1st Global Conference on Transparency
Posted: September 18, 2010 Filed under: Conferences | Tags: Conference, Transparency Leave a comment »
In the context of CSR and regulation, transparency is becoming more and more important. Next year, the Rutgers School of Public Affairs and Administration in Newark is convening the 1st Global Conference on Transparency Research. Here you find the Call for Papers, which might not only be interesting for academics working in the field of regulation and CSR.
The purpose of the conference to bring together scholars from a wide range of fields including sociology, anthropology, political science, public administration, economics, political economy, journalism, business, and law who study issues of governmental transparency. This is the first large meeting of its kind to bring together leading scholars from throughout the world to collectively advance our understanding of the impact and implications of transparency policies that involve governments, either directly or indirectly. This includes policies on access to information held by and about governments, transparency relationships between government entities, transparency relationships between governments and private and nonprofit entities, and access to information heldby government about individuals. We are interested in learning about the effects of these policies and the processes around which they are developed and implemented. Papers and pre-formed panels are invited on any of the above issues.
Possible proposal topics include: governmental transparency at the subnational level, the ways in which governments regulate private entities, the ways in which private entities use government data, open public meetings, whistle blowing and leaks, informal document release processes, citizen demand driven transparency, the relationship between trust and transparency, the relationship between corruption and transparency, the intersection of privacy and transparency, surveillance studies, and the legal analysis of relevant laws. This list is meant to be illustrative and we look forward to receiving other relevant paper proposals.
One relatively new and instructive book in this context is: Fung, Graham, Weil (2007): Full disclosure. The perils and promise of transparency. Cambridge University Press.
Conference: Shopping to Save the World?
Posted: September 16, 2010 Filed under: Conferences | Tags: Conference, Development, Environment, Ethical consumption Leave a comment »
Here is a call for papers of the annual meeting of the annual meeting of the Association of American Geographers (AAG) in Seattle:
Shopping to Save the World? Ethical consumption, development and environment
This paper session will explore the various material and symbolic connections between people, places and natures that are highlighted and hidden through ethical consumption initiatives.
If consumption is becoming a new front line in development or environmental interventions and the market is being re-inscribed as the place for political and moral action, then what are the consequences of this in terms of environments, subject formation and networks of collaboration or oppression across spaces? What actors, processes and power dynamics are involved in framing ethical consumption as a viable ‘solution’ to global social and environmental problems? How do consumers embody this new form of ‘responsibility’? And how does this process result in new forms or understandings of caring across distance, solidarity, philanthropy, economies and/or nature?
Inspired by the vast amount of work in geography exploring the material and symbolic aspects of ethical consumption, questioning the meaning of ethical consumption and investigating the ways in which discourses of ethical consumption function, this session encourages participants to expand on this rich array of work by drawing on theories such as feminist geography, critical race theory, political ecology, neoliberalized natures and development geographies (for example); in order to further explore the ways in which ethical consumption can be approached and understood within the discipline.
Possible topics include but are not limited to:
- fair trade, sustainable, local, organic, ethical, developmental consumption
- anti-consumerist, simplicity movements
- ethical consumption discourses and subject formation
- the symbolic and material connections through ethical consumption networks
- North-South dynamics, development and consumption
- the geographical imaginaries of consumption
- commodity fetishism
- local-global power dynamics, scales and consumption networks
- feminist or critical race analyzes of ethical consumption
Titles and abstracts (250 words) of proposed papers should be sent to Roberta Hawkins (rohawkins(at)clarku.edu) by October 10th, 2010.
organic selection at munichfabricstart
Posted: August 26, 2010 Filed under: Conferences | Tags: Conference Leave a comment »
From 31/8 – 2/9 the munichfabricstart will take place, and for the first time it will have an “organic selection”. The textile fair might be interesting for all, who are looking for organic textiles. The organizers write:
“Featuring a selection of around 340 woven and knitted fabrics the organicselection Forum located right in the entrance concourse of Hall 4 is a cornerstone of this system – your pool of ideas. Experts will be ready and available to answer any questions or discuss matters with you. Our trade fair’s proprietary labelling with organicicons has been further refined so asto make assessment of the individual organic fabrics even easier for you.”
The info-leaflet “organicselection” provides some information about social and environmental standards. They rightly argue:
Ideally, clothing should be produced not only in a clean but also socially compatible way – making it doubly good. There are a plethora of social standards in use now – though they do denote different levels. Five acknowledged seals are permitted here. Exhibitors reaching this benchmark will receive one orange icon.
As acknowledged seals they permit: BSCI, Cotton made in Africa, ETI, FLO, SA 8000 – these are seemingly all standards that apply to the textile industry. I guess that the multi-stakeholder initiatives FLA, FWF, WRC are not listed here, because they do not apply to textile companies, but only to retailers and brands that are producing garments, which shows a problem of these approaches. However, regarding the textile industry this list shows that the ETI and SA 8000 are the only multi-stakeholder initiatives working on the level of textile production. The FLO standard only applies to the cotton fields, and CmiA (I guess) also. BSCI applies to textile producers, but the standard allows these companies to free-ride on standards to a quite large extent, as my own research showed.
