Does Purchasing Make Consumers Complicit in Global Labour Injustice?

Res Publica 24 (3):319-338 (2018)
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Abstract

Do consumers’ ordinary actions of purchasing certain goods make them complicit in global labour injustice? To establish that they do, two things much be shown. First, it must be established that they are not more than complicit, for example that they are not the principal perpetrators. Second, it must be established that they meet the conditions for complicity on a plausible account. I argue that Kutz’s account faces an objection that makes Lepora and Goodin’s better suited, and defend the idea that consumers are complicit in at least two of the ways distinguished by the latter. In the final section of the paper, I consider whether consumers’ responsibility for complicity in global labour injustice is likely to be as strong as responsibility from another source, namely benefiting from that injustice.

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Holly Lawford-Smith
University of Melbourne

References found in this work

Do I Make a Difference?Shelly Kagan - 2011 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (2):105-141.
On complicity and compromise.Chiara Lepora - 2013 - Oxford United Kingdom: Oxford University Press. Edited by Robert E. Goodin.
Consequentialism and the Problem of Collective Harm: A Reply to Kagan.Julia Nefsky - 2011 - Philosophy and Public Affairs 39 (4):364-395.
What 'we'?Holly Lawford-Smith - 2015 - Journal of Social Ontology 1 (2):225-250.
Harm and Its Moral Significance.Seana Valentine Shiffrin - 2012 - Legal Theory 18 (3):357-398.

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