Self-Ownership and Self-Alienation: Three Case Studies

Abstract

This chapter addresses the alienability or inalienability of the bodily self by looking at continuing legal, economic, and cultural issues surrounding three case studies: the growth of cell lines, live organ transfer, and the practices of “forced prostitution” as a contemporary form of slavery. The essay contends that it is, ironically, Locke and Hegel's shared hyperliberal notion of the self as inalienable property that sustains a potential basis, in law and in culture, for troubling cases of self-alienation which persist in the case studies offered.

Citation

MacAdam, E. (2011), "Self-Ownership and Self-Alienation: Three Case Studies", Sarat, A. (Ed.) Special Issue Human Rights: New Possibilities/New Problems (Studies in Law, Politics, and Society, Vol. 56), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 1-36. https://doi.org/10.1108/S1059-4337(2011)0000056004