Is the Consumer's Voice Heard at All: Economic and Cultural Mediation Between Industry, Trade and Consumption (1945-1961)

The introduction of socialism entailed a fundamental reconstruction of bourgeois trade, which was labelled as "profiteering", "speculative" and "black marketeering". Alternative new trade, based on "sound and nationwide" foundations, was supposed to successfully link production and consumption through the planned distribution of goods, thus contributing to general prosperity and a happier future. However, the introduction of self-management in 1950 revitalized the principle of supply and demand and decentralized supply. The stated aim of the new regulations and the newly introduced control bodies was to establish ethical, efficient and "more civilized" trade, and to satisfy consumers' needs and wants. Although trade was assigned the role of mediator between production and consumption, research shows that in the course of the "social life" of things, a mutually constitutive relationship between industry, trade and consumers was being established, by means of which multiple "mediation regimes" were effectuated (Cronin 2004). While the first half of the 1950s was marked by trade interventions seeking to redefine the design and quality of manufactured goods, the second half of the decade saw a new departure. Industry, aided by designers as professional interpreters of consumer markets, sought to influence commercial buyers' choices with a new supply of goods aligned with consumers' wants. Through legislative acts which enabled the establishment of a consumers' council, direct mediation of consumers' needs and wants was also legitimized. These multidirectional cultural and economic mediations between industry, trade and the consumer were successful to a lesser or greater extent. Admittedly, in certain economic situations, both trade and industry used their capacity for blackmail to protect their guild interests. The hidden mechanisms of influence and power inhibited the mediating action of various actors and contributed to systemic confusion. However, it is indisputable that representatives of industry and trade as economic and cultural actors, together with consumers, sought to channel wants into economically presented forms of demand, and to gradually deconstruct the mechanisms of "dictatorship over needs" characteristic of socialist economies.

Protectionism

This chapter considers the flip side of the case on free trade, in which trade interventions are often misguided and costly. It analyzes tariffs and quotas on imports that inefficiently redistribute income from consumers to producers. It points out how trade barriers produce a net economic loss due to the costs of consumers exceeding the benefits to producers and reduce exports that harm downstream user industries. The chapter also addresses the question of why trade protectionism is often politically attractive. It examines situations in which protection may be justified in theory, even if governments might be ineffective in trying to take advantage of those situations.

Women, Fair Trade Tea, and Everyday Entrepreneurialism in Rural Darjeeling

Based on more than a decade of ethnographic research in Darjeeling’s non-plantation tea producing areas, this chapter highlights the gendered effects of Fair Trade certification of organic non-plantation tea on rural tea cooperatives. Through a focus on rural women’s everyday entrepreneurialism and their run-ins with the transnational Fair Trade bureaucracy, the chapter underscores how Fair Trade interventions can inadvertently strengthen patriarchal/gendered power relations in Fair Trade certified tea cooperatives in Darjeeling. It highlights how women tea farmers also creatively use specific Fair Trade interventions to defend their own entrepreneurial priorities and rupture Fair Trade’s imbrications with local patriarchies. Women tea farmers creatively juxtapose Fair Trade and swaccha vyāpār, a local translation of Fair Trade, to defend their own entrepreneurial ambitions and enact new modalities of women’s collective self-governance. This chapter brings much needed attention to women’s contemporary economic lives and their role in tea production in non-plantation rural locations of Darjeeling.

Quantitative methods of identifying the key nodes in the illegal wildlife trade network

Innovative approaches are needed to combat the illegal trade in wildlife. Here, we used network analysis and a new database, HealthMap Wildlife Trade, to identify the key nodes (countries) that support the illegal wildlife trade. We identified key exporters and importers from the number of shipments a country sent and received and from the number of connections a country had to other countries over a given time period. We used flow betweenness centrality measurements to identify key intermediary countries. We found the set of nodes whose removal from the network would cause the maximum disruption to the network. Selecting six nodes would fragment 89.5% of the network for elephants, 92.3% for rhinoceros, and 98.1% for tigers. We then found sets of nodes that would best disseminate an educational message via direct connections through the network. We would need to select 18 nodes to reach 100% of the elephant trade network, 16 nodes for rhinoceros, and 10 for tigers. Although the choice of locations for interventions should be customized for the animal and the goal of the intervention, China was the most frequently selected country for network fragmentation and information dissemination. Identification of key countries will help strategize illegal wildlife trade interventions.