How far should society go in permitting people to buy and sell goods and services? Radin addresses this controversial issue in an exploration of contested commodification. As a philosophical pragmatist, the author argues for an incomplete commodification, in which some contested things can be bought and sold, but only under regulated circumstances.

This work looks at ethical and moral questions surrounding certain economic "commodities" such as body parts and babies. It argues that commodification should remain incomplete, with some contested things being bought and sold only under strict regulation.

This book discusses tourism niches as contested commodities that have grown and become part of the tourist setting in many destinations. Over time, they develop organically, and, in some cases, underground before they explode into the mainstream, and, more often than not, cause controversy. The text traces the roots of different tourism trends, using examples from both industry and existing studies, revealing the importance of understanding their key drivers, dynamics and impacts. It is in managers’ interest to monitor such trends and tourist pursuits as they cross over because they hold the potential to influence new markets, as destinations diversify their tourist offering. This volume explores a number of different tourism niches, including slum tourism, trophy hunting tourism, cosmetic surgery tourism, volunteer tourism, and sex tourism, to name but a few. It shows that the margins between contested commodity and mainstream acceptance are fluid and relative, becoming increasingly blurred. In this environment, it is easy for a seemingly marginal tourist pursuit to cross into the mainstream. What is pivotal in this emerging picture is that, as the understanding of each niche matures into the broader public’s consciousness, and supply grows, it becomes another experience that can be replicated, homogenised and sold. Turning these niches into tourism products requires enough understanding of them to be sold commercially and further segmented to benefit as many stakeholders as possible. In this reality, it is paramount that the tourism industry maintains an open mind and explores the potential of turning new trends into products for tourist consumption.

Highlighting the sources, processes and outcomes of moral struggles in and around markets, this volume advances our current understanding of markets and their contested moralities.

Recent changes in the global economy and in Southeast Asian national political economies have led to new forms of commodity production and new commodities. Using insights from political economy and commodity studies, the essays in Taking Southeast Asia to Market trace the myriad ways recent alignments among producers, distributors, and consumers are affecting people and nature throughout the region. In case studies ranging from coffee and hardwood products to mushroom pickers and Vietnamese factory workers, the authors detail the Southeast Asian articulations of these processes while also discussing the broader implications of these shifts. Taken together, the cases show how commodities illuminate the convergence of changing social forces in Southeast Asia today, as they transform the terms, practices, and experiences of everyday life and politics in the global economy.

Common markets, open borders, air traffic, and the internet have made it faster and less expensive to change places and jurisdictions. As a result, legal forums are increasingly treated as a good that is subject to the market mechanism. Individuals and corporations increasingly have free reign to choose which legal rules to apply to their company, their contract, their marriage, or their insolvency proceedings. States in turn grant these opportunities and respond to demand by competing with other suppliers of legal regimes. 'Regulatory competition' describes a dynamic in which states as producers of legal rules compete for the favour of mobile consumers of their legal products. This book focuses on the philosophical underpinnings, problems, and consequences of such regulatory competition. It argues that there is a mismatch between regulatory competition as a policy approach and the beliefs and commitments that shape our thinking about law and the state. It concludes that 'law markets' are potentially at odds with both our conception of the functions of legal rules and of key political ideals and principles such as democracy, state autonomy, and political authority.

Nearly 120,000 people are in need of healthy organs in the United States. Every ten minutes a new name is added to the list, while on average twenty people die each day waiting for an organ to become available. Worse, our traditional reliance on cadaveric organ donation is becoming increasingly insufficient, and in recent years there has been a decline in the number of living donors as well as in the percentage of living donors relative to overall kidney donors. Some transplant surgeons and policy advocates have responded to this shortage by arguing for the legalization of the sale of organs among living donors. Andrew Flescher objects to this approach by going beyond concerns traditionally cited about social justice, commodification, and patient safety, and moving squarely onto the terrain of discussing what motivates major and costly acts of human selflessness. What is the most efficacious means of attracting prospective living kidney donors? Flescher, drawing on literature in the fields of moral psychology and economics, as well as on scores of interviews with living donors, suggests that inculcating a sense of altruism and civic duty is a more effective means of increasing donor participation than the resort to financial incentives. He encourages individuals to spend time with patients on dialysis in order to become acquainted with their plight and, as an alternative to lump-sum payments, consider innovative solutions that positively impact living donor participation that do not undermine the spirit of the National Organ Transplant Act of 1984. This book not only re-examines the important debate over whether to allow the sale of organs; it is also the first volume in the field to take a close look at alternative solutions to the organ shortage crisis.