Herbert Gintis
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Herbert Gintis
Congress on
Capitalism in the seventies
, Tilburg,
the Netherlands (1970). Left to right:
, Herbert Gintis,
,
and organiser
Born
Herbert Malena Gintis
February 11, 1940
,
, U.S.
Died
January 5, 2023
(aged 82)
,
, U.S.
Academic background
Education
(BA)
(PhD)
(1969)
Influences
,
,
Academic work
Main
interests
,
,
Notable
works
(1976)
Democracy and Capitalism
(1986)
The Bounds of Reason
(2009)
A Cooperative Species
(2011)
Herbert Malena Gintis
(February 11, 1940 – January 5, 2023) was an
American economist,
, and educator known for his
theoretical contributions to
, especially
,
, epistemic
,
,
,
, and
theory.
Throughout his career, he worked extensively with economist
. Their landmark book,
, had
multiple editions in five languages since it was first published in
1976. Their book,
A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and its
Evolution
was published by Princeton University Press in 2011.
Early life and education
[
]
Gintis was born in
, where his father had a
retail furniture business. He grew up there and later in
(just outside Philadelphia).
Gintis completed his
at the
in three years, one of which was
spent at the
, and received
his
in mathematics
in 1961. He then enrolled at
for post-graduate work
in mathematics. After receiving his
in 1962, he grew disillusioned
with the subject area, and although still registered at Harvard, became
a sandal maker with a shop in
. During that time, he
became very active in the student movements of the 1960s, including the
and grew increasingly interested in
and economics. In 1963, he switched his PhD program at Harvard
from mathematics to economics, completing his PhD in 1969 with his
dissertation,
Alienation and power: towards a radical welfare
economics
.
Career
[
]
He was subsequently hired as an assistant professor in the
and then as an
and later associate professor in Harvard's Economics Department.
Towards the end of his postgraduate studies in economics, Gintis had come into contact with the economist
who had returned to Harvard after research work in Nigeria. It was to be the beginning of a collaboration that
lasted throughout their careers. In 1968, Gintis and Bowles were part of a group of graduate students and young faculty
members at Harvard that included
, Richard Edwards,
, and Patricia Quick. The group held
seminars to develop their ideas on a new economics that would encompass issues of
, racism, sexism,
and imperialism. Many of their ideas were tried out in a Harvard class which they collectively taught, "The Capitalist
Economy: Conflict and Power". They also became founding members of the
.
In 1974, Gintis, along with Bowles,
,
and Richard Edwards, was hired by the Economics
Department at the
as part of the "radical package" of economists.
Bowles and
Gintis published their landmark book,
, in 1976.
Their second joint book,
Democracy
and Capitalism
, published a decade later, was a critique of both
and orthodox Marxism and outlined their
vision of "postliberal democracy".
Their most recent book,
A Cooperative Species
, was published in 2011. Like
Gintis's 2009
The Bounds of Reason
, the book reflects his increasing emphasis since the 1990s on the unification of
economic theory with sociobiology and other behavioral sciences.
Gintis retired from the University of Massachusetts Amherst as
in 2003. In 2014, he was a visiting
professor in the Economics Department of
where he taught since 2005, visiting professor at
the
, a position he held since 1989, and an external professor at the
where he
taught since 2001.
Death
[
]
This section
needs expansion
. You can help by
.
(
July
2025
)
Gintis died on January 5, 2023, at the age of 82.
Selected works
[
]
In addition to numerous scholarly articles and book chapters, Gintis authored or co-authored the following books:
Gintis, Herbert;
(1976).
. New York: Basic Books.
.
Gintis, Herbert;
(1986).
. New York: Basic Books.
.
Also as:
Gintis, Herbert;
(2011).
Democracy and capitalism property, community, and the
contradictions of modern social thought
. London: Routledge.
.
Gintis, Herbert;
(2005).
Unequal chances: family background and economic success
. New York &
Princeton, New Jersey: Russell Sage Foundation, Princeton University Press.
.
Gintis, Herbert (2009).
The bounds of reason: game theory and the unification of the behavioral sciences
.
Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
.
Gintis, Herbert (2009).
Game theory evolving: a problem-centered introduction to modeling strategic interaction
(2nd ed.). Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
.
Gintis, Herbert;
(2011).
A cooperative species: human reciprocity and its evolution
. Princeton, New
Jersey Oxford: Princeton University Press.
.
Gintis, Herbert (2016).
Individuality and Entanglement: The Moral and Material Bases of Social Life
. Princeton, New
Jersey: Princeton University Press.
From 1997 to 2006, Gintis and anthropologist
co-chaired "Economic Environments and the Evolution of Norms
and Preferences", a multidisciplinary research project funded by the
. Much of the research
stemming from the project was published in two books co-edited by Gintis and other project members:
Gintis, Herbert;
;
;
(2005).
Moral sentiments and material interests: the
foundations of cooperation in economic life
. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.
.
Gintis, Herbert;
;
;
;
;
(2004).
Foundations of
human sociality: economic experiments and ethnographic evidence from fifteen small-scale societies
. Oxford & New
York: Oxford University Press.
.
References
[
]
Alberto, Carlos Torres (2013),
, pp. 107–129.
Routledge.
Colander, David; Holt, Richard; Rosser, J. Barkley Jr. (2004).
. University of Michigan Press. pp.
77–
106.
.
Arestis, P.; Sawyer, M.C. (2000).
. Edward Elgar Publishing. p. 226.
.
Lee, Frederic (2009).
, p. 271.
Routledge.
Katzner, Donald W. (2011).
. Oxford University Press.
Apple, Michael and Giroux, Henry (1995) "Critical Pedagogy in the United States" in
, p. 311. SUNY Press.
^
(8 June 1986).
.
. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
^
Foster, Jacob G. (September 2012). "A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution" by Samuel Bowles and
Herbert Gintis".
, Vol. 118, No. 2, pp. 501–504.
, Retrieved 30 September
2014.
^
Sigmund, Karl (November–December 2009).
.
. Retrieved
30 September 2014.
.
. Retrieved 30 September 2014.
.
Daily Hampshire Gazette
. Northampton, MA – via
.
Wagner, Walter C. (March 1987).
.
, Vol. 21, No. 1, pp. 549–551.
Simonsohn, Uri (September 2006).
.
, Vol. 44, No. 3, pp. 745–747.
Schmid, Hans Bernhard (2009). "Social Identities in Experimental Economics" in
, p. 87. Springer.
External links
[
]
on
Video:
delivered at
, 9 July 2009 (official YouTube
channel of Cambridge University).
Biologists /
neuroscientists
Anthropologists
Psychologists /
cognitive scientists
Other
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Literary theorists /
philosophers
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(
)
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:
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:
This page was last edited on 2 January 2026, at 03:07
(UTC)
.
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