The Hit Man's Dilemma: Or, Business, Personal and Impersonal

by Keith Hart

"It's not personal; it's just business," says the professional killer to his victim. But business is always personal, and even though modern business corporations have been granted the legal status of persons, they are still part of the impersonal engines of society that operate far beyond human reach.

Keith Hart explores in his thought-provoking pamphlet The Hitman's Dilemma how we have never been more conscious of ourselves as unique personalities, but we live in a society increasingly ruled by faceless corporate forces. He ultimately What place is there for the humanity of individual persons in the dehumanized social and economic frameworks we live within? This is the hitman's dilemma, and it is ours as well.

Genres: Economics

128 pages, Paperback

First published November 15, 2005

About the author

Keith Hart is a British anthropologist and writer living in Paris. His main research has focused on economic anthropology, Africa and the African diaspora, and money. He has taught at universities including East Anglia, Manchester, Yale and the Chicago, as well as at Cambridge University where he was director of the African Studies Centre. He contributed the concept of the informal economy to development studies and has published widely on economic anthropology. He is the author of The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World and Self in the World: Connecting Life's Extremes. His written work focuses on the national limits of politics in a globalised economy.