
  
• Contains a substantial introduction by the editors on the main strands and history of the cultural economy approach.
  
• Shows how the pursuit of prosperity always involves multiple and hybrid orderings that cannot be reduced to either the terms culture or economy.
  
• Shows that thinking about cultural economy is both a substantive task and a valuable contribution to knowledge.
  
• Material is organised around different links in the value chain.

"Even a good old Chicago School economist can find much in the book to widen her horizons. That ‘the economy’ is embedded in social relations and is linguistic and is ethical is obvious to any student of society. Yet Samuelsonian economics denies all this. The Reader should open eyes all round." Deirdre McCloskey, University of Illinois at Chicago

"This is a terrific collection! Amin and Thrift have brought together a rich set of studies to make the case that in economic life, calculation is cultural. Across a wonderful range of settings – from financial exchanges to supermarkets – this lively volume is essential reading for anyone studying economic sociology." David Stark, University of Columbia

"Amin and Thrift's reader is an indispensable purchase for those who research and teach on the economy-culture problematic. Its 22 essays represent the wide diversity of viewpoints that have emerged this last decade or so - theoretically, topically and politically ... There really is something in here for everybody, and I think this book should be read by those wishing to know more about the culture-economy debate, as well as those familiar with its main contours ... I dare you not to buy it." Noel Castree, Cultural Geographies

Ash Amin is Professor of Geography and Head of the Department of Geography at Durham University.

Nigel Thrift is Professor of Geography in the School of Geographical Sciences at Bristol University.