Quotes
or instance, that young women work a double shift seven days a week to sew clothing for an average wage of 22 cents (USD) an hour,
Government inaction on global social justice responsibility is of central inter- est in political science. It shows that existing political institutions charged with caring for the world are not proving that they can successfully take responsibility for global problems.
This discouraging conclusion suggests that tra- ditional government political responsibility, which is premised on the existence of state authority (jurisdiction) for problem solving and identifiable actors that can be made legally accountable for their specific actions, are ill suited to take charge of solving pressing complex global problems.
Reformers, as antisweatshop activists were then called, made political claims about sweatshop wrongdoings.
who testified publicly that consumers were behind “some of the worst evils from which producers suffer” and that they had the duty “to find out under what conditions the articles they purchase are produced and distributed
Antisweatshop reformers used a variety of tactics to promote their cause. They investigated sweatshops, informed and educated the public
Shortly afterwards, the antisweatshop movement gained momentum. Old, established civil society organizations learned to spice up their traditional social justice message with the help of spin-doctor, PR-oriented Internet-based advo- cacy groups like Global Exchange (from 1988). Global Exchange used its media talents to focus public and media attention on celebrity corporate leaders—in par- ticular, Nike CEO Phil Knight and Kathie Lee Gifford, U.S. talk show host with her own brand name clothes—whose corporations were key targets of antisweat- shop activism (Bullert 2000).
This concentration on logos and CEO celebrities used buyer-driven corporate vulnerabilities well and gave the sweatshop problem cultural resonance by showing the relationship between important consumer sym- bols in the cultural environment and social justice responsibility-taking
Many of the newer groups focus on the market as an arena for politics and have “clean clothes” as a main focus while others concentrate exclusively on unsat- isfactory conditions in the garment industry
Creative forms of individualized collec- tive action, attention to the role of production and consumption in global politics, and use of the Internet facilitate the building of bridges and coalitions between tra- ditional membership groups and those groups whose legitimacy and support are crafted online
However, a study of documents and interviews with key movement actors (UNITE HERE!, Global Unions, CCC, USAS, Oxfam, Global Exchange, and Adbusters Media Foundation) representing important parts of the movement (unions, specific antisweatshop associations, international humanitarian organi- zations, and Internet spin doctors) shows that these organizations mobilize consumers to play different roles in the antisweatshop struggle
They are (1) support group for a broader cause, (2) critical mass of fair trade shoppers, (3) “spearhead force” of corporate change, and (4) ontological agent of societal change.
Even though most other antisweatshop activists support the union cause, they also want consumers to play a more dynamic and independent role. For them, consumers—not unions—can become the countervailing power to corporations.
Oxfam International (2006) stated that aware and mobilized consumers can “use their purchasing power to tilt the bal- ance, however slightly, in favour of the poor.”
“brand name companies compete intensely for consumer loyalty, and therefore consumers can influence how these companies operate” (CCC 2006).
Only enlightened and reformed consumers can play this powerful role because unions are stuck in “an old leftist paradigm” that promotes workers’ self-interests and unsustainable economic growth and are therefore unable to solve pressing global problems,
The antisweatshop movement has succeeded in formulating the sweatshop problem in a way that resonates well in Western democratic cultures.
Still, these policy changes may just be “sweatwash,” meaning that logo corpo- rations change their policy to manage activism and dodge activist and media crit- icism
Not only were diamonds sexy, but the strength of this message was also the result of its connection with “the repulsive fascination of Africa in the occidental imaginary” (Amselle 2000). Many people know about the genocide committed in Cambodia, but this knowledge does not compare with the widespread imaginative geography of Africa as the “Dark Continent”.
In many conflict diamond narratives, political leaders, combatants and miners were often indiscriminately conflated into one single category of “greedy thugs”; even if the status of alluvial diamond diggers as victims and legitimate political agents rightly seeking social change, as well as their social diversity have been documented
Not only does the economic marginalization of artisanal miners and small traders represent a case of structural violence, but fencing out “illegal miners” is also frequently marked by physical violence often embroiling identity politics
Arguably, this narrow definition of conflict diamonds—and its legitimating effect for the rest of the industry—aided the successful conclusion of the Kimberley Process
Like De Beers, the rest of the industry recognized that luxury goods such as diamonds may be vulnerable to a consumer boycott.
In addition to the classic myth-making images of diamonds as symbols of love and desire, Canadian diamonds were marketed as “pure”, “blood- shed free”, or “socially conscious” (Stueck 2003).
Ironically, the lasting effects of linking diamonds with violence may not be ethical consumption, but rather a stronger dystopian vision of Africa and legitimated position for large “reputable” (western) companies over smaller local and regional operators.
In the consumer dystopias emerging from these narratives, violence was a purely criminal enterprise driven by “greed”, or a senseless attack on “freedom”, rather than the outcome of exploitative and exclusionary histories and uneven development.
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/23322705.2020.1690117
https://www.cfr.org/blog/palermo-protocol-and-next-twenty-years-global-fight-against-modern-slavery
Format Requirements
- You should write essay of 1,500-2000 words.
- Use a legible font, size 12.
- Double space your essay (200% spacing on Hangul word processor)
- Leave margins of 2cm on the top, bottom, left, and right sides of each page.
- Print only on one side of the paper.
- Make sure you have your name and id number on the header of each page.
- Number each page at the bottom.
- Write out the question on the first page at the top before the start of your essay; this your title.
Sources and Readings
You should use assigned reading to help you write the essay and you must do some independent research with further academic articles or book chapters. You may also need to find factual information.
- For factual information, use web or print newspapers, or current events and political affairs periodicals. Google News or PROQUEST are valuable for searching.
- For academic sources, I recommend looking at the library, or going to JSTOR, EBSCO (available from our library’s website), or Google Scholar.
*E-resources should be used on campus, it will be harder to get access to some materials off campus.