Exploitation: From Practice to Theory

by Monique Deveaux (Editor), Vida Panitch (Editor)

Overview

Contemporary theoretical discussions of exploitation are dominated by thinkers in the liberal and Marxian traditions. Exploitation: From Practice to Theory, pushes past these traditional and binary explanations, to focus on unjust practises that both depend on and perpetuate inequalities central to exploitation.

Using real-world examples, the chapters in this collection address key questions, including, in what ways are exploitation practices globalised, racialized and gendered? How do cases of organ selling, price gouging and commercial gestational surrogacy change our understandings of exploitation? What possible social and economic remedies do these new conceptions prescribe?

Case studies in this volume span the globe, dealing with developed and developing countries alike and in a variety of national and transnational contexts.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786602053
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	01/31/2017
Series:	Studies in Social and Global Justice
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
File size:	2 MB
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Monique Deveaux is Professor of Philosophy at the University of Guelph, Canada, where she holds the Canada Research Chair in Ethics and Global Social Change.

Vida Panitch is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Carleton University, Canada.

Table of Contents

Introduction, Exploitation: From Practice to Theory, Monique Deveaux&Vida Panitch / Part one: Structural injustices: labour, race, and the market / 1. Unequal Bargaining Power and Economic Justice, Richard Miller / 2. Sweatshop Labour as Global Structural Exploitation, Maeve McKeown / 3. False Parallels: Exploitation in Markets and ‘Exploitation’ in Social Relationships, Waheed Hussain / 4. Racial Exploitation and the Payoff of Whiteness, Charles Mills / Part two: Exploitation and inequality: gestational and care labour / 5. Exploitation, Commodification and Equality, Anne Phillips / 6. Exploitation and Intimate Labour, Vida Panitch / 7. Taking Structural Injustice Seriously: Exploitation in Global Commercial Surrogacy, Agomoni Ganguli Mitra / 8. The Work of Care, the Ethics of Care, and Women’s Human Rights, Lynda Lange / Part three: Rethinking the boundaries and contexts of exploitation / 9. Beauty, Choice and Exploitation, Heather Widdows / 10. The Ethics of Kidney Sales, M. Shaiful Islam&Des Gasper / 11. What is Wrong with Price Gouging in the Drug Market?, Ruth Sample / 12. Exploiting Hope through Unproven Medical Interventions, Jeremy Snyder / Bibliography / Index

Editorial Reviews

Philosophical discussion about exploitation has so far been dominated by two approaches, one Marxist and another liberal. The Marxist tradition views exploitation as a phenomenon that results from economic and social systems of oppression. By contrast, the liberal tradition frames the phenomenon as reducible to impaired consent or unfair pricing in various transactions. Exploitation: From Practice to Theory challenges the two main frameworks that dominate the literature, showing how exploitation can both recognize systematic or structural issues while acknowledging how transactions can generate and sustain exploitative practices. This excellent volume constitutes a highly welcome contribution to several debates in ethics, social and political philosophy, and applied ethics. Through useful discussion of many case studies this collection also emphasizes the need for legal and economic reforms that reduce vulnerability to exploitation.

Gillian Brock

Exploitation: From Practice to Theory offers readers a way to think themselves through these conundrums by proposing a methodology that goes beyond abstract theorizing to building theory from analysis of cases deemed to be exploitative in the real world.. .. the book provides a mental lifeline to those of us struggling with this slippery concept. Importantly, it also provides ideas about the political and collective efforts necessary to challenge exploitation, once we know it.

International Journal of Feminist Approaches To Bioethics

This volume brings together work from an impressive and diverse array of thinkers. It makes a major contribution to our understanding of exploitation by applying philosophical analysis in a wide range of practical contexts.

Stephen Wilkinson

This book moves us beyond the binary debate of liberal versus Marxist conceptions of exploitation to see inequalities as the bedrock of exploitative relations. The authors combine insights from the study of socio-structural injustice with liberal-transactional accounts of exploitative agents, to pave a broader path for understanding exploitation. Employing a new practice-to-theory methodological approach, the authors begin with real world examples to demonstrate the inadequacies of traditional liberal or Marxist accounts of exploitation. Solutions to exploitation lie in remedying the inequalities that render some groups vulnerable to exploitation at the hands of more powerful others.

Julie Murphy Erfani

Contemporary theoretical discussions of exploitation are dominated by thinkers in the liberal and Marxian traditions... "Exploitation: From Practice to Theory" pushes past these traditional and binary explanations, to focus on unjust practices that both depend on and perpetuate inequalities central to exploitation.... A model of seminal scholarship, "Exploitation: From Practice to Theory" is enhanced with the inclusion of an eighteen page Bibliography, a ten page Index, and a three page listing of the contributors and their credentials, making it unreservedly recommended for both community and academic library Political Science & Philosophy collections.

Midwest Book Review

An important and provocative collection of essays, Exploitation: From Practice to Theory forces us to ask tough questions about what it means in practice to protect the vulnerable.

Matt Zwolinski

We cannot understand exploitation – let alone what’s wrong with it – unless we carefully scrutinize how it works in the real world. In particular, we need to understand how exploitation is rooted in social structures. That is what this rich, engaging collection helps us do. Anyone who cares about exploitation should read this book.

Michael Neu