Complicity, Decency, and "Interconnectedness"

My friend, Jim Stewart, is, for my money, one of the most interesting new scholars of complicity writing today. Jim is an international criminal law scholar by and large, and one particular area of his expertise is in the law and policy of "corporate pillage" in the international community, and in Africa in particular. 

Still, in this very short transcription of his remarks at the American Society of International Law's Annual Conference on the subject of "complicity in business and human rights," I was struck by the possible range of application of this quote, even quite far afield from Jim's own special area of study:

Complicity goes to the heart of our attempts to live decently in a world that is characterized by, first, great interconnectedness born of globalization, and second, enormous dysfunction. Complicity is especially important as a legal and ethical concept that delineates how we as individuals, businesses, and states should comport ourselves to lead decent lives in this very imperfect interconnected world. And because our points of connection are likely to intensify with the technological advance that drives globalization, complicity is likely to take on a new importance for international law moving forward....

I believe that just having these sorts of discussions about complicity is a net gain for the world. In her book On Violence, Hannah Arendt points out that the absence of a robust pacifist discourse in the world bodes ill for the ways in which we are likely to use force. By the same token, the absence of a robust discourse about complicity undermines our chances of living decent lives in the world as presently constituted. For that reason, discussions about complicity are to be welcomed, even and perhaps especially, where they involve differences of opinion, deep skepticism, and outright critique.