Buying Freedom: The Ethics and Economics of Slave Redemption

Description

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. In Buying 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 Freedom includes 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.

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".

"Slavery? In the modern world? Many readers will be shocked to read that human beings are still owned, bought, and sold. Editors Appiah and Bunzl present a series of essays documenting current slavery issues in a broad context as well as providing a historic context, analyzing some changes that have occurred in slave-based industries from the late 1700s to the present."--D. E. Mattson, Choice "Buying Freedom is an instructive volume on the question whether slave redemption makes sense or not. The contributions cover the most varied methodological approaches, which is certainly an asset of the book."--Paul Ramskogler, Journal of Economic Issues