Uploaded January 2020 | Updated September 2026, 2 weeks ago
Gabriel Rossman - January 13, 2020
"Obfuscation of Morally Disreputable Exchange"
A wide class of economic exchanges are considered morally disreputable precisely because they are seen as economic exchanges. For instance bribery without payment is just constituent service and prostitution without payment is just casual sex. However, parties to disreputable exchange qua exchange can arrange the transfers so as to obscure that a disreputable exchange is occurring at all. I propose that four obfuscation structures—bundling, brokerage, gift exchange, and pawning— decrease the moral opprobrium of disreputable exchange. The talk will present evidence from a vignette experiment with Oliver Schilke as well as a review of historical and ethnographic cases.
The following is a presentation in the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture Speaker Series. For more information on this speaker series, including a searchable archive of all previous presentations, please see http://bec.ucla.edu/
BEC relies on the generosity of a variety of organizations and individuals. If you find this presentation valuable and would like to assist in advancing research and education in the evolutionary behavioral sciences, please see https://giving.ucla.edu/Standard/NetDonate.aspx?SiteNum=197
Gabriel Rossman - January 13, 2020
"Obfuscation of Morally Disreputable Exchange"
A wide class of economic exchanges are considered morally disreputable precisely because they are seen as economic exchanges. For instance bribery without payment is just constituent service and prostitution without payment is just casual sex. However, parties to disreputable exchange qua exchange can arrange the transfers so as to obscure that a disreputable exchange is occurring at all. I propose that four obfuscation structures—bundling, brokerage, gift exchange, and pawning— decrease the moral opprobrium of disreputable exchange. The talk will present evidence from a vignette experiment with Oliver Schilke as well as a review of historical and ethnographic cases.
The following is a presentation in the UCLA Center for Behavior, Evolution, and Culture Speaker Series. For more information on this speaker series, including a searchable archive of all previous presentations, please see http://bec.ucla.edu/
BEC relies on the generosity of a variety of organizations and individuals. If you find this presentation valuable and would like to assist in advancing research and education in the evolutionary behavioral sciences, please see https://giving.ucla.edu/Standard/NetDonate.aspx?SiteNum=197
