William T. Cavanaugh's 'Being Consumed'

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William T. Cavanaugh is the author of the book ‘Being Consumed’. This book focuses on economics and Christian desire, and how to find a balance. Cavanaugh’s stated thesis and purpose for writing this book is to “deal with the basic matters of economic life: the free market, consumerism, globalisation, and scarcity” (Cavanaugh, W.T. 2008: vii). By going through four well written chapters he intends to summarise and give insight into how to deal with his stated issues. His main goal in the unrolling of his thesis statement is to have an overall “contribution to a kind of theological microeconomics… to focus our attention on concrete Christian attempts to discern and create economic practice, spaces, and transactions that are truly free (Cavanaugh, W.T. 2008: viii). Therefore, by using a number of different aspects, careful terminology and clearly focused…show more content…
2008: 86). Thus, it is the loss of individuality. On the other hand, Cavanaugh’s definition of local oppositely states that to be local is to “coexist with others…learning to appreciate the otherness of the other and the legitimacy of other ways of salvation” (Cavanaugh, W.T. 2008: 71). Thus, it is the focus on just the individual, without looking at the greater scheme of Gods intentions for this world. The balance of global and local mentalities is found in the concept of the “concrete universal” (Cavanaugh, W.T. 2008: 76), which is described by Cavanaugh as “Christ being neither one individual, since he is God…nor the norm in the sense of a universal, since He is an individual” (Cavanaugh, W.T. 2008: 76). Thus, having a Christian desire within our economic situation one must “not replace one universal system with another, but attempt to realize the universal body of Christ in every (individual) or particular exchange” (Cavanaugh, W.T. 2008:
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