DeGrieff, Pablo and C. Cronin, eds. Global Justice and Transnational Politics: Essays on the...

DeGrieff, Pablo and C. Cronin, eds. Global Justice and Transnational Politics: Essays on the Moral and Political Challenges of Globalization. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2002, 320 pp.

This may prove to be a difficult book for economists on two fronts. First, the essays are written

mainly by philosophers, with the jargon, the meaning attached to economic words, and the framing of the scholarly stories in the book being quite unfamiliar to most. Second, and the most difficult aspect of the book, ironically, is expressed in the essay written by an economist, Amartya Sen, who proposes the heretical idea that economists need to add empathy to the economic model, which means that agricultural and agribusiness economists perhaps need to do the same. While some of us have also proposed this modification (see Lynne, G.D. "Agricultural Industrialization: A Metaeconomics Look at the Metaphors by Which We Live." Review of Agricultural Economics 24(2002):410-27), it remains a minority perspective on what agricultural economics and agribusiness economics really needs to be about, whether focused on globalization generally or on its close relative represented in agricultural industrialization. While edited books of essays tend to not necessarily have many consistent and recurring themes, this one accomplishes this goal on this one front: Every essay in one way or another calls for empathy to become a major feature of the ongoing globalization, on the road to economic justice.

DeGrief and Cronin do an excellent job in an extensive Introduction covering thirty-three pages to summarize and highlight other key points made in the nine essays, so there is no need to repeat that summary here. Rather, the limited space is devoted to the substantive theme in the book for economists to ponder, that of empathy influencing efficiency and efficiency influencing empathy. The potential is for a symbiotic interaction of these two driving forces to achieve a kind of economic justice that the very first capitalist (at least the first one to write a couple of substantive books about it, Adam Smith) understood, and, unfortunately, most modern economists have not fully appreciated. As J. B. Wight (Saving Adam Smith. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice-Hall, Inc, 2002) points out in bringing Adam Smith back to life in channeling through Howard, the empathetic mechanic, Smith is very perturbed with us: We did not read his other book on The Theory of Moral Sentiments, and thus we continue to misrepresent him.

The missing construct in modern economics, especially the Chicago-version of it, is that it is human nature to also be empathetic-altruistic in the pursuit of another-interest as well as to be egoistic-hedonistic in the pursuit of the self-interest. This is the implication, at least, of Sen's story (as well as that in new scientific literature that is emerging in neuroscience and experimental social science research). Sen's solution to achieving global justice is to engage Adam Smith's "impartial spectator" to affect the workings of the global market. Reason? As Sen (p. 46) sees it, "The impartial spectator can place herself in different situations (without having to be present in any of them) ..." and by so doing bring justice to economic choices. This is to say, the construct of the impartial spectator as a principle of economic justice asks that we each walk-in-the-shoes of others (empathize); project ourselves into that situation, without actually having to be there (into that other firm, into that other household, into that other country and culture); and after having done so, emerge with a different value and choice than was possible without empathy. Smith referred to this experience as going to the "third station;" empathizing (Smith referred to it as expressing the sentiments; the word empathy did not appear in the English language until about 100 years after Smith's time); and emerging on a higher plane (see Khalil, E.L. "Beyond Self-Interest and Altruism." Economics and Philosophy 6(1990):255-73). This is accomplished by being (empathizing) in unity with a variety of other groups out there who are not necessarily political subdivisions of the world, but rather are represented in other families; other professors; other causes, perhaps an environmental or gender cause; other ideologies and ways of life; any kind of shared, unifying experience expressed in common with others in the world. As Sen notes, "there is no contradiction (Note: with the egoistic self-interest model) in this richer understanding of a person's identity" (p. 49). It is this higher plane ... one achieved only with an empathetic expression of the sentiments, one with economic justice ... that Sen also sees. As an aside, Sen frames his call for embracing Smith's impartial spectator (and by implication the third station construct) around arguing for a substantive replacement for Rawl's contractarian approach, and goes through several convincing arguments about why we need to do so, and by so doing attaches his chapter to the rest of chapters on philosophy. Yet, while this rejection of Rawlsian justice is intriguing, what is perhaps more important is the focus on empathy needed to influence efficiency if we are to achieve economic and global justice.

Other contributors reinforce this theme at several junctures, at least indirectly: We find it in Weiner's seeing a "disconnect" (p. 67) in Rawls theory of justice, i.e., the failure to recognize there are individual concerns for the "interests of the peoples" (as Lynne, 2002 calls it, the other-interest), at the same time there is the individual's self-interest in more wealth and income; in Luban's recognition of the "social sentiment" (p. 80) and to engage in "altruistic wars" (p. 85), "to not harm," i.e., recognizing empathy, as in one would not wish to harm oneself ensured through empathy to self as the starting point to empathy to others and potentially to altruistic acts, as the key to justice; Nussbaum's focus on the need to consider the "capability" as the more fundamental precondition to the human right "to do and to be" (p. 119), which could only be known through empathy, recognizing the impossibility of the "commensurability of value" across both the empathy and wealth domains, not being able "to satisfy the need for one of them by giving (up) a larger amount of the other" (p. 130); Pogge's seeing human rights as fundamentally moral rights, and that humans express "ultimate moral concerns" (p. 159), seeing that humans empathize for ultimate ends [i.e., it is empathy that leads to moral rules, which may be constructed "without (even) the individualistic concept of a right" (p. 176)] as well as egoistically pursuing the other ultimate end-state of greater wealth. It is only through (implicitly, empathy based) moral outcomes viewed also as ultimate ends and not just means that we can ensure that "all human beings have secure access to the basic goods" (p. 185); in Habermas' first essay, the declaration that "liberal" (read egoistic self-interest) and political (read empathetic other-interest) basic rights are inseparable" (p. 202), going beyond the "individualistic style of European-based human rights" (i.e., justice requires joint pursuit of both interests, like Adam Smith taught, and few modern economists learned); in Habermas' second essay seeing the need for a "third way" approach to globalization through representing the self-interest in the global markets while also representing (implicitly, this could occur only through empathy) the political interest of the various territories participating in the markets, is not to evoke the "image of a struggle for power between political and economic actors" (p. 226) but rather to suggest a third way to find the higher ground; in McCarthy's call for recognizing the possibility that there is a "conception of nationhood that is compatible with basic liberal principles" (p. 235) allowing each participant to adhere to their own culture, which informs "who they are and who they want to be as individuals and communities" (p. 241) which requires a "we-consciousness" (p. 242), characterizing peoples "in terms of biological (essentially egoistic, self-interested) and cultural (essentially empathetic, other-interested) factors" (p. 243), leading to connecting internally "the basic values of liberalism and civic republicanism; "in Calhoun's call for people to see themselves as "citizens of the world" while "nurturing individual autonomy" (p. 286) and "solidarity" (p. 287) at the same time, we might say the self-interest and the other-interest at the same time, with the latter resulting from being "committed to cooperation" (p. 295), an outcome only possible with empathetic acts, leading to "mutual commitment" (p. 306).

As Editors DeGrief and Cronin contend at the outset, we need to move beyond "the global spread of aggressive individualism and the exploitation and destruction of nature, to the detriment of the values, traditions, and conceptions of community of other cultures" (p. 3), seeking instead the higher plane. Sen's pointing to Adam Smith's sentiment, empathy-based call for reflection on individual economic acts of globalization now helps us see how to reach that higher plane of global economic justice. And, now, like Paul Harvey says, "you know the rest (the empathy part) of the story." This book is highly recommended reading for economists, especially those just entering the profession who still have time to build an economics that more accurately represents both of Adam Smith's books.

Gary Lynne

University of Nebraska, Lincoln