Grahame Thompson just published an interesting piece on the OpenDemocracy website. He discusses the issue of corporate social responsibility (CSR) and challenges the common notion that it contributes to a progressive agenda. To make his case, he presents neo-liberalism not just as a political-economic model of organization but also as a mode of governance:
“The key aspects here are the responsibilisation of autonomous agents; the production of “freedoms” that this engenders for these agents in the economic field in particular, and the encouragement of self-governance and self-reliance on their part; and the creation of mechanisms of indirect “governance at a distance” rather than direct interventionism.
.
Furthermore, there is an emphasis on establishing and organising the “conduct of conduct”: this involves the replacement of hierarchical administrative means of direct governance with a system of benchmarks, standards, targets, and norms that are set for agents and that can be monitored and audited.
.
. . . There is a clear connection between this state-led neo-liberal project and the movement in the social-economic sphere associated with “corporate social responsibility“(CSR). This movement “responsibilises” autonomous agents (companies), who increasingly organise their own self-governance, setting themselves targets and standards that they themselves police. Inasmuch as a wide range of organisations – companies, NGOs, governmental and quasi-governmental agencies, individuals, religious organisations, academics – “advocate” CSR they are, in effect, enacting and performing such a neo-liberal programme on themselves and others.
.
In this light, the “progressive” appeal of the CSR movement – embracing issues of ethical investment and ethical consumption – looks somewhat different. The movement could in fact be viewed as an integral aspect of the neo-liberal programme.”
As an alternative to the focus on CSR, Thompson proposes to concentrate on “the major legal bastion which allows [the corporate sector] to escape its responsibilities: limited liability.” Such strategy could potentially avoid Manichean pictures so common in this debate. Whether or not one agrees with Thompson, it’s worth thinking harder about it.
The French NGO Reporters without Borders (RSF) has an interesting map of “internet black holes,” that is, countries where news are not free to circulate on the web. Black holes include, among others, China, Cuba, Iran, Nepal, and Saudi Arabia.
Here’s a brief video in which the leader of the French Socialist Party, François Hollande, lays out the main questions that his party should be able to answer in the globalization debate. So many questions, so few answers…
New York Times journalist Elaine Sciolino just published an article in which she explains that the Sarkozy presidency believes that the French should think less and do more. Sarkozy ran his campaign with the slogan “Work more to earn more;” apparently, it should have been “Work more to think less”:
France is the country that produced the Enlightenment, Descartes’s one-liner, “I think, therefore I am,” and the solemn pontifications of Jean-Paul Sartre and other celebrity philosophers.
But in the government of President Nicolas Sarkozy, thinking has lost its cachet.
In proposing a tax-cut law last week, Finance Minister Christine Lagarde bluntly advised the French people to abandon their “old national habit.”
“France is a country that thinks,” she told the National Assembly. “There is hardly an ideology that we haven’t turned into a theory. We have in our libraries enough to talk about for centuries to come. This is why I would like to tell you: Enough thinking, already. Roll up your sleeves.”
Outraged reactions did not take long:
“How absurd to say we should think less!” said Alain Finkielkraut, the philosopher, writer, professor and radio show host. “If you have the chance to consecrate your life to thinking, you work all the time, even in your sleep. Thinking requires setbacks, suffering, a lot of sweat.”
Bernard-Henri Lévy, the much more splashy philosopher-journalist who wrote a book retracing Tocqueville’s 19th-century travels throughout the United States, is similarly appalled by Ms. Lagarde’s comments.
“This is the sort of thing you can hear in cafe conversations from morons who drink too much,” said Mr. Lévy.
What is interesting is that both sides of the controversy seem to believe that there’s a zero-sum relation between work and thinking: More work allegedly entails less thinking and vice-versa. Perhaps this logic applies to some heavy manual tasks but certainly not to people in office and leading France. Or at least, I hope not…
The 4th International AIDS Society conference is currently taking place in Sidney, Australia. Prevention and access to AIDS treatment are among the core issues being addressed. The case of Africa is particularly dramatic: 25.8 million people are HIV positive in sub-Saharan Africa, compared to 1.2 million in North America and 0.7 million in Western Europe! Access to treatment is similarly shocking: 90% and 70% of infected people get treatment in Western Europe and North America, respectively, compared to 17% in sub-Saharan Africa!
Le Monde provides a revealing world map of the AIDS epidemic. The map below, from Worldmapper.org, is also quite striking. It shows the proportion of all people aged 15-49 with HIV. “In 2003, the highest HIV prevalence was Swaziland, where 38%, or almost 4 in every 10 people aged 15 to 49 years, were HIV positive. All ten territories with the highest prevalence of HIV are in Central and Southeastern Africa.”
Exactly 20 years ago, ACT UP declared that the AIDS epidemic was a political crisis. As the map above clearly shows, this crisis has become global.
UPDATE: You may want to read two recent articles about the economics of the AIDS epidemic. One written by Mead Over on the Center for Global Development website and the other by William Easterly in the New York Review of Books.
It is commonly believed that trade liberalization in developing countries fosters child labor. Families would send their children to work in new export-driven sectors, particularly textile and apparel, while greedy multinational corporations would take advantage of these families’ desperate condition to shamelessly exploit children.
Well, think again. In an article just posted on VoxEu.org, Dartmouth economists Eric Edmonds and Nina Pavcnik argue that trade liberalization could actually have a positive effect on child labor:
“Our recent research shows that children are less likely to work in countries with more international trade. The negative association between trade and child labour holds even when considering only poor countries’ trade with high-income countries. It also holds up for trade in unskilled-labour intensive products. Quite simply, child labour is less prevalent in countries that trade more because countries that trade more are richer, and children work less in richer countries”
According to Edmonds and Pavcnik, instead of assuming that international trade can cause children to work we should begin by asking why do children work. The main reason children work in some developing countries is poverty. Trade liberalization could thus foster child labor if it makes families poorer. Edmonds and Pavcnik claim that it doesn’t, but that’s a heated debate in the development policy community. Most studies show that globalization and trade feed inequality but not necessarily poverty. World Bank studies show that globalization has reduced poverty but some scholars, like Robert Wade, have questioned the validity of World Bank indicators.
But whatever the actual causal relation between globalization and poverty, Edmonds and Pavcnik have a point when they write that:
“Before one boycotts a product with child labour content or supports punitive trade sanctions, one should ask whether these measures will make the child better off. Will boycotts or sanctions eliminate the reasons why children work? Thus far, most of the existing evidence suggests that eliminating sources of income will not make poor families better off. It will not change the circumstances that cause children to work.”
While the French military and Sarkozy were walking up the Champs-Élysées for the official July 14th celebration, an alternative parade was taking place: clowns were in charge, undocumented immigrants (sans-papiers) invoked the end of slavery in 1794, and environmentalist activists denounced genetically modified organisms and the use of nuclear energy. Look at the video produced by rue89.com:
Rue89.com has an interesting article on a French street photographer mysteriously called “JR.” He took shots of youths in the Parisian suburbs and then put huge posters of his pictures on the walls of Paris, so that people were forced to see these “others” that they try avoid. He did the same thing in Israel, putting large pictures of Palestinians on the Israeli side of the “security wall” and vice-versa. His technique is also quite original, for the pictures take the texture of the wall on which they are posted. Here’s a sample from the rue89.com website:
As many things today, the market of weapons is increasingly globalized and organized along transnational production chains (see report). The website of the global campaignControl Armshas a nice interactive map “which shows how companies circumvent arms regulations by selling components and subcontracting manufacturing overseas.” You can consult it here.
The French NGO 
