Buying Freedom

by Appiah, Kwame Anthony; Bunzl, Martin; Bales, Kevin

• ISBN13: 9780691130101
• ISBN10: 0691130108
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-07-02
• Publisher: Princeton Univ Pr

Summary

If "slavery" is defined broadly to include bonded child labor and forced prostitution, there are upward of 25 million slaves in the world today. Individuals and groups are freeing some slaves by buying them from their enslavers. But slave redemption is as controversial today as it was in pre-Civil War America. InBuying Freedom, Kwame Anthony Appiah and Martin Bunzl bring together economists, anthropologists, historians, and philosophers for the first comprehensive examination of the practical and ethical implications of slave redemption. While recognizing the obvious virtue of the desire to buy the freedom of slaves, the contributors ask difficult and troubling questions: Does redeeming slaves actually increase the demand for--and so the number of--slaves? And what about cases where it is far from clear that redemption will improve the material condition, or increase the real freedom, of a slave? Buying Freedomincludes essays by the editors and by Dean Karlan and Alan Krueger, Carol Ann Rogers and Kenneth Swinnerton, Arnab Basu and Nancy Chau, Stanley Engerman, Jonathan Conning and Michael Kevane, Jok Madut Jok, Ann McDougall, Lisa Cook, Margaret Kellow, John Stauffer, and Howard McGary.

Author Biography

Kwame Anthony Appiah is the Laurance S. Rockefeller University Professor of Philosophy at Princeton University. His books include "Cosmopolitanism" (Norton). Martin Bunzl is professor of philosophy at Rutgers University and the author of "Real History: Reflections on Historical Practice".

Table of Contents

Foreword	p. vii
Introduction	p. 1
The Economics of Redemption	p. 7
Some Simple Analytics of Slave Redemption	p. 9
Slave Redemption When It Takes Time to Redeem Slaves	p. 20
An Exploration of the Worst Forms of Child Labor: Is Redemption a Viable Option?	p. 37
Slavery, Freedom, and Sen	p. 77
Freedom, Servitude, and Voluntary Contracts	p. 108
Anthropological Considerations	p. 141
Slavery and Slave Redemption in the Sudan	p. 143
Dilemmas in the Practice of Rachat in French West Africa	p. 158
Historical Considerations	p. 179
The End of Serfdom in Russia-Lessons for Sudan?	p. 181
Conflicting Imperatives: Black and White American Abolitionists Debate Slave Redemption	p. 200
Frederick Douglass and the Politics of Slave Redemptions	p. 213
Philosophical Considerations	p. 223
The Moral Quandary of Slave Redemption	p. 225
The Next Best Thing	p. 235
What's Wrong with Slavery?	p. 249
Appendix: "They Call Us Animals," Testimonies of Abductees and Slaves in Sudan	p. 259
List of Contributors	p. 269
Index	p. 271
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