Mobilizing Global Social Justice Responsibility-Taking

1
Mobilizing Global Social Justice
Responsibility-Taking

• Samples from our book-in-progress
• Michele Micheletti (Karlstad University)
• Dietlind Stolle (Michele Micheletti)
• Project financed by the Swedish Council of
  Research

2
Political Consumerism

• Use of the market as an arena for politics
• Three forms
• Boycotts dont buy for political, ethical,
  environmental reasons
• Buycotts do buy for these reasons
• Discursive actions opinion value expression
  in communicative efforts
• GOVERNMENT IS NOT PRIMARY TARGET FOR POLITICAL
  ACTION

3
Paper HighlightsFocus No-Sweat, Just Clothes,
Anti-Sweatshop, Clean Clothes Movement

• Political Responsibility Sweatshops
• Responsibility problems responsbility models
• Short Overview of Anti-Sweatshop Movement
• Envisioned role of consumers in the movement
• What force has political consumerism?

4
ExamplesProblems in global garment industry in
Logo Sweatshops

• At the Hung Wah factory, young women work from
  730 a.m. to 1030 p.m., seven days a week,
  sewing Nike clothing for an average wage of 22
  cents an hour.
• Keds made in China by 16-year-old girls applying
  toxic glue with their bare hands, the only tool
  given them, a toothbrush. 
• Timberland shoes are made in China by 16 and
  17-year-old girls forced to work 14 hours a day,
  seven days a week for 22 cents an hour, often in
  temperatures over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. The
  young women are threatened and coached to lie to
  any auditors visiting the factory.- National
  Labor Council report 2004

5
Why Problems Here? Globalization, Government,
Corporations Consumers

• No Global Government Earth has no CEO. No Board
  of Directors. No management team UN, World
  Bank, and World Resources Institute
• Conventional Model of Political Responsibility
  Nation-state government model out of touch with
  global times
• ? social justice responsibility vacuums
• Global Garment Corporations Fiercely competitive
  buyer-driven corporations race to the bottom to
  price themselves in the market
• Consumers Demanding good personalized mass
  fashion at good prices
• ? mobile outsourced fashion manufacturing
  sweatshops

6
Anti-Sweatshop Focus on Corporations

• Globalization has generated layers of
  transactions and institutional practices that
  envelop and cut across the system of states.
• Globalizations most visible manifestation
• Ca. 70,000 transnational firms in operation
• with ca 700,000 subsidiaries and millions of
  suppliers connected through distributed networks
  globally
• They are like elephants standing in the center
  of rooms
• Speech by John G. Ruggie, Professor of
  International Affairs, Harvard University and
  Special Representative on the Issue of Human
  Rights and Transnational Corporations and Other
  Business Enterprises
• October 2005

7
Anti-Sweatshop Focus on Consumers Consumption
Practices

• Choose it, colour it, sign it, buy it
• Divided spring real self,
  real style
• The best style is your very
  own
• Everyone is a star
• Clothing and accessories that enhance
  personal style

8
Whos responsible for sweatshops? Cause
treatment responsibility Everyone involved with
garment consumption The social relations that
connect us to others are not restricted to nation
state borders. Our actions are conditioned by and
contribute to institutions that affect distant
others, and their actions contribute to the
operation of institutions that affect us. Because
our actions assume these others as condition for
our own actions, we have made practical moral
commitments to them by virtue of our actions.
That is, even when we are not conscious of or
actively deny a moral relationship to these other
people, to the extent that our actions depend on
the assumption that distant others are doing
certain things, we have obligations of justice in
relation to them. Iris Marion Young,
Responsibility and Global Justice A Social
Connection Model, Philosophy and Social Policy
(winter 2006)
9
Overview Contemporary Anti-Sweatshop Political
Consumerism

• Formative events for North American European
  Branches
• European Branch Lockout of women workers in
  Philipine factory making clothes for C A for
  demanding legal minimum wage (1990)
• North American Branch Establishment of
  amalgamated Union of Needle, Industrial, and
  Technical Employees (UNITE!) sweatshop raid in
  El Monte, California (1995)
• STRUCK A NERVE IN CIVIL SOCIETY ? MOBILIZATION
  ? CONSOLIDATION OF ANTI-SWEATSHOP MOVEMENT

10
Transnational Movement

• Teaming up of Old New Civil Society
• Church groups, student groups, think tanks,
  policy institutes, foundations, consumer-oriented
  organizations, international organizations, local
  to global labor unions, labor-oriented groups,
  specific anti-sweatshop groups, no sweat
  businesses, business investors, and old new
  international humanitarian networks and groups
• Figure 1 106 main groups, networks
  organizations (CSR-oriented groups not included)
• All use sweatshop metaphor as their master
  frame

11
(No Transcript)
12
(No Transcript)
13
(No Transcript)
14
Study of Key Anti-Sweatshop Movement Actors

• From old new membership-based civil society
  groups associations
• Unions (UNITE, Gobal Unions)
• International Humanitarian (Oxfam, Global
  Exchange)
• Specific no-sweat groups (United Students
  Against Sweatshops, Clean Clothes Campaign)
• Internet Spin Doctors (Adbusters)
• Sources Interviews, documents and other
  materials from key actors, secondary sources

15
Different Envisioned Role for Consumers to Play
in Social Justice Responsibility-TakingWork-still
-in-progress

• Support group for other causes
• unions consumers are broad, ideologically
  benign community to mobilize to make the
  struggle for justice for workers more palatable
  to the public in an antilabor climate
• Critical shopping mass
• - USAS international humanitarian
  organizations consumers can use their
  purchasing power to tilt the balance, however
  slightly, in favour of the poor Organizing
  communities of consumers can make sweatfree
  purchases dynamic and effective
• Spearhead force hitting corporations where it
  hurts most
• Clean Clothes Campaign uses opportunities opened
  up by buyer-driven corporate vulnerability
  Brand name companies compete intensely for
  consumer loyalty, and therefore consumers can
  influence how these companies operate.
• Ontological agent of societal change
• Adbusters Media Foundation the world can change
  if consumers change their relationship to
  consumption

16
Envisioned Role for Consumers Affects Movement
Actors Campaign Strategies Tactics
Work-still-in-progress

• Thematic campaigning penetrates underlying
  mechanisms leading to social justice
  responsibility vacuums goal is change in
  predispositions, worldview, consumer outlook on
  role of consumption in their lives
• Episodic campaigning focuses on particular
  issues, actors, puts responsibility claims on
  specific wrong-doers (Nike, Walmart, H M)
• Preliminary Findings (1) Support group, critical
  mass, spearhead force more focus on episodic
  campaigning (2) Most movement actors focus on
  episodic campaigning event actor focus
  (exceptions Adbusters UNITEs Behind the Label
  Campaign)
• (See Shanto Iyengar Framing Responsibility for
  Political Issues Annals, AAPSS 1999 for initial
  discussion on these frames)

17
Effectiveness of Episodal Campaigning and
Anti-Sweatshop ActivismEffectiveness Chain
ModelSome Preliminary Results
Builds on classical studies of power influence,
Keck Sikkniks work on transnational advocacy
networks mainstream political science analysis
of public policy processes
How measure activist effects on market share and
stock prices?
18
Force of Political ConsumerismMichelettis
Thoughts

• Need to distinguish between light thick
  political consumerism?
• Thin version better buying, supporting unions
  when triggered episodically by mobilizing
  campaigns
• Problems of price-sensitivity fickliness
  incongruencies between saying and doing
• Implication harnessing consumer power is
  never-ending-task
• Thick/deep version changing our consumption
  predispositions and deep values about role of
  consumption as social marker long-term goal of
  ontological movement
• - New non-price-sensitive relationship to
  consumption with staying power