Robin Dunford

Globalisation, cost competitiveness and international trade: The evolution of the Italian textile and clothing industries and the growth of trade with China:

Amongst developed countries, Italy is unusual in that it has maintained a specialisation in traditional industries such as textiles and clothing (TCI). Explanations of Italy’s unusual industrial profile mainly emphasise the role of endogenous economic and cultural resources. Globalisation in the 1990s and 2000s saw slow growth and a significant decline of these formerly resilient industries. Analyses of trade and unit value data support accounts of the lateness of the Italian TCI’s movement in the direction of Outward Processing Traffic (OPT) and the subsequent rise of a pan-Euro-Mediterranean system. More recently, however, this system has declined as a result of new competitive challenges from China and other emerging economies that have eroded the position of Italian enterprises on export and domestic markets and adversely affected their Euro-Mediterranean suppliers. As district and value-chain theories show, the geography of industrial activities is a result of enterprise strategies and the environment in which they operate. To embrace recent trends these theories must, however, be extended to give greater weight to exchange rate, trade, market, demand-side and related institutional issues.

Human rights and collective emancipation: the politics of food sovereignty

This article develops contextually grounded accounts of emancipation in general and notions of collective rights based emancipation in particular by identifying a form of emancipatory politics in which collectives demand rights for themselves. The article develops the idea of collective, rights based emancipation by focusing on the practices of two related social movements, the Landless Workers Movement (MST) and la Via Campesina. The MST and Via Campesina seek to replace existing rights to ‘food security’ with a human right to ‘food sovereignty’. While food security agendas emphasise the role of international governance agencies in providing food on behalf of others, food sovereignty is secured by peasant social movements themselves. Furthermore, practices of active citizenship and democratic organisational structures, built through the grassroots and transnational struggles through which peasants raise their demand for human rights, are vital in enacting rights to food sovereignty. In instances where victims are not entirely silenced and powerless, this combination of a demand for human rights and the development of practices of citizenship that enable people to demand and secure rights for themselves provides a contextually grounded emancipatory alternative to interventionist politics that, however well intentioned, risk reinforcing the dependence of purportedly powerless victims.

Peasant activism and the rise of food sovereignty: Decolonising and democratising norm diffusion?

‘Food sovereignty’ emerged from grassroots peasant mobilisations, and has been spread globally by a democratically organised social movement, la Vía Campesina. This process has seen food sovereignty influence global political discourse, transform national constitutions and be incorporated into a proposed United Nations declaration on the rights of peasants and other people working in rural areas. By examining the role of grassroots actors in the global South in the construction of this emerging global norm, I militate against tendencies of West-centrism and elitism in existing literature on the contemporary diffusion of norms. By also discussing the potential marginalisation of grassroots peasant voices in recent United Nations discussions, I suggest that these elitist and West-centric tendencies may also exist in the norm diffusion process itself.

Regional development, equality and gender: moving towards more inclusive and socially sustainable measures

As the efficacy of the neoliberal model is now in question this is an appropriate moment to consider ‘what kind of regional development and for whom?’, or, as the authors interpret it, what kind of development model would be inclusive and economically and socially sustainable. Current indicators of regional performance are based on growth alone, overlook distribution and so misrepresent the performance of regions in terms of social well-being. An alternative, more inclusive measure of regional development and a gender sensitive variant are calculated for UK regions. On these measures London falls from the top ranked region to a middle rank on the regional development indicator and on the gender sensitive variant falls to the lowest position, arguably better reflecting the experience of life in this region. Optimistically, use of these measures would lead to more inclusive models of development that would render the more contentious social, redistributive policies less necessary.

Toward a decolonial global ethics

ABSTRACT This paper argues that decolonial theory can offer a distinctive and valuable ethical lens. Decolonial perspectives give rise to an ethics that is fundamentally global but distinct from, and critical of, moral cosmopolitanism. Decolonial ethics shares with cosmopolitanism a refusal to circumscribe normative commitments on the basis of existing political and cultural boundaries. It differs from cosmopolitanism, though, by virtue of its rejection of the individualism and universalism of cosmopolitan thought. Where cosmopolitan approaches tend to articulate abstract principles developed from within a particular Western tradition, decolonial approaches reject abstract global designs in favour of inter-cultural dialogue amongst multiple people(s), including peoples who deem collective and non-human entities to be of fundamental moral importance. In addition, decolonial global ethics rejects universality in favour of ‘pluriversality’.

Vernacular rights cultures and the 'Right to Have Rights'

We use a case study of the Landless Workers Movement (MST) in Brazil and the Via Campesina network of which they are part to develop the concept of ‘vernacular rights cultures’. Vernacular rights cultures calls attention to the way in which demands for the right to have rights call on particular cultures, histories and political contexts in a manner that can transform the rights inscribed in constitutions and political imaginaries. What Ranciere (1999) and Balibar (2002) call the democratisation of democracy, we therefore argue, does not just involve a logic of equality and inclusion through which dispossessed groups demand already existing rights. Rather, it also occurs as mobilisations alter the means through which rights are delivered and transform the content and meaning of the rights demanded.

Autonomous peasant struggles and left arts of government

I argue that self-organisation cannot account for how grassroots struggles can pursue transnational political change. I develop an account of some ‘left arts of government’ through which resistance is facilitated and organised without reintroducing oppressive and hierarchical forms of rule. I do so by focusing on the practices of autonomous peasant mobilisations. Land occupation movements facilitate the ability of people to engage in ongoing resistance on their own behalf. They organise resistance through horizontal communication and through transnational networks involving representative structures. Finally, peasant mobilisations engage with states and international institutions to solidify gains made.

Weak Intentionalism and the Death of the Subject

Does Bevir’s weak intentionalism clash irredeemably with the rejection of conceptions of subjectivity in the work of Deleuze and the later Foucault? The paper examines the notion of the subject required by Bevir’s weak intentionalism, before turning to the ‘rejection’ of the subject found in the work of Deleuze and the later Foucault, suggesting that this rejection only rejects the subject as something fully autonomous and given in advance, and does not constitute a global rejection of any subject capable of intentional meaning. A subject who intends is perfectly permissible within the context of Deleuze and Foucault’s philosophies, provided that they are regarded as emergent phenomena from multiple impressions, processes, forces and powers. This subject is in fact a strong candidate for weak intentionalism. However, the Deleuzean–Foucaultian conception of the subject does problematize Bevir’s restriction of historical meaning to the meanings of individual subjects, and not to collectivities. Collectivities, much like individuals, can be conceived as emergent phenomena from multiple matters, relations, powers, individuals and so on, and therefore seem capable of generating meanings, much in the way that subjects can generate meanings. We must, therefore, ask what is so special about the individual subject such that only they are capable of meaning.