Becoming morally cosmopolitan: The interplay of inner-outer moral commitments in the marketplace

Abstract

Drawing on the testimonies of a group of ten philanthropic lenders, this chapter illustrates how within years of experience using peer-to-peer lending platforms, the lenders enter a process of becoming moral cosmopolitan. The chapter demonstrates how lenders not only express their moral commitments toward those symbolically seen as being close to them, but also reshape and challenge the narrowness of their initial moral commitments. They further adventure themselves in diversifying their loan commitments, with the purpose of optimizing impacts, the case being collaborating with other lenders. This theoretical view on the process of becoming moral cosmopolitan contrasts with a more usual view of consumer behavior, where marketplaces are seen as static repositories of predefined segments of consumers’ moral identities and profiles.