Why people do what they do day-to-day -- they're not just driven by their economic interest, says 'Interest'

http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/Oct05/book.interest.ssl.html

Oct. 13, 2005

By Susan S. Lang
SSL4@cornell.edu

ITHACA, N.Y. -- "Why do people behave the way they do? Mainly because of their interests," says Richard Swedberg, professor of sociology at Cornell University, whose book "Interest" (Open University Press) has just been published.

Although for 150 years or so economists have been explaining people's behavior through their interest in making money, Swedberg argues that people's interests are not all related to money.

"It is true that [this type of] interest helps explain a lot of behavior that otherwise would not be explicable. But interests drive people also in political, religious, spiritual and sexual areas," said Swedberg, an economic sociologist and associate director at the Center for the Study of Economy and Society. In what is the first book in the English language on the concept of interest, Swedberg writes that these other kinds of interest are sometimes much more powerful types of interest than economic interest.