Activist capitalism and supply-chain citizenship: Producing ethical regimes and ready-to-wear clothes

Current Anthropology

Volumn 52, Issue SUPPL. 3, 2011, Pages

  Partridge, Damani James ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 79953153382     PISSN: 00113204     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1086/657256     Document Type: Article

References (19)

1. In her work, sociologist Gay Seidman (2003) sees the roots of the trend toward corporate social responsibility and socially responsible investment (see also Welker and Wood 2011) in the corporate adoption of the Sullivan code, a voluntary corporate code of conduct developed by a General Motors (GM) director from Philadelphia, an "African American Baptist minister" (389) appointed under pressure from Ralph Nader and others to have black members on the GM board. The code would make it politically feasible for American corporations to stay invested in South Africa and initially stave off the more radical calls for total divestment during the apartheid era. It was ultimately divestment and U.S. government sanctions, according to Seidman, however, that broke the system. Countering the American multinational corporate arguments for sustained investments and more moderate transformation based on the code, she adds, "South African unionists understood that full economic sanctions would cut jobs for their members; but in contrast to contemporary debates about transnational companies in most developing countries, a larger goal-undermining the apartheid state-prevailed in their thinking" (Seidman 2003:398). In the introduction to their edited volume, Hidden Hands in the Market: Ethnographies of Fair Trade, Ethical Consumption, and Corporate Social Responsibility, De Neve, Luetchford, and Pratt (2008), paraphrasing Dinah Rajak, point out that "companies' continuous insistence on 'empowerment' and 'partnerships' with local communities is experience on the ground as a powerful extension of corporate control. In the process, an ideal-type citizen is fashioned, one who is able to respond to the entrepreneurial demands of the market and hence to use the market to 'uplift' themselves out of poverty. Paradoxically, market capitalism itself emerges as the celebrated vehicle for economic empowerment, social upliftment, and, ultimately, legitimate citizenship" (21).
2. In her work in the mid-1990s, Aihwa Ong (1996) used the term "graduated citizenship" to describe the unequal process of becoming a citizen for East Asian versus Southeast Asian immigrants. In her work centered in northern California, she found that Cambodian refugees were on a trajectory toward becoming black, whereas Chinese immigrants were on a trajectory toward becoming white.
3. In Ethnicity, Inc., writing about the neoliberalization of state (as opposed to corporate practices), Comaroff and Comaroff (2009) argue that "the rise of neoliberal voluntarism in many places-Britain and Italy are anything but alone in this-transforms modernist conventions of social responsibility into postmodern idealizations of ethical responsibility" (130). They add that "neoliberal ethnics are focused less on securing a state that nurtures human freedom or equality than one that underwrites and abets the 'entrepreneurial and competitive behaviour of economic-rational individuals'" (Comaroff and Comaroff 2009:130). While their focus is on the neoliberalization of the nation-state and the move toward what they call "Nationality, Inc.," my investigation has focused on how corporations are acting like not only entrepreneurial individuals but also governmental institutions with ethnical programs but without wide-scale local participation. In many cases, as I will show, these are programs that make claims not only to do the minimal harm but even, increasingly, to make lives better.
4. As opposed to governance, language such as "managing risk," "setting standards," or "compliance" is more common in the everyday parlance of ethical production (see also Dolan 2008). A recent annual report by the trade organization Organic Exchange writes about one of its signature programs: "CottonConnect was created in December 2009 as an independent company that will provide retailers with a much-needed holistic view of their supply chains (including an opportunity to manage the risks and leverage the opportunities within them; to better mitigate the social and environmental impact of their activities; and to reduce costs embedded within the chain) and help farmers convert to producing sustainable cotton (benefiting from associated lower input costs, health benefits and better long-term soil fertility" (http://organicexchange.org/oecms/images/stories/publications/ OE-2009-annual-report-080610.pdf;accessed August 18, 2010).
5. I, following authors such as Escobar (1995), am critical of the use of "development" as a term that both implies global hierarchies between the underdeveloped and the developed and also assumes an already defined (implicitly superior) path toward the future. The central argument about business, social impact, and sustainability seems to be that sustainability comes through having not only a social model that is ethical but also an economic model that can survive over time. The question, however, is to what extent the economic model of sustainability includes a value chain (see Gereffi, Humphrey, and Sturgeon 2005) that requires differentiated global economic standards for everyday existence.
6. I have also changed the names of the specific individual actors in order to have the space to be critical without potentially jeopardizing their jobs.
7. Because Righteous was just starting, it did not have as much leverage as it might in a few years to say where the cotton it bought should come from. In the conversation, she pointed me to the African Growth and Opportunity Act, which would end in 2005. The Chinese quotas (which limited Chinese exports to the United States and Europe to give other countries the opportunity for more trade) would also go away in 2005, meaning that a large portion of manufacturing would move to China and away from Africa and other places that could compete in terms of expertise or (low) cost. According to the current Web site, "The African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) was signed into law on May 18, 2000, as Title 1 of The Trade and Development Act of 2000. The Act offers tangible incentives for African countries to continue their efforts to open their economies and build free markets" (http://www.agoa.gov/;accessed June 13, 2008).
8. Quoting numbers from a 2000 International Labour Organization report, Esbenshade (2004) notes that "in 1995, Africa and Oceania accounted for just over 3 percent of clothing production and just under 3 percent of footware production" (123). The implication in this report and in the strategy of Rise is that Africa has mainly been involved in primary-resource extraction and not the more valuable trade of manufactured goods (G. Gereffi, "A Commodity Chains Framework for Analyzing Global Industries," unpublished manuscript).
9. While production can be moved throughout the world, does the fact that it is more difficult in Africa demonstrate a different type of social commitment? Is there also a market rationality for this move?
10. As the author of The Travels of a T-Shirt (Rivoli 2005) has noted, the connection of American cotton production to land-grant universities that work to maximize efficiency has made American cotton some of the cheapest in the world. The fact that land-grant institutions are also public, however, makes this an indirect subsidy.
11. I put "African" in quotes here because of the undifferentiated way in which Africa is often discussed. Of course, it is also not clear who these farmers are in the context of social justice and postcolonial histories.
12. In their work, Michael Porter and Mark Kramer (1999) have contrasted foundations and charities: "When a donor gives money to a social enterprise, all of the money goes to work creating social benefits. When a donor gives money to a foundation, most of the gift sits on the sidelines. On average, foundations donate only 5.5% of their assets to charity each year, a number slightly above the legal minimum of 5%. The rest is invested to create financial, not social, returns" (122). On the other hand, while making a general argument about how to add value to the kinds of social investments that foundations make, Porter and Kramer (1999) also note that "the permanence of a foundation's asset base means that it has an appropriately long time horizon to tackle social issues and develop expertise in its field" (123). In saying that their business is not charity, the activist capitalists seem to be making a related claim about their potential impact.
13. See Escobar (1995) for a critique of development.
14. Reading like an international aid policy statement, the language of a recent industry pilot-phase fair trade document emphasizes workers' basic needs. One of the central tensions in this notion of "basic need" is the international distribution of profit along the entire supply chain.
15. One should not forget that the social effects are not limited to the industries' own criteria for measurement of success.
16. More recently, work with a transnational network of NGOs has made monitoring possible, although a factory owner with whom I have been in conversation accused the NGO of calling to ask for bribes to pass the factory for the compliance criteria.
17. http://www.bergdorfgoodman.com/store/catalog/template/catB6a.jhtml? itemIdpcat100007&parentIdpcat50001&masterIdpcat261003&cmCatp (accessed June 17, 2008).
18. In other instances, I heard clothing industry managers talking about "the story" as critical to the success of new ventures.
19. Aihwa Ong (2006) writes about an intensifying competition between what she calls U.S.-based sweatshops and manufacturing centers in other parts of the world. Increasingly, she argues, Chinese workers in Los Angeles are in competition with Chinese workers in China, meaning that workers in Los Angeles must work for similar wages (when one takes into account the time it takes for goods to get from China to the United States). In a conversation with an Organics CEO who has made special efforts to continue producing some product lines in the United states, she pointed out the resistance of one particular fair trade initiative to work with American-based factories because of the strength of American laws in securing worker rights. She said that this was the case even when she pointed out all of the recent labor violations in Los Angeles or the kosher food scandal in the Midwest.