This paper reappraises the idea, traceable to Adam Smith, of a fundamental distinction between market transactions and genuinely social relationships. On Smith's account, each party to a market transaction pursues his own interests, subject only to the law of contract. Using the work of Smith's...

This paper responds to Gui and Nelson's separate comments on our paper ‘Fraternity’, which analysed sociality in markets as joint commitment to mutual assistance. We argue that our analysis is fundamentally different both from Nelson's analysis (a mixture of self-interested and intrinsic...

This note comments on Bruni and Sugden's interesting notion of fraternity among contract partners as joint commitment to cooperate for mutual benefit. I raise two points on their paper, both concerning the role of sacrifice. First I maintain that, differently from other social preferences, guilt...

An article by Luigino Bruni and Robert Sugden published in this journal argues that market relations contain elements of what they call ‘fraternity’. This Response demonstrates that my own views on interpersonal relations and markets – which originated in the feminist analysis of caring...