Looking behind the Label

Nik Summers, Gustavo Setrini, Hiram Samel, Sebastian Koos, Bartley Tim

Description

Read an excerpt from the book Connect: Tim Bartley's website Framing the Global website Global Studies on Facebook

What does it mean when consumers "shop with a conscience" and choose products labeled as fair or sustainable? Does this translate into meaningful changes in global production processes? To what extent are voluntary standards implemented and enforced, and can they really govern global industries? Looking behind the Label presents an informative introduction to global production and ethical consumption, tracing the links between consumers' choices and the practices of multinational producers and retailers. Case studies of several types of products—wood and paper, food, apparel and footwear, and electronics—are used to reveal what lies behind voluntary rules and to critique predominant assumptions about ethical consumption as a form of political expression.

Acknowledgments
List of Commonly Used Acronyms
Introduction: Rules, Responsibilities, and Rights in the Global Economy
Part I: Making Sense of Conscientious Consumerism
1. The Making of Conscientious Consumers: Individual and National Patterns
2. Dilemmas of Conscientious Consumerism
Part II: Behind the Label: Global Production and the Meaning of Standards
3. Wood and Paper Products: Searching for Sustainability
4. Food: Global Agriculture and Local Development
5. Apparel and Footwear: Standards for Sweatshops
6. Electronics: The Hidden Costs of Computing
Conclusion: Beyond Conscientious Consumerism
Appendix
Notes
References
Index

Sujets

• Social Science
• POLITICAL SCIENCE
• Sociologie, société et politique
• Sociology
• Sustainability
• Food industry
• Global studies
• Textile industry
• Environmentalism
• International labour standards
• Ethical consumerism
• Consumerism
• General officer
• Economic development
• Sweatshop
• Neoliberalism
• Logging
• Fair trade
• Globalization
• Electronics
• Anthropology
• Commerce équitable
• Certification
• General
• Atelier de misère
• CSR
• Social
• Culture

Informations

• Publié par: Indiana University Press
• Date de parution: 25 mai 2015
• Nombre de lectures: 2
• EAN13: 9780253016621
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

LOOKING BEHIND THE LABEL
GLOBAL RESEARCH STUDIES
is part of the Framing the Global project, an initiative of Indiana University Press and the Indiana University Center for the Study of Global Change, funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Advisory Committee
Alfred C. Aman Jr.
Patrick O Meara
Eduardo Brondizio
Radhika Parameswaran
Maria Bucur
Heidi Ross
Bruce L. Jaffee
Richard R. Wilk
LOOKING BEHIND THE LABEL
Global Industries and the Conscientious Consumer
TIM BARTLEY
SEBASTIAN KOOS
HIRAM SAMEL
GUSTAVO SETRINI
NIK SUMMERS
This book is a publication of
INDIANA UNIVERSITY PRESS
Office of Scholarly Publishing
Herman B Wells Library 350
1320 East 10th Street
Bloomington, Indiana 47405 USA
iupress.indiana.edu
2015 by Indiana University Press
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. The Association of American University Presses Resolution on Permissions constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z 39.48-1992.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Cataloging information is available from the Library of Congress
ISBN 978-0-253-01648-5 (cloth)
ISBN 978-0-253-01656-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-0-253-01662-1 (ebook)
1 2 3 4 5 20 19 18 17 16 15
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
List of Commonly Used Acronyms
Introduction: Rules, Responsibilities, and Rights in the Global Economy
Part I: Making Sense of Conscientious Consumerism
1 The Making of Conscientious Consumers: Individual and National Patterns
2 The Dilemmas of Conscientious Consumerism
Part II: Behind the Label: Global Production and the Meaning of Standards
3 Wood and Paper Products: Searching for Sustainability
4 Food: Global Agriculture and Local Institutions
5 Apparel and Footwear: Standards for Sweatshops
6 Electronics: The Hidden Costs of Computing
Conclusion: Beyond Conscientious Consumerism
Appendix
Notes
References
Index
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
THIS BOOK REPRESENTS THE COLLABORATIVE EFFORT OF THIS TEAM of authors. Some of us came to the project with expertise on consumer behavior and debates about conscientious consumerism, while others had focused more on the application of standards in global industries. We have learned a great deal from one another, though a series of conversations and through an iterative process of sketching, writing, and rewriting the manuscript.
The team of authors also benefited from a much larger set of people who supported our research in various ways. The full list is too long to mention, and it would include numerous people we have interviewed in the field. We thank them for being generous with their time and knowledge. A partial list of others who supported our research, took it in new directions, or otherwise facilitated our work includes Graeme Auld, Suzanne Berger, Teri Caraway, Ben Cashore, Greg Distelhorst, Kevin Doran, Niklas Egels-Zand n, Deborah Fitzgerald, Thomas Kochan, Kai Lee, Richard Locke, Sarah Lyon, Errol Meidinger, Ethan Michelson, Tad Mutersbaugh, Ruth Norris, Hari Nugroho, Timea Pal, Michael Piore, Christian Resch, Ben Rissing, Mari Sako, Ulrike Samer, Andrew Schrank, Binbin Shu, Peter Sprang, Edward Steinfeld, Judith Tendler, Eric Thun, Zhuo Wang, and Lu Zhang, as well as members of Hewlett-Packard s social auditing team, the Center for International Forestry Research (CIFOR), and the Department of Sociology at Sun Yat-Sen University.
Valuable feedback on conceptualization and writing was provided by Christi Smith, Rachel Schurman, and the Framing the Global Fellows, who are Manuela Ciotti, Deborah Cohen, Stephanie De Boer, Lessie Jo Frazier, Zsuzsa Gille, Anne Griffiths, Rachel Harvey, Prakash Kumar, Michael Mascarenhas, Deirdre McKay, Sean Metzger, Faranak Miraftab, Alex Perullo, and Katerina Teaiwa. We thank this group (of which Bartley was a member), its intrepid leaders, Hilary Kahn and Deborah Piston-Hatlen, and its funders at Indiana University and the Mellon Foundation for support and encouragement throughout the project.
Our editor at Indiana University Press, Rebecca Tolen, deserves a great deal of credit for helping us conceptualize the project and integrate its various pieces and for very effectively moving the project toward publication. Others at the press, including Mollie Ables, Nancy Lightfoot, and Janet Rabinowitch, also made key contributions. We thank Jill R. Hughes for copyediting and Susan Storch of Illuminating Indexing for preparing the index.
COMMONLY USED ACRONYMS
ACFTU
All China Federation of Trade Unions
APP
Asia Pulp and Paper
APRIL
Asia Pacific Resources International Limited
ATOs
Alternative Trading Organizations
AZPA
Azucarera Paraguaya
BSCI
Business Social Compliance Initiative
CCC
Clean Clothes Campaign
CSA
Community Supported Agriculture
CSR
Corporate Social Responsibility
DAP
Desarollo Agricola Paraguaya
EICC
Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition
ETI
Ethical Trading Initiative
FLA
Fair Labor Association
FLO
Fairtrade Labelling Organization
FSC
Forest Stewardship Council
FWF
Fair Wear Foundation
ILO
International Labor Organization
INGO
International Nongovernmental Organization
LOHAS
Lifestyles of Health and Sustainability
NGO
Nongovernmental Organization
PEFC
Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification
RSPO
Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil
RTRS
Roundtable on Responsible Soy
SAI
Social Accountability International
SFI
Sustainable Forestry Initiative
UNITE
Union of Needletrades, Industrial, and Textile Employees
WRAP
Worldwide Responsible Accredited Production
WRC
Worker Rights Consortium
WTO
World Trade Organization
WWF
previously World Wildlife Fund or Worldwide Fund for Nature
LOOKING BEHIND THE LABEL
INTRODUCTION
Rules, Responsibilities, and Rights in the Global Economy
THE FURNITURE SHOPPING TRIP WAS MORE COMPLICATED THAN expected. Searching for a new headboard, my wife and I (Bartley) hoped we would find something that was well made, preferably under decent conditions. When we asked about items made from wood certified by the Forest Stewardship Council, we mostly got blank stares or information that seemed intended to divert our attention. One saleswoman was telling us proudly about the store s furniture being made in the USA when we saw Made in Vietnam stamped in large letters on the back of one piece. We knew that logs were being harvested illegally-not to mention unsustainably-in Laos, Indonesia, and Russia and shipped to factories in Vietnam and China to make furniture for consumers in North America and Europe. We also knew that the young women and men working in these factories endured health hazards and long hours to meet the low prices and fast delivery times that retailers demanded. Not that Made in the USA, even if we could find it, would be a perfect guarantee either, since labor laws are frequently violated here as well, and unsustainable forestry is not unique to developing countries.
After much head scratching, we stopped browsing and bought a cheap used headboard from a Craigslist ad. We might have even felt good about this for a moment, since we could claim to be resisting a culture of disposability and overconsumption. But we knew we wouldn t keep the slightly ugly headboard for long and would soon find ourselves back in the same conundrum.
Little dilemmas like this have become increasingly common, especially in the markets of North America and Europe. Many consumers claim to shop with a conscience, and a huge number of eco- and social-labeling programs have sprung up to assure them that factories, farms, forests, and fisheries around the world are in some sense sustainable or fair. One project to track eco-labels has found more than 450 different labels worldwide. 1
Yet it is clear that consumers often abandon their ideals for low prices, and even conscientious consumers can be confused by the barrage of labels and misleading claims. Some labels are issued by independent initiatives with stringent standards, such as Fair Trade certification and the Forest Stewardship Council, but what lies behind the label is a far cry from what consumers imagine when they see images of a smiling coffee farmer or a green tree in a lush forest. What does it mean if consumers vote with their pocketbooks by choosing products that are labeled as fair or sustainable ? Can global production processes really be transformed by standards that are voluntarily adopted by profit-seeking companies to please fickle consumers? As some people strive to be conscientious consumers, are they just fooling themselves, engaging in small acts of charity while ignoring larger structures of power and inequality that shape the lives of workers, citizens, and communities locally and globally? Is a consumerist logic of one dollar, one vote displacing the democratic principle of one person, one vote?
This book explores these dilemmas by looking at the links between consumption and production processes in global indus