Environmental justice in South Africa: tools and trade‐offs

Despite constitutional commitments to environmental justice in South Africa, evidence indicates that the poor and the natural environment continue to be marginalised in decision making. This paper examines the role of environmental assessment procedures, specifically Environmental Impact Assessments, in shaping outcomes at the local level to understand how injustices are perpetuated and maintained. Injustices are understood here by examining the relationship between power, knowledge and rationality, and the effects these have on including the public in decision‐making processes. In the revamping of environmental assessment regulations in South Africa, much attention has been paid to streamlining the process of assessment. However, this paper argues that environmentally just decisions cannot be made in a context where debates are centred on process. Instead, debates need to be redirected to qualities of outcomes, foregrounding the need for an approach grounded in questions of value. Recognising that the poor and the natural environment tend to systematically lose out in a context where environment is pitted against development, environmental assessment must be able to take into account the distributional consequences of decisions. Furthermore, the paper makes a case for the need to challenge the broader political context within which environmental assessments are conducted, as environmental assessments cannot replace broader strategic and policy debates. In the absence of this broader institutional challenge, political power will continue to work through decision‐making tools to perpetuate and maintain systems of injustice.     

Economic experts or laypeople? How teachers and journalists judge trade and immigration policies

It is widely acknowledged that lay and expert perspectives on the economy widely diverge. In this context, teachers and journalists play a major role because they act as promoters for economic knowledge transfer through schools and media. This study analyzes how teachers and journalists judge economic policies and whether they are closer to an expert or a lay way of thinking. In four separate surveys, randomly chosen German adults (n = 190), economists (n = 80), social studies teachers (n = 97) and economic journalists (n = 90) were presented two policy proposals from the trade and immigration policy domain. Consistent with existing evidence, a large majority of the economists favored free trade and labor mobility and judged them as economically efficient and fair, while most of the laypeople hold contrary views. The answers from journalists and teachers generally lay in between economists and laypeople—with teachers being closer to laypeople and journalists tending more towards the economists. Interestingly however, teachers and journalists reverted to the same criteria for the judgment of economic policies as laypeople. All three groups based their judgments nearly exclusively on a policy proposal’s perceived fairness, while economists strongly focused on its economic efficiency.     

A tainted trade? Moral ambivalence and legitimation work in the private security industry1

The private security industry is often represented - and typically represents itself - as an expanding business, confident of its place in the world and sure of its ability to meet a rising demand for security. But closer inspection of the ways in which industry players talk about its past, present and future suggests that this self-promotion is accompanied by unease about the industry's condition and legitimacy. In this paper, we analyse the self-understandings of those who sell security - as revealed in interviews conducted with key industry players and in a range of trade materials - in order to highlight and dissect the constitutive elements of this ambivalence. This analysis begins by describing the reputational problems that are currently thought to beset the industry and the underlying fears about its status and worth that these difficulties disclose. We then examine how security players seek to legitimate the industry using various narratives of professionalization. Four such narratives are identified - regulation, education, association and borrowing - each of which seeks to justify private security and enhance the industry's social worth. What is striking about these legitimation claims is that they tend not to justify the selling of security in market terms. In conclusion we ask why this is the case and argue that market justifications are 'closed-off' by a moral ambivalence that attaches to an industry trading in products which cannot guarantee to deliver the condition that its consumers crave.     

Beyond the nature–labour divide: trade union responses to climate change in South Africa

ABSTRACT

We present the life histories of two environmentally engaged unionists in South Africa, who were decisive for formulating the environmental programmes of their respective trade unions. Their experiences of participating in the resistance against apartheid in universities and factories taught them the necessity to connect different struggles and equipped them with the knowledge and ability to connect the fight for workers’ rights with the fight against environmental degradation. Both activists experienced the difficulty of integrating ‘the environment’ politically and practically into a trade union agenda. The labour movement has traditionally experienced nature as a place outside of work to be enjoyed for recreation. While nature constitutes an indispensable condition for labour, it has been privately appropriated by Capital. For environmental policies to form an integral part of union agendas, nature needs to be wrestled away from its appropriation by Capital and understood as an inseparable ally of labour.     

The impact of US tariffs against China on US imports: Evidence for trade diversion?

We provide evidence on the existence of short-run trade diversion effects towards third countries as a consequence of tariff shocks. We exploit sudden policy changes in the context of the trade dispute between the United States and China in 2018. Based on a data set covering monthly product-level information on US imports from 30 countries for the period 2016 until May 2019, we employ a difference-in-differences estimation framework. Doing so, we can show a strong negative direct effect of US tariffs on US imports from China, but do not find evidence for significant short-run trade diversion effects towards third countries.     

Globalization and state size in East Asia: How do international NGOs cushion the effect of trade?

How does globalization influence the size of the state? Many studies examine the effect of economic globalization or the impact of International NGOs (INGOs, hereafter) on state size but fail to acknowledge the interdependent and antagonistic associations between them. This paper addresses this gap by examining the interaction of trade and INGOs and identify how this interaction differs in democratic and nondemocratic countries. In drawing on panel data from 6 East Asian countries in the period 1971-2009, this paper finds that the negative impact of trade on state size can be alleviated by the engagement of INGOs, and INGOs’ effect is much stronger in democratic countries. In addition, health INGOs have a similar pro-state effect which is also stronger in democracies. This suggests that INGOs help cushion the negative consequences of trade by collaborating with domestic actors, which is more likely to occur in democratic settings.     

Capitalism after slavery?: The French slave trade and slavery in the Atlantic, 1500–1900

La traite des Noirs; Bastilles négrières et velléités abolitionnistes. SERGE DAGET. Editions Quest‐France Université, 1990. 300 pp. 132 Ffr 70.

Esclaves et Citoyens, les Noirs à la Guadeloupe au XIXe siècle dans le processus de résistance et d'intégration, 1802–1910. JOSETTE FALLOPE. Basse Terre: Société d'Histoire de la Guadeloupe, 1992. 713 pp.     

More than profits? The contribution of the slave trade to the Dutch economy: assessing Fatah-Black and Van Rossum

We assess Fatah-Black and Van Rossum’s analysis of the Dutch slave trade by detailing six 1750s voyages of the Middelburg Commercial Company. The costs of transporting captives from Africa to Suriname are explored along with their relation to the Dutch economy. We also examine the implications of the concept ‘gross margin’, which is central to Fatah-Black and Van Rossum’s work. We find that, given the nature of the transport costs, the impact of the slave trade on the Dutch economy was minimal, and more generally that gross margin is not a useful measure for testing the Williams Thesis.     

Unanticipated consequences of “humanitarian intervention”: The British campaign to abolish the slave trade, 1807–1900

Building on Robert Merton’s theory of unanticipated consequences of purposive action and Charles Tilly’s theory of error correction, the present article presents a stylized narrative about the British campaign to abolish the trading in African slaves, from its beginning in 1807 until the end of the nineteenth century. In the end, this campaign was largely successful, though it required error corrections that had extremely far-reaching consequences. The colonization of Africa was, to a certain extent, a second-degree unanticipated consequence. This case study suggests that three sorts of error correction can be distinguished, namely (a) measures that are taken to facilitate the effective implementation of the purposive action; (b) measures that are taken to minimize unintended consequences, after the purposive action has been carried out; and (c) new purposive actions that widen the objective and are more far-reaching than the original purposive action.     

A ‘Wild West’ of trade? African women and men and the gendering of globalisation from below in Guangzhou

Based on fieldwork in Guangzhou, this paper documents the activities of a group of African women traders, highlighting their role in constituting globalisation from below or a counterhegemonic globalisation that emanates from China. It further builds on previous studies on women and development to show how neoliberal economic changes in Africa since the 1980s have forced African men into the traditionally feminine role of (informal) traders between Africa and China. Struggles for economic power between African women and men traders and representations of gender in such struggles as well as the construction of a hyper-masculine discourse in the Guangzhou context are analysed in discussing how women and men are engaged in a continual process of ‘making gender make sense’ outside of Africa.     

China’s flexible overseas food strategy: food trade and agricultural investment between Southeast Asia and China in 1990–2015

Using the UN Comtrade database and multiple sources of agricultural investment data, this paper outlines the emerging patterns of food trade and agricultural investment between Southeast Asian countries and China. The paper shows that China has adopted a flexible overseas food strategy. First, China has increased food export and shifted its food trade with Southeast Asia from a dependent relationship towards a complementary relationship at the regional level in recent years. Second, China tends to adapt to the existing conditions of food production and trade in Southeast Asian countries instead of fundamentally altering them. Finally, Chinese overseas agricultural investment is less driven by domestic food demand but more oriented for profit making, and this gives it flexibility in diversifying investment. An adequate understanding of China’s flexible food strategy in bilateral and multilateral relationships holds implications for global food security.     

Technical assistance,neo-colonialism or mutual trade? The experience of an Anglo/Ukrainian/Russian social work practice learning project

Since the collapse of the Soviet Union there has been a steady stream of Western consultants ready to work in Eastern Europe and Russia and share professional and academic expertise and experience. Social work, unknown as a discrete discipline or profession in the Soviet Union, has been a growth area with funding from a variety of sources to help promote East–West partnerships.

Social work theory and practice emphasises critical appraisal of policy and embraces issues of power, discrimination and oppression. Social work educators should therefore be especially alert to the complex ethical questions which these kinds of collaborations raise, and adept at finding practical solutions or workable compromises. This article explores these ethical and political issues with reference to a project to develop social work practice learning in a Russian oblast’ (region). The project was an ambitious partnership of British, Ukrainian and Russian educators, involving numerous Russian social work and related agencies, and four Russian universities and colleges in one oblast’. The authors use a series of vignettes to help the reader achieve insights into these East–West transactions. The article concludes with a discussion of different interpretations of these dealings, using three prisms: technical assistance, neo-colonialism and mutual trade.     

‘Cruel necessity’: capitalism,the discourse of sympathy,and the problem of the slave trade in the age of human rights

How did Frenchmen profiting from colonial slavery respond to the emergent discourse of human rights? Le commerce de l'Amérique par Marseille (1764), a trade manual by Auguste Chambon, provides exceptional insight into the moral imagination of eighteenth-century commercial capitalists. Chambon encouraged the French to pursue slaving more aggressively. Yet rather than deny the problem of slavery, he questioned openly whether slavery violated morality, religion, and natural rights, responding to Montesquieu, Rousseau and Voltaire from a rare Catholic-inspired perspective. Lamenting slavery as a ‘cruel necessity’ for France, Chambon enabled merchants to represent themselves as sympathetic and patriotic while preserving profits.