Market Complicity and Christian Ethics

This book examines our own moral responsibilities for the distant harms of our market transactions, and the global consequences and costs.

Albino Barrera (Author)

9781107649378, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 6 March 2014

326 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.7 cm, 0.44 kg

'Barrera sets himself a tough intellectual challenge. … It is a very impressive book. … The interweaving of a philosophy of causation, the law of tort and P.D.E. [principle of double effect] in Thomism illuminates current economic events in a magisterial way.'Ecclesiology Ecclesiology

The marketplace is a remarkable social institution that has greatly extended our reach so shoppers in the West can now buy fresh-cut flowers, vegetables, and tropical fruits grown halfway across the globe even in the depths of winter. However, these expanded choices have also come with considerable moral responsibilities as our economic decisions can have far-reaching effects by either ennobling or debasing human lives. In this book, Albino Barrera examines our own moral responsibilities for the distant harms of our market transactions from a Christian viewpoint, identifying how the market's division of labour makes us unwitting collaborators in others' wrongdoing and in collective ills. His important account covers a range of different subjects, including law, economics, philosophy, and theology, in order to identify the injurious ripple effects of our market activities.

Preface
Part I. Theory: Material Cooperation in Economic Life: 1. The nature of material cooperation and moral complicity
2. Complicity in what? The problem of accumulative harms
3. Too small and morally insignificant? The problem of overdetermination
4. Who is morally responsible in the chain of causation? The problem of interdependence
Part II. Application: A Typology of Market-Mediated Complicity: A. Hard Complicity: 5. Benefiting from and enabling wrongdoing
6. Precipitating gratuitous harms
B. Soft Complicity: 7. Leaving severe pecuniary externalities unattended
8. Reinforcing injurious socioeconomic structures
Part III. Synthesis and Conclusions: 9. Toward a theology of economic responsibility
10. Synthesis: Christian ethics and blameworthy material cooperation
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Business ethics & social responsibility [KJG], Religious ethics [HRAM1]