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Ethical Turn in International Development
Ethical Turn in International Development Eleanor Fisher, University of Reading, Reading, UK Ó 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Abstract The ethical turn in international development relates to a tendency to question the deleterious impact of international development action on local populations and environment. As a consequence, new courses of action are proposed in order to generate socially just and environmentally sustainable global change. This tendency is most prominent in relation to the development impacts of globalization of production and trade but also appears across a wide range of development sectors.
International development relates to change in living standards by developing countries through the elimination of poverty and the creation of institutional environments conducive to material improvement. It is a broad field encompassing topics as wide ranging as economics, politics, social transformation, overseas development assistance, health, infrastructure, education, governance, humanitarian relief, environmental change, human rights, and gender equality. Ethical concerns enter into all of these aspects. However an ‘ethical turn’ emerges most strongly out of the globalization of production and trade and is linked to demand by citizen-consumers to know where and how products and services originate, the conditions under which they have been produced and traded, and the sustainability of these processes. The ethical turn does not refer to coherent shared politics, values, or practices, but points to a tendency within international development, which emphasizes consideration of peoples’ quality of life in terms of healthy, secure, and sustainable living and work environments, and of the impact of development processes on people and the planet. Thus, the ethical turn has been consolidated through diverse international campaigns over labor rights, the mineral trade and conflict, food quality, animal welfare, health concerns, natural resource depletion, and environmental sustainability. Increasingly, citizen-consumers demand that ethical standards are upheld by companies and organizations producing and selling products and services from developing countries; they also demand that governments and international organizations demonstrate leadership in setting ethical development agendas and in ensuring ethical development practice.
state (Grande and Pauly, 2005). These processes are illustrated by Fisher (2012) in a case study of Wales, the world’s first Fair Trade Nation. In the Welsh example international development practice is driven by government’s close relationship to civil society organizations and businesses promoting ethical trade. In a global era driven by neoliberal capitalism, in which the centrality of the market is championed, the power of transnational corporations comes to the fore. This corporate power has potential for adverse social and environmental effects, as companies seek to source products and services at the lowest cost without considering broader externalities. Impoverished people may be paid a pittance for their labor and may work in conditions where negative impact on life well-being can be profound (Brown, 2000). Linked to this are questions over business standards in developing countries and who holds multinational corporations to account for their actions. Associated with changing relationships between state, market, and society is the rise of organizations that are explicitly in favor of globalization and play contradictory roles in the ethical turn in international development – both by acting as standard bearers for human development and human rights and, conversely, through stimulating unintended social protest in response to their actions. These organizations include the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations (UN). The WTO, IMF, OECD, and World Bank focus on aspects of economic development and the UN and its agencies on global security through the political, humanitarian, and social aspects of global development (Kingbury, 2012).
Globalization and Market Integration
The Governance of Ethics through Voluntary Regulation
Stiglitz (2006) conceives globalization as encompassing the increased integration of people and countries due to a change in information communication technologies, reduction in transportation costs, and the removal of cross-border barriers to the flow of goods, services, and capital. One aspect of globalization is an increasingly interdependent global market, as described by Kingsbury (2012). Another aspect of globalization, linked also to neoliberal capitalism, is a transformation in established orthodoxies on the relationship between the state, market, and society. The changing power of supra- and substate authorities, and the influence of nongovernmental organizations and companies mean a multiplicity of social actors and power regimes come together beyond the nation-
60
Voluntary regulation has emerged as an important mechanism for introducing ethical standards into aspects of international development. As Brunsson and Jacobsson (2000) describe, standards are rules that identify the course of action that those who adopt them should follow. The state has historically been the main body that promotes standards for regulation, often but not always backed by legislation. However, as global governance processes have become more complex, and in the context of an ideological emphasis on the neoliberal market as opposed to state control, voluntary regulation has become increasingly prominent across a wide range of development sectors. Standards associated with voluntary regulation perform
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 8
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.10153-9
Ethical Turn in International Development
two key functions: product differentiation and risk management. They are part of a wider ‘tripartite standards regime,’ which includes standard setting, certification, and accreditation, and reflects evolving governance processes in which state-based systems have shifted to networks of regulation that incorporate state, corporate, and nongovernmental actors (Loconto and Busch, 2010). Against this background an important issue is how local development actors, interests, and values shape the effect of standards on processes of development transformation relevant to ethical issues (Viteri and Arce, 2013). Both transnational social movement organizations and corporate actors promote the use of voluntary standards as mechanisms for ensuring that ethical issues are taken into account in international development in response to concerns by citizen-consumers about safety, quality, ethics, and production conditions (SC of the SKASC, 2012). This has led to a burgeoning of standards, certification, and product labels, as illustrated by information held by the International Trade Centre on over 100 voluntary standards (www.standardsmap. org). Global development organizations, such as UN agencies, also play important roles in leadership for global standards. This leadership is reflected in legally binding agreements, such as some labor standards promoted by the International Labor Organization (e.g., on child labor) and the Minemata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury, whose adoption has been led by United Nations’ Environment Programme through the Global Mercury Partnership and Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee. Standards also relate to nonmandatory guidance, such as the OECD’s 2011 Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas.
Corporate Social Responsibility Corporate social responsibility has been adopted by business as an approach to international development that brings ethical issues to the fore. It focuses on consideration of the social and environmental impacts of business activity and how they can be mitigated. Blowfield (2005) argues that the incorporation of corporate social responsibility as an approach to international development raises crucial questions about who benefits and in what ways; in particular, is it used as a vehicle for certain interest groups to redefine the meaning of international development success? In examining this question and the degree to which business focuses on instrumental outcomes in development as opposed to intrinsic gains, Edward and Tallontire (2009) outline a model to examine businesses’ role in development. To do this, the model presents two continuums: one focuses on the business–society relationship and the other on concepts of development (Tallontire, and Nelson 2013). Strength of this model is that it provides a means to observe and analyze the changing role of business in development, rather than positing ideal positions for or against. Examples of empirical analyses of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and development and relevant ethical issues are provided in an edited collection by Barrientos and Dolan (2006), examining how ethical sourcing has entered mainstream food retailing and
61
whether it can address problems facing workers and producers in the global food system.
Social Movements and Public Campaigns Nongovernmental organizations, trade unions, and the many different actors that are part of civil society have become increasingly important in international advocacy over ethical issues in developing countries, influencing policies, and affecting the contexts in which they are made. Micheletti et al. (2006) suggest that the global market in particular becomes a site for ethics and citizen action. They propose the idea of political consumption in which the market becomes a site for politics, expressing political values beyond traditional markers of value – price, taste, and quality. This can be seen in historically prominent international campaigns, such as the movement against apartheid in South Africa between 1959 and 1994, student protests in the 1970s over the multinational corporation Nestle’s sale of formula milk to mothers in the developing world, and violent demonstrations with diverse motivation in reaction to meetings of the WTO and Group of Eight (G8) leaders of the world’s most powerful countries. For Kriesberg (1997), these and similar campaigns reflect the rise of transnational social movement organizations, made possible by democratization, global integration, and the convergence and diffusion of values. Social movements promoting ethical causes in international development draw complex linkages between a wide range of development issues and actions that can be taken by government, business, and society. Two contrasting examples illustrate these processes. The first example comes from the African mining sector, which in the twenty-first century is a crucial driver for the ‘mineralization’ of economies and societies across the African continent (Bryceson et al., 2014). Emphasis on ethical issues in African mining has been stimulated by high-profile international campaigns on ‘conflict’ or ‘blood’ diamonds and minerals – where profits from the mineral trade fuel violent conflict – and by corporations worried about reputational damage as result of the negative social and environmental impacts of mining. These issues have brought traceability and accountability to the fore in the mineral trade. Focusing on artisanal gold production for fair trade markets, Fisher and Childs (2014) provide a case study on how voluntary regulation on ethical standards has entered into mineral production and trade in sub-Saharan Africa. They illustrate how a large number of ethical standards have been developed to certify the absence of conflict, good labor conditions, mitigation of environmental impacts, and development benefits for artisanal producers. These standards combine voluntary initiatives, e.g., the Fairtrade and Fairmined Gold Standard, with mandatory legislation, e.g., the United States Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Protection Act, and nonmandatory guidance by international organizations, e.g., UN Guidelines on Due Diligence. An important question is whether ethical standards, such as the Fairtrade and Fairmined Gold Standard, create new opportunities for market-led development transformation or whether they reinforce established patterns of power and
62
Ethical Turn in International Development
inequality with potentially detrimental and unintended consequences for artisanal producers or workers in large-scale mining operations. Fisher and Childs propose that Fairtrade has the potential to benefit artisanal gold producers, but suggest that there are significant impediments in practice to this occurring in ways that challenge established power and market relations to the benefit of the most marginalized in mining communities. See also Lompo and Trani (2013), who examine corporate social responsibility and development in the oil sector, presenting a case from Nigeria. A second example of linkages between ethical issues, development, and actions taken by social movement organizations is from the Latin American health sector. As countries develop, governments face the problem of what policy response to make to noncommunicable diseases. Among these diseases are the consequences of poisoning from reliance on use of dangerous pesticides in food crop production and subsequent deleterious effects on human health. Sherwood et al. (2013) examine pesticide use, noncommunicable diseases, and social action on the ethics of development in Ecuador. They outline three significant policy developments in modern food supply: making food accessible to the whole population, the arrival of energy-compact food products, and industrial food production – all have been associated with agricultural productivity reliant on high pesticide use. One unintended consequence relates to rising levels of obesity due to the high sugar and fat content of the food products. Challenging the use of pesticides and arguing for the need for healthier food consumption are social movement organizations, which propose alternatives to the dominant food regime. Sherwood et al. (2013) argue that the sheer violence of the pesticide technology has captured the public imagination, generating challenges to seemingly all-powerful and impervious food ideologies and business interests. An outcome of the ethical countermovement was the introduction of legislative measures to eliminate highly toxic pesticides. Examples from the African mining sector and Latin American health sector contrast markedly; nonetheless both highlight how international development issues generate ethical concerns and how social actors from civil society, government, and business respond to these concerns in ways that seek to challenge established practices and power relations in the favor of local people.
Conclusion The ethical turn in international development relates to a tendency to question the deleterious impact of international development action on local populations and environment. As a consequence, new courses of action are proposed in order to generate socially just and environmentally sustainable global change. This tendency is most prominent in relation to the globalization of production and trade, but also appears across a wide range of development sectors. In taking action on ethical issues, the changing dynamics between civil society, state, and market become apparent. The power of transnational corporations comes to the fore, but so does the ability of transnational social movement organizations to challenge the status quo in terms of power hierarchies and accepted values,
often through using the market as a site to express the politics of consumption but also by lobbying governments and global institutions.
See also: Culture and Economic Development; Development and the State; Ecocultural Theories of Development; Environment and Development; Global Development: Markets and Wellbeing; Globalization and Health; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Globalization and World Culture; Globalization, Anthropology of; Globalization: Welfare and Social Work; Migration and Development; Neoliberalism; Planning Issues and Sustainable Development; Sustainable Agriculture; Sustainable Development: An Economic Perspective.
Bibliography Barrientos, S., Dolan, C. (Eds.), 2006. Ethical Sourcing in the Global Food System. Earthscan, London & Sterling, VA. Blowfield, M., 2005. Corporate social responsibility: reinventing the meaning of development? International Affairs 81 (3), 515–524. Brown, D.K., 2000. International Trade and Core Labour Standards: A Survey of the Recent Literature, OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers 43. OECD Publishing. http://ideas.repec.org/p/tuf/tuftec/0005.html (accessed 22.06.13.). Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B., 2000. The contemporary expansion of standardization. In: Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B., Associates (Eds.), A World of Standards. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Bryceson, D.F., Fisher, E., Jønsson, J.B., Mwaipopo, R., 2014. Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Mineralizing and Democratizing Trends in Artisanal Production. Routledge, London, New York. Edward, P., Tallontire, A., 2009. Business and development – towards re-politicisation. Journal for International Development 21 (6), 819–833. Fisher, E., 2012. The “Fair trade nation”: market-oriented development in devolved European regions. Human Organization 71 (3), 255–267. Fisher, E., Childs, J., 2014. An ethical turn in African mining: voluntary regulation through fair trade. In: Bryceson, D., Fisher, E., Jønsson, J.B., Mwaipopo, R. (Eds.), Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Mineralizing and Democratising Trends. Routledge, London, New York. Grande, E., Pauly, L. (Eds.), 2005. Complex Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-first Century. Toronto University Press, Toronto. Kingsbury, D., 2012[2008]. Globalization and Development, in International Development: Issues and Challenges, second ed. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. pp. 112–137. Kriesberg, L., 1997. Social movements and global transformation. In: Smith, J., Chatfield, C., Pagnucco, R. (Eds.), Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Loconto, A., Busch, L., 2010. Standards, techno-economic networks, and playing fields: performing the global market economy. Review of International Political Economy 17 (3), 507–536. Lompo, K., Trani, J.-F., 2013. Does corporate social responsibility contribute to human development in developing countries? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 14 (2), 241–265. Micheletti, M., Follesdal, A., Stolle, D. (Eds.), 2006. Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past & Present. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Sherwood, S., Arce, A., Berti, P., Borja, R., Oyarzun, P., Bekkering, E., 2013. Tackling the new materialities: modern food and counter-movements in ecuador. Food Policy 41, 1-10. Steering Committee of the State-of-Knowledge Assessment of Standards and Certification. 2012. Toward Sustainability: The Roles and Limitations of Certification. RESOLVE, Inc., Washington, DC. Available at: http://www.resolv.org/siteassessment/files/2012/06/Report-Only.pdf (accessed 31.07.12.). Stiglitz, J., 2006. Making Globalization Work: The Next Steps to Global Justice. Allen Lane, London. Tallontire, A.M., Nelson, V.J., 2013. Fair trade narratives and political dynamics, Social Enterprise Journal 9, 28–52. Viteri, L., Arce, A., 2013. The negotiation of quality standards: a social interactionist approach to fruit and vegetable distribution in Argentina. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 20 (1).
Abstract The ethical turn in international development relates to a tendency to question the deleterious impact of international development action on local populations and environment. As a consequence, new courses of action are proposed in order to generate socially just and environmentally sustainable global change. This tendency is most prominent in relation to the development impacts of globalization of production and trade but also appears across a wide range of development sectors.
International development relates to change in living standards by developing countries through the elimination of poverty and the creation of institutional environments conducive to material improvement. It is a broad field encompassing topics as wide ranging as economics, politics, social transformation, overseas development assistance, health, infrastructure, education, governance, humanitarian relief, environmental change, human rights, and gender equality. Ethical concerns enter into all of these aspects. However an ‘ethical turn’ emerges most strongly out of the globalization of production and trade and is linked to demand by citizen-consumers to know where and how products and services originate, the conditions under which they have been produced and traded, and the sustainability of these processes. The ethical turn does not refer to coherent shared politics, values, or practices, but points to a tendency within international development, which emphasizes consideration of peoples’ quality of life in terms of healthy, secure, and sustainable living and work environments, and of the impact of development processes on people and the planet. Thus, the ethical turn has been consolidated through diverse international campaigns over labor rights, the mineral trade and conflict, food quality, animal welfare, health concerns, natural resource depletion, and environmental sustainability. Increasingly, citizen-consumers demand that ethical standards are upheld by companies and organizations producing and selling products and services from developing countries; they also demand that governments and international organizations demonstrate leadership in setting ethical development agendas and in ensuring ethical development practice.
state (Grande and Pauly, 2005). These processes are illustrated by Fisher (2012) in a case study of Wales, the world’s first Fair Trade Nation. In the Welsh example international development practice is driven by government’s close relationship to civil society organizations and businesses promoting ethical trade. In a global era driven by neoliberal capitalism, in which the centrality of the market is championed, the power of transnational corporations comes to the fore. This corporate power has potential for adverse social and environmental effects, as companies seek to source products and services at the lowest cost without considering broader externalities. Impoverished people may be paid a pittance for their labor and may work in conditions where negative impact on life well-being can be profound (Brown, 2000). Linked to this are questions over business standards in developing countries and who holds multinational corporations to account for their actions. Associated with changing relationships between state, market, and society is the rise of organizations that are explicitly in favor of globalization and play contradictory roles in the ethical turn in international development – both by acting as standard bearers for human development and human rights and, conversely, through stimulating unintended social protest in response to their actions. These organizations include the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the World Bank, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and the United Nations (UN). The WTO, IMF, OECD, and World Bank focus on aspects of economic development and the UN and its agencies on global security through the political, humanitarian, and social aspects of global development (Kingbury, 2012).
Globalization and Market Integration
The Governance of Ethics through Voluntary Regulation
Stiglitz (2006) conceives globalization as encompassing the increased integration of people and countries due to a change in information communication technologies, reduction in transportation costs, and the removal of cross-border barriers to the flow of goods, services, and capital. One aspect of globalization is an increasingly interdependent global market, as described by Kingsbury (2012). Another aspect of globalization, linked also to neoliberal capitalism, is a transformation in established orthodoxies on the relationship between the state, market, and society. The changing power of supra- and substate authorities, and the influence of nongovernmental organizations and companies mean a multiplicity of social actors and power regimes come together beyond the nation-
60
Voluntary regulation has emerged as an important mechanism for introducing ethical standards into aspects of international development. As Brunsson and Jacobsson (2000) describe, standards are rules that identify the course of action that those who adopt them should follow. The state has historically been the main body that promotes standards for regulation, often but not always backed by legislation. However, as global governance processes have become more complex, and in the context of an ideological emphasis on the neoliberal market as opposed to state control, voluntary regulation has become increasingly prominent across a wide range of development sectors. Standards associated with voluntary regulation perform
International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2nd edition, Volume 8
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-08-097086-8.10153-9
Ethical Turn in International Development
two key functions: product differentiation and risk management. They are part of a wider ‘tripartite standards regime,’ which includes standard setting, certification, and accreditation, and reflects evolving governance processes in which state-based systems have shifted to networks of regulation that incorporate state, corporate, and nongovernmental actors (Loconto and Busch, 2010). Against this background an important issue is how local development actors, interests, and values shape the effect of standards on processes of development transformation relevant to ethical issues (Viteri and Arce, 2013). Both transnational social movement organizations and corporate actors promote the use of voluntary standards as mechanisms for ensuring that ethical issues are taken into account in international development in response to concerns by citizen-consumers about safety, quality, ethics, and production conditions (SC of the SKASC, 2012). This has led to a burgeoning of standards, certification, and product labels, as illustrated by information held by the International Trade Centre on over 100 voluntary standards (www.standardsmap. org). Global development organizations, such as UN agencies, also play important roles in leadership for global standards. This leadership is reflected in legally binding agreements, such as some labor standards promoted by the International Labor Organization (e.g., on child labor) and the Minemata Convention on Mercury, a global treaty to protect human health and the environment from the adverse effects of mercury, whose adoption has been led by United Nations’ Environment Programme through the Global Mercury Partnership and Intergovernmental Negotiation Committee. Standards also relate to nonmandatory guidance, such as the OECD’s 2011 Due Diligence Guidance for Responsible Supply Chains of Minerals from Conflict-Affected and High-Risk Areas.
Corporate Social Responsibility Corporate social responsibility has been adopted by business as an approach to international development that brings ethical issues to the fore. It focuses on consideration of the social and environmental impacts of business activity and how they can be mitigated. Blowfield (2005) argues that the incorporation of corporate social responsibility as an approach to international development raises crucial questions about who benefits and in what ways; in particular, is it used as a vehicle for certain interest groups to redefine the meaning of international development success? In examining this question and the degree to which business focuses on instrumental outcomes in development as opposed to intrinsic gains, Edward and Tallontire (2009) outline a model to examine businesses’ role in development. To do this, the model presents two continuums: one focuses on the business–society relationship and the other on concepts of development (Tallontire, and Nelson 2013). Strength of this model is that it provides a means to observe and analyze the changing role of business in development, rather than positing ideal positions for or against. Examples of empirical analyses of the relationship between corporate social responsibility and development and relevant ethical issues are provided in an edited collection by Barrientos and Dolan (2006), examining how ethical sourcing has entered mainstream food retailing and
61
whether it can address problems facing workers and producers in the global food system.
Social Movements and Public Campaigns Nongovernmental organizations, trade unions, and the many different actors that are part of civil society have become increasingly important in international advocacy over ethical issues in developing countries, influencing policies, and affecting the contexts in which they are made. Micheletti et al. (2006) suggest that the global market in particular becomes a site for ethics and citizen action. They propose the idea of political consumption in which the market becomes a site for politics, expressing political values beyond traditional markers of value – price, taste, and quality. This can be seen in historically prominent international campaigns, such as the movement against apartheid in South Africa between 1959 and 1994, student protests in the 1970s over the multinational corporation Nestle’s sale of formula milk to mothers in the developing world, and violent demonstrations with diverse motivation in reaction to meetings of the WTO and Group of Eight (G8) leaders of the world’s most powerful countries. For Kriesberg (1997), these and similar campaigns reflect the rise of transnational social movement organizations, made possible by democratization, global integration, and the convergence and diffusion of values. Social movements promoting ethical causes in international development draw complex linkages between a wide range of development issues and actions that can be taken by government, business, and society. Two contrasting examples illustrate these processes. The first example comes from the African mining sector, which in the twenty-first century is a crucial driver for the ‘mineralization’ of economies and societies across the African continent (Bryceson et al., 2014). Emphasis on ethical issues in African mining has been stimulated by high-profile international campaigns on ‘conflict’ or ‘blood’ diamonds and minerals – where profits from the mineral trade fuel violent conflict – and by corporations worried about reputational damage as result of the negative social and environmental impacts of mining. These issues have brought traceability and accountability to the fore in the mineral trade. Focusing on artisanal gold production for fair trade markets, Fisher and Childs (2014) provide a case study on how voluntary regulation on ethical standards has entered into mineral production and trade in sub-Saharan Africa. They illustrate how a large number of ethical standards have been developed to certify the absence of conflict, good labor conditions, mitigation of environmental impacts, and development benefits for artisanal producers. These standards combine voluntary initiatives, e.g., the Fairtrade and Fairmined Gold Standard, with mandatory legislation, e.g., the United States Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Protection Act, and nonmandatory guidance by international organizations, e.g., UN Guidelines on Due Diligence. An important question is whether ethical standards, such as the Fairtrade and Fairmined Gold Standard, create new opportunities for market-led development transformation or whether they reinforce established patterns of power and
62
Ethical Turn in International Development
inequality with potentially detrimental and unintended consequences for artisanal producers or workers in large-scale mining operations. Fisher and Childs propose that Fairtrade has the potential to benefit artisanal gold producers, but suggest that there are significant impediments in practice to this occurring in ways that challenge established power and market relations to the benefit of the most marginalized in mining communities. See also Lompo and Trani (2013), who examine corporate social responsibility and development in the oil sector, presenting a case from Nigeria. A second example of linkages between ethical issues, development, and actions taken by social movement organizations is from the Latin American health sector. As countries develop, governments face the problem of what policy response to make to noncommunicable diseases. Among these diseases are the consequences of poisoning from reliance on use of dangerous pesticides in food crop production and subsequent deleterious effects on human health. Sherwood et al. (2013) examine pesticide use, noncommunicable diseases, and social action on the ethics of development in Ecuador. They outline three significant policy developments in modern food supply: making food accessible to the whole population, the arrival of energy-compact food products, and industrial food production – all have been associated with agricultural productivity reliant on high pesticide use. One unintended consequence relates to rising levels of obesity due to the high sugar and fat content of the food products. Challenging the use of pesticides and arguing for the need for healthier food consumption are social movement organizations, which propose alternatives to the dominant food regime. Sherwood et al. (2013) argue that the sheer violence of the pesticide technology has captured the public imagination, generating challenges to seemingly all-powerful and impervious food ideologies and business interests. An outcome of the ethical countermovement was the introduction of legislative measures to eliminate highly toxic pesticides. Examples from the African mining sector and Latin American health sector contrast markedly; nonetheless both highlight how international development issues generate ethical concerns and how social actors from civil society, government, and business respond to these concerns in ways that seek to challenge established practices and power relations in the favor of local people.
Conclusion The ethical turn in international development relates to a tendency to question the deleterious impact of international development action on local populations and environment. As a consequence, new courses of action are proposed in order to generate socially just and environmentally sustainable global change. This tendency is most prominent in relation to the globalization of production and trade, but also appears across a wide range of development sectors. In taking action on ethical issues, the changing dynamics between civil society, state, and market become apparent. The power of transnational corporations comes to the fore, but so does the ability of transnational social movement organizations to challenge the status quo in terms of power hierarchies and accepted values,
often through using the market as a site to express the politics of consumption but also by lobbying governments and global institutions.
See also: Culture and Economic Development; Development and the State; Ecocultural Theories of Development; Environment and Development; Global Development: Markets and Wellbeing; Globalization and Health; Globalization and Transnational Corporations; Globalization and World Culture; Globalization, Anthropology of; Globalization: Welfare and Social Work; Migration and Development; Neoliberalism; Planning Issues and Sustainable Development; Sustainable Agriculture; Sustainable Development: An Economic Perspective.
Bibliography Barrientos, S., Dolan, C. (Eds.), 2006. Ethical Sourcing in the Global Food System. Earthscan, London & Sterling, VA. Blowfield, M., 2005. Corporate social responsibility: reinventing the meaning of development? International Affairs 81 (3), 515–524. Brown, D.K., 2000. International Trade and Core Labour Standards: A Survey of the Recent Literature, OECD Labour Market and Social Policy Occasional Papers 43. OECD Publishing. http://ideas.repec.org/p/tuf/tuftec/0005.html (accessed 22.06.13.). Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B., 2000. The contemporary expansion of standardization. In: Brunsson, N., Jacobsson, B., Associates (Eds.), A World of Standards. Oxford University Press, Oxford. Bryceson, D.F., Fisher, E., Jønsson, J.B., Mwaipopo, R., 2014. Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Mineralizing and Democratizing Trends in Artisanal Production. Routledge, London, New York. Edward, P., Tallontire, A., 2009. Business and development – towards re-politicisation. Journal for International Development 21 (6), 819–833. Fisher, E., 2012. The “Fair trade nation”: market-oriented development in devolved European regions. Human Organization 71 (3), 255–267. Fisher, E., Childs, J., 2014. An ethical turn in African mining: voluntary regulation through fair trade. In: Bryceson, D., Fisher, E., Jønsson, J.B., Mwaipopo, R. (Eds.), Mining and Social Transformation in Africa: Mineralizing and Democratising Trends. Routledge, London, New York. Grande, E., Pauly, L. (Eds.), 2005. Complex Sovereignty: Reconstituting Political Authority in the Twenty-first Century. Toronto University Press, Toronto. Kingsbury, D., 2012[2008]. Globalization and Development, in International Development: Issues and Challenges, second ed. Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke. pp. 112–137. Kriesberg, L., 1997. Social movements and global transformation. In: Smith, J., Chatfield, C., Pagnucco, R. (Eds.), Transnational Social Movements and Global Politics: Solidarity beyond the State. Syracuse University Press, Syracuse, New York. Loconto, A., Busch, L., 2010. Standards, techno-economic networks, and playing fields: performing the global market economy. Review of International Political Economy 17 (3), 507–536. Lompo, K., Trani, J.-F., 2013. Does corporate social responsibility contribute to human development in developing countries? Evidence from Nigeria. Journal of Human Development and Capabilities 14 (2), 241–265. Micheletti, M., Follesdal, A., Stolle, D. (Eds.), 2006. Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past & Present. Transaction Publishers, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Sherwood, S., Arce, A., Berti, P., Borja, R., Oyarzun, P., Bekkering, E., 2013. Tackling the new materialities: modern food and counter-movements in ecuador. Food Policy 41, 1-10. Steering Committee of the State-of-Knowledge Assessment of Standards and Certification. 2012. Toward Sustainability: The Roles and Limitations of Certification. RESOLVE, Inc., Washington, DC. Available at: http://www.resolv.org/siteassessment/files/2012/06/Report-Only.pdf (accessed 31.07.12.). Stiglitz, J., 2006. Making Globalization Work: The Next Steps to Global Justice. Allen Lane, London. Tallontire, A.M., Nelson, V.J., 2013. Fair trade narratives and political dynamics, Social Enterprise Journal 9, 28–52. Viteri, L., Arce, A., 2013. The negotiation of quality standards: a social interactionist approach to fruit and vegetable distribution in Argentina. International Journal of Sociology of Agriculture and Food 20 (1).