Book chapter
Who is Responsible?
Distant Markets, Distant Harms
16 Apr 2014
Abstract
This chapter argues that the critical realist school of sociology explains in causal terms both how market harms arise through emergence and the nature of our individual responsibility for them. As an alternative to positivism, the critical realism of philosopher Roy Bhaskar holds that “higher” levels of reality emerge from lower levels (e.g., water emerges from hydrogen and oxygen), such that the novel characteristics of the higher levels cannot be reduced to the lower. Markets, like all social structures, are systems of social relations among (preexisting) social positions, systems that emerge from the actions of individuals but that have independent causal impact back on those individuals. This causality is not deterministic but operates by altering the vested interests of the persons who take on those social positions. Thus simply replacing a firm’s objectionable CEO with another person will not make much difference, as both face the same incentives and restrictions.
Metrics
4 Record Views
Details
- Title
- Who is Responsible?
- Creators
- Douglas V Porpora
- Publication Details
- Distant Markets, Distant Harms
- Publisher
- Oxford University Press; New York
- Resource Type
- Book chapter
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Communication
- Other Identifier
- 991021863116504721