Sunday, December 28, 2008

Big Business Strong State or Rethinking Commodification

Big Business, Strong State: Collusion and Conflict in South Korean Development, 1960-1990

Author: Eun M Kim

This book debunks the rosy success story about South Korean economic development by analyzing how the state and businesses formed an alliance, while excluding labor, in order to attain economic development, and how these three entities were transformed in the process.



Interesting book: Starting out or Wine Report 2008

Rethinking Commodification: Cases and Readings in Law and Culture

Author: Martha M Ertmann

"A superb collection of classic and contemporary readings on commodification theory, including the latest, most advanced theorizing on this subject. It is a must-read."
—Elizabeth Anderson, Philosophy, University of Michigan

"As someone who helped to draw attention to the subject of commodification more than two decades ago, I believe that commodification is, if anything, more important today than it has ever been. We must ask ourselves: Are there some things that money can't buy? Who is advantaged and who disadvantaged by desperate market exchanges? This indispensable collection of old and new thoughts on commodification will help us as we struggle towards answering these questions."
—Margaret Jane Radin, Stanford Law School

"Rethinking Commodification includes several classic texts of commodification theory that familiarize readers with the traditional debate. The work then offers new insights into the issue, with two dozen articles, appellate court opinions, and essays. Taken together, this book comprises an intellecutal mosaic that moves the discussion beyond the early, on-off question of whether or not to commodify."
Metapsychology Online

"A magnificent collection. The subject is profound and complex, the text gripping, lively, and thoroughly enjoyable to read."
—Sylvia A. Law, NYU Law School

"Commodification is on net a great source for good in the world. But the seminal essays in Rethinking Commodification show that the serious questions about alienability are much more than concerns about hypothetical contracts for babies or self-indenture."
—Ian Ayres, author of InsincerePromises

What is the price of a limb? A child? Ethnicity? Love? In a world that is often ruled by buyers and sellers, those things that are often considered priceless become objects to be marketed and from which to earn a profit. Ranging from black market babies to exploitative sex trade operations to the marketing of race and culture, Rethinking Commodification presents an interdisciplinary collection of writings, including legal theory, case law, and original essays to reexamine the traditional legal question: "To commodify or not to commodify?"

In this pathbreaking course reader, Martha M. Ertman and Joan C. Williams present the legal cases and theories that laid the groundwork for traditional critiques of commodification, which tend to view the process as dehumanizing because it reduces all human interactions to economic transactions. This "canonical" section is followed by a selection of original essays that present alternative views of commodification based on the concept that commodification can have diverse meanings in a variety of social contexts. When viewed in this way, the commodification debate moves beyond whether or not commodification is good or bad, and is assessed instead on the quality of the social relationships and wider context that is involved in the transaction. Rethinking Commodification contains an excellent array of contemporary issues, including intellectual property, reparations for slavery, organ transplants, and sex work; and an equally stellar array of contributors, including Richard Posner, Margaret Jane Radin, Regina Austin, and many others.




Table of Contents:
Preface : freedom, equality, and the many futures of commodification1
Introduction : the subject and object of commodification8
Pt. IClassic texts of commodification theory
ADefinitions : commodity and commodification
Commodities and the politics of value34
BContested commodities : babies/parental rights and obligations
The economics of the baby shortage46
In the matter of baby M58
In search of Pharaoh's daughter68
Johnson v. Calvert71
CDefaulting to freedom or to equality : treating some things as inalienable
Property rules, liability rules, and inalienability : one view of the cathedral78
Contested commodities81
Moore v. the regents of the University of California96
DDistinguishing between exchanges and gifts
The gift relationship : from human blood to social policy108
Giving, trading, thieving, and trusting : how and why gifts become exchanges, and (more importantly) vice versa114
ECommodification and community
What money can't buy : the moral limits of markets122
Community and conscription128
Pt. IINew voices on commodification theory
ACommodifying intellectual and cultural property
Culture, commodification, and native American cultural patrimony137
U.S. v. Corrow156
Property in personhood164
BCommodifying identities
Kwanzaa and the commodification of black culture178
Eating the other : desire and resistance191
Cities and queer space : staking a claim to global cosmopolitanism199
Selling out : the gay and lesbian movement goes to market213
CCommodifying intimacies
1Commodifying sex
"Sex in the [foreign] city" : commodification and the female sex tourist222
Taking money for bodily services243
The currency of sex : prostitution, law, and commodification248
2Commodifying care
Fore love nor money : the commodification of care271
Unbending gender : why family and work conflict and what to do about it291
Minnesota v. Bachmann293
Commodification and women's household labor297
3Commodifying family relations
What's wrong with a parenthood market? : a new and improved theory of commodification303
Home economics : what is the difference between a family and a corporation?324
Hard bargains : the politics of sex345
4Commodifying bodies and body parts
A framework for reparations claims348
National Organ Transplant Act (NOTA)354
Increasing the supply of transplant organs : the virtues of an options market355
Future markets in everything357
DRetheorizing commodification
To commodify or not to commodity : that is not the question362
The multivalent commodity : on the supplementarity of value and values383
Afterword : whither commodification?402

No comments: