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272 pages, Paperback
First published November 20, 2012
Apart from any judgment about the merits or demerits of globalization qua globalization, a driving force of globalization has undoubtedly been the corporation. Thus it is reasonable to assess globalization by one of its dominant features, i.e., its corporate ethic, which has received and continues to receive the endorsement of the state…The corporation is created by law for one purpose: to increase its wealth and to prioritize this purpose above all others, including social responsibility, which, when it exists at all, is placed in the service of generating even more profit. Corporate charity and social responsibility thus become strategies to increase profits and hence the economic size of the corporation. This is precisely why corporation-based globalization cannot view with the state, because the state has developed the means of addressing, however minimally, the human needs of its own citizens. The corporation has, by contrast, not only failed to do the same; it has also been notorious in its inhumane and exploitative practices, destroying the lives of people (so-called externalities) as consumers of their products, as victims of chemical and oil spillages, as abused laborers in their sweatshops, and as inhabitants of a planet being slowly but assuredly destroyed by their callow industrial practices.Hallaq, sure to find many who agree with this critique, goes on to discuss Islamic moral economy in the context of globalization and the role of corporations.