one more example of why she was my favorite professor at Cal. #GlobalPOV project. Ananya Roy.
“The second video in The #GlobalPOV Project series is an exploration of ethical consumerism and fair trade interventions. However tempting it may be to believe that we save lives, empower women and do good with our purchases, the impacts of our consumption on poverty cannot be reduced to mere product labels. Consumers need to understand the life histories of global commodities and advocate for changes in how these items are produced, traded and consumed.”
Right now, it’s a loser’s game to try to find a more ethical smartphone. Everything and everyone is compromised. But it’s a winner’s game to figure out how to use what we’ve got to bring progressive change. We have computers in our pockets that not only connect us more easily and effortlessly to information about what’s going on in the rest of the world than ever before, but also connect us to each other. We might (and we should) feel guilty and ashamed when we stop to think about the suffering of the workers who built those devices, and it sure seems like there’s a hell of a market opportunity for someone who figures out how to build these devices through a clean and green, worker-friendly supply chain, but in the meantime, our best option is to use our devices to learn more, donate money where it is most effective, and make our voices heard. In this crazy ultra-connected world, we might end up surprised at how fast things can turn around.
Andrew Leonard, Salon
(Source: ciigaretteduett)
Writers, actors, and prostitutes all face the same fundamental economic problem: they are competing with amateurs who are pretty good and will work for nothing.
(Source: barefootravels)
(Source: rockoutwithyourguacout)
