Contested Commodities

by Margaret Jane Radin

Not only are there willing buyers for body parts or babies, Radin observes, but some desperately poor people would be willing sellers, while better-off people find such trades abhorrent. Radin observes that many such areas of contested commodification reflect a persistent dilemma in liberal we value freedom of choice and simultaneously believe that choices ought to be restricted to protect the integrity of what it means to be a person. She views this tension as primarily the result of underlying social and economic inequality, which need not reflect an irreconcilable conflict in the premises of liberal democracy.

As a philosophical pragmatist, the author therefore argues for a conception of incomplete commodification, in which some contested things can be bought and sold, but only under carefully regulated circumstances. Such a regulatory regime both symbolizes the importance of nonmarket value to personhood and aspires to ameliorate the underlying conditions of inequality.

296 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1996

Reviews

[Steph · Rating 2 out of 5]

so it just…ends?

[Benjamin]

Discusses the trade in controversial commodities such as personal information, body parts, babies, sex. Recommended by Schwartz in an article in the May 2004 Harvard Law Review.

[Leonardo]

Comentado en Teorías de la Justicia, Clase 10 (los límites morales al mercado).