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LAW MANTRATHINK BEYOND OTHERS

(National Monthly Journal, I.S.S.N 2321-6417)

CONSUMER ACTIVISIM

*Miss Sanskriti Singh BBA .,LL.B (Hons.)

(4TH YEAR) UPES,Dehradun

ABSTRACT

The goal of our project was to research the history of modern boycott, create a philosophical framework to address the moral issues of the project and finally to design a tool to utilize existing technology and information database, with a goal of providing information to consumers at the point of purchase. The tool was intended to be only a prototype which, upon completion of the project, could be made available.

The literature has typically expressed environmental quality as a function of per capita income ignoring the role consumption choices can play as a potential mediating factor between environmental degradation and economic growth. Consumption can affect the environment in many ways: higher levels of consumption (and therefore higher levels of production) require larger inputs of energy and material and generate larger quantities of waste by products. Increased extraction and exploitation of natural resources, accumulation of waste and concentration of pollutants can damage the environment and, on the long run, limit economic activity. consumerism, a term used by sociologists to describe the effects of equating personal happiness with purchasing material possessions, can even do worse as long as it determines an increase in the amount of purchased goods. The object of this article is to analyse the relationship between consumerism and environment. We critically review the empirical findings of the Environmental Kuznets Curve literature, according to which an inverted U-relationship between environmental degradation and economic growth is observed. In particular, we focused our attention on consumption-based approaches to the income-environment relation in order to better identify the impact

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of consumerism on the environment. We finally suggest a possible specification and estimation of a reduced form equation relating several impact indicator to consumption per capita.

In order to accomplish these goals we engaged in extensive research of consumer movements, philosophical position which were both complementary and antithetical to the project, existing technologies and possible implementations, and already existing organizations with similar objectives. Additionally we interviewed expert professors on the same topic and also conducted a survey of local college students with the question pertaining to use interest and familiarity of the issues addressed by the project and finally worked on its implementation.

ORIGIN OF CONSUMER ACTIVISM In many ways, the rise of the cooperative and consumer movements were linked to that of the trade union movement and enhanced social activism. Cooperatives were an effective response by agricultural and rural communities in Europe and North America protecting their interests and livelihoods against powerful landowners and big business owners at that time who sought to exploit cheap labor, land and raw materials to make even greater profit through trade. In this respect and looking at the ongoing challenges in global trade and the economy today, not a great deal has changed.1 Cooperatives were - and are still - based on the principles of solidarity and community and focused on ensuring an improved standard of living for workers by providing products and services at affordable prices. The movement became gradually more structured and organized over the years, providing health, housing and banking services, promoting gender and education equality and protecting the environment and workers' rights. Their strength was built on the fact that the cooperative - usually workers in a particular location -owned everything from the land on which crops were grown, to the factories that made comestible products and the shops that sold them. Prices were maintained at affordable levels for working people and, today, there are millions who benefit from the cooperative movement, mainly in developing countries. However, over time the movement faded somewhat in industrialized countries as economies grew more sophisticated and competitive. Nevertheless, a growth in ethical and environmental awareness in the late 20th century has seen renewed interest in cooperative principles and values.

THE RISE OF CONSUMER GROUPS The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw the gradual establishment of a more formal consumer movement in emerging industrialised countries, which focused more specifically on ensuring that people were able to get value for their money in terms of their purchases. For example, a Consumers League was formed in New York,USA, in 1891 and by 1898 the National Consumers League had been created.

1 S. Chase & F. J. Schlink, Your Moneys Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumers Dollar (NewYork: Macmillan, 1927).

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In Great Britain, the Consumers Council, which later became the Consumers' Association, was established around the time of World War I. These early movements became less concerned with political agitation or cooperative action, instead turning their attention to providing authoritative information to consumers to enable them to obtain better value for their money. This focus by early consumer activist groups led to a strengthening of the legal framework of the retail sector, including advertising regulation and improved labeling requirements of food, drugs, cosmetics and other consumer goods. Unfortunately, whilst the loss of jobs in rich countries is in itself a serious problem for the workers who lose out there, in poor countries too there are often very negligible gains from globalization: the workers are not well-paid, nor are they in secure employment with decent benefits and adequate levels of social protection.2 (See accompanying box on Uganda) What is important is that workers throughout the world should have decent working conditions and in this the Irish trade union movement follows the ILO policy of campaigning for decent work wherever there is an opportunity of job creation or job-maintenance.3Without significant and fundamental reform of the WTO,globalisation as it is currently being practiced cannot bemanaged for everybodys benefit, because not everybody is engaged in the relevant decision-making processes. If the trade union movement can become a partner to help the WTO, then working people will engage in a dialogue to manage the process, to everyones benefit. But if we continue to be excluded, then we can only oppose the current trends in globalisation. Consumer groups began to conduct specialised research into a wide range of products to support consumer spending. One of the best known research magazines of this type is the British Consumer Association's Which and similar research media exist in most industrialized countries today. Experts test products usually in their own research laboratories according to a range of criteria,including price, safety, durability, effectiveness, and so on- in short, everything that will help consumers to obtain value for money. These movements focused far more on consumers' rights, information, labelling and what legal redress was available in case things go wrong. THE FAIR-TRADE FOUNDATION T origins of consumer activism 9 However, this form of consumer movement faced a number of difficulties towards the end of the 20th century. First, the pace of technological change impacted on the value of consumer information as things changed so quickly. Second, retailers themselves began to address consumers' expectations and to promote themselves as consumer champions. This was done through cost cutting promotions, establishing cheaper own brand lines, and so on, and one just has to watch and listen to advertising campaigns by big retailers in Ireland today to understand how they compete for consumer interest by promoting their own value brands. Third, the main criticisms of this form of consumerism are: that it fails to address longer-term social and environmental issues; that it disregards the plight of poorer consumers; and that it encourages a middle-class orientation of aspiring to ever increasing standards of 2 York: Macmillan, 1927).L. Cohen, A Consumers Republic: The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America.

3 G. Trumbull, The Contested Consumer: The Politics of Product Market Regulation in France.

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living. In spite of these criticisms, the impact this form of consumer activism has had on business worldwide should not be underestimated. The level of professionalism applied to their consumer research means that companies and governments ignore them at their peril. Taking on the multinationals .The late 1960s and beyond saw a rise in activism against the power of multinational corporations closely related to a parallel focus on the corporate social responsibility of companies, large and small. This form of activism stemmed from a growing realization that the behavior and practices of companies affects the lives and livelihoods of millions of people, whether or not they are employed directly or indirectly by these same companies. This subject is covered extensively in the ICTU's publication in 2006, Corporate Social Responsibility: A Guide for Trade Unionists, and it would be important for trade unionists to cross-reference these two publications as there are many points of overlap. Ethical consumerism plays a significant role in obliging companies to think more carefully about their behavior and practices. In the USA, this emerging form of consumer activism was led by lawyer Ralph Nader, who published a book Unsafe at any speed in 1965 which exposed the irresponsible behavior of the car industry in not focusing enough attention on safety in its design and building of cars. Nader pointed out that advertising was misleading consumers in believing some vehicles were safe when statistics proved that they clearly were not. His research revealed the extent of damage to property, road-related injuries and deaths, insurance claims, and so on and criticized the industry for not acknowledging the dangers of vehicle design faults. Subsequent to this publication, Nader set up his own Center for Study of Responsive Law and Corporate Responsibility which led to a proliferation of similar organizations, not only in the USA but worldwide Initially, these organizations were established on a public groundswell of growing distrust of companies, particularly the larger multinational corporations, and a feeling that people needed to be able to defend their interests, health and well-being. These organizations grew from an imbalance of David and Goliath proportions and aimed at lobbying governments to take necessary action to protect the rights and interests of ordinary citizens through legal reform and appropriate industry standards of conduct. In addition, these organisations began to broaden the scope of consumer protection to include a range of services, such as insurance, banking and other financial services, and also health and other public services.4In the 1980s and 1990s, this form of consumer activism focused strongly on the application of international labour standards in global supply chains and informing the general public of violations of these in the production of certain goods. Campaigns were launched against such well-known multinational companies as Nike, The Gap,Reebok, Adidas and Marks & Spencer, highlighting exploitative practices used in supply chains. The early argument used by multinationals that they could not be responsible or accountable for the labour and other practices of its multitude of suppliers, particularly in developing countries, was no longer considered valid and the need for greater accountability was integrated into national and international conventions and legislation.As a result, private companies of all sizes are more aware of the importance of behaving in a socially responsible manner throughout their business processes and across global supply chains. This period, supported by the development of the internet and other information and communication technologies,

4 Trumbull, Contested Consumer

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saw a surge in consumer activism and sparked considerable interest in where companies source labour, raw materials, products and services and why. Today, more and more companies pay increasing attention to their supply and investment chains to ensure that these comply with relevant international conventions and standards as to ignore this aspect of business is to risk survival in increasingly competitive private sector markets.5While there are still many challenges in monitoring the behaviour and business practices of companies domestically and internationally and ensuring that they are not just paying lip-service to their corporate social responsibilities, using it as a marketing tool for example, this form of consumer activism has had a major impact on the working conditions and socio-economic environments of workers and their families across the globe, but particularly in developing countries. Much more needs to be done, particularly within the framework of the United Nations Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) targeting poverty and hunger and environmental sustainability, but at least the role of the private sector is now acknowledged and embedded in human development processes. consumer activism 9 ALTERNATIVE CONSUMER ACTIVISM Since the 1980s, an additional emerging form of consumer activism that has grown significantly in strength and influence has been so-called green consumerism6, which is based on the impact of consumption on the environment. The premise of this form of consumer awareness is to limit the impact of consumption on the environment to protect the wellbeing and interests of future consumers, i.e. future generations. Decisions are based on guidance provided through different media on which products to buy from particular producers that either benefit the environment or inflict the least lasting damage on the environment.For example, green consumerism impacted on the sale of aerosols with chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) and the sale of fruit and vegetables treated with pesticides.7While in the early stages of its existence, the green consumer movement remained on the margins of retailers' radars, it gradually grew in importance and influence to the extent that today green products are growing in both number and scope, from vegetables and fruit, to green cars and electrical products. The movement generally promotes a message calling on consumers to be more careful and informed in their decision-making on consumption, although there is also a more radical element which recommends that people should make more effort to consume less in general to protect the environment and its capacity to provide for future generations.

Consumer Boycotts

5 Joop Koopman, Dutch consumer movement, in S. Brobeck, R. N. Mayer & R. O. Herrmann

6 P. L. Maclachlan, Consumer Politics in Postwar Japan: The Institutional Boundaries of Citizen acivism

7 K. van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power (New York: Vintage, 1990); G. Fields, Gucci on the Ginza (Tokyo: Kodansha, 1989).

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Understanding the historical context of the movement we wished to help, and those associated with it, was a primary goal of the project. This understanding helped to guide the development of the project and our overall understanding of our place within the current setting of the movement. The term boycott has been around for over 100 years, but its practice has been around in one form or another for much longer. During this time boycotts have enjoyed an imperfect but still significant track record. It is important for modern consumer movements to look at boycotts of the past to observe which tactics work and which should be avoided. It is said that, Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.109 For this reason it is beneficial to look at the evolution of boycotts and examine their successes, as well as their failures, so one does not repeat the errors of the past.

Nestl Formula Boycott

The Nestle Boycott has been in effect since the late 1970s and began with the publication of an expos mentioned earlier titled The Baby Killer. Nestle, a multinational food company operating out of Switzerland and the worlds leading infant food manufacturer was and continues to be accused of aggressive tactics in marketing its baby formula in developing countries. The boycott began in 1977 in an attempt to force Nestle to stop its internationally recognized marketing violations and meet the requirements of the International Baby Food Action Network concerning the sale of baby formula. These violations included the use of wrongful marketing practices to sell their instant formula and discouraging mothers from breastfeeding their children.

ETHICAL CONSUMERISM

Over the last ten or twenty years, more and more people around the world, primarily in industrialized countries, have become better informed and more aware of the origins of the goods they purchase on a day-to-day basis, the buying policies and practices of the shops they visit and the policies and principles of the services they buy. In a growing number of cases, this increased awareness and knowledge is affecting consumer practices and may be the difference between someone buying a particular product or service or not. There are a number of reasons for this development, which is commonly referred to as ethical consumerism, or also ethical consumption, ethical purchasing, moral purchasing, ethical sourcing, ethical shopping or green consumerism. Fundamentally, ethical consumerism is a form sourcing, ethical shopping or green consumerism. Fundamentally, ethical consumerism is a form of consumer activism, in other words, consumers taking responsibility for their decisions in purchasing goods and services Two key elements that have contributed to this development and that are interrelated are the significant and rapid progress in Information and Communications Technologies, particularly internet-based, and the role of the media in exposing bad practices in global supply chains of

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goods and services.8 If consumers log on to the internet today and carry out a search on ethical consumerism or ethical trade, they will get thousands of hits of web sites with information on these issues or specialized retail goods and services advertised as either ethical or fair trade. In addition, there are articles nearly every day in many newspapers and magazines on life stories of exploited workers, sometimes children, who make products which are eventually sold in the west at many times the small amount of money they are paid in wages. All of which contributes to a very confusing picture for the average consumer, who is bombarded with messages of what to do or not to do. Trade unions, charities and other civil society organizations the world over run regular campaigns to inform consumers of how the products and services they buy are manufactured, farmed or otherwise provided and produced. The aim is to highlight the significant profits made by companies and others on the backs of workers in developing countries, pointing out that a very obvious way to tackle poverty and inequality around the world would be to ensure that everyone enjoys decent working conditions and benefits from a living wage, access to adequate public services, particularly education, health and social protection, and a fulfilled and meaningful life. In this way, the fundamental principles of ethical consumerism are directly linked to the need for companies to be socially responsible in all aspects of their business activities and for governments to apply and monitor the application of international conventions relating to human rights and appropriate labour, social and environmental standards.9 In essence, therefore, ethical consumerism applies to the intentional purchase by a consumer of products and services that have been manufactured, processed or provided through ethical means, in other words, with minimal harm to or exploitation of humans, animals and/or the natural environment. Put simply, it is about buying products and services that are made and distributed under ethical conditions by companies that behave in an ethical and socially responsible manner. Ethical consumerism is practised through positive buying in that ethical products, for example, those branded fair trade, are favoured over others. CONSUMERISM AS A SOCIO POLITICAL MOVEMENT

Consumerism, that is the organised attempts to fight for better value for money for individual shoppers in the marketplace, has clearly lacked the more obvious radical undercurrents of environmentalism, feminism or the peace movement. Likewise, in its focus on everyday goods, it could never hope toattract the broad attention of the media and the public in the same manner as, for instance, the human rights groups. Consumerism has often been regarded as a transient interest, the abuses of the marketplace attracting the attention of disgruntled consumers at specific moments in time, yet it remains an interest lacking an ideological or political core which could attract a truly mass base whose commitment could be sustained over a significant period. But such a view overlooks much of the work of comparative-testing consumer organisations. Magazines such as Test, Que Choisir, Consumer Reports and Which have been usually associated with the urban professional middle classes, as guides together consuming lives, yet many of the organisations behind them have been involved in a range of political issues which

8 Consumers International, Annual Report, 1999 (London, Consumers International, 1999).

9 C. Medawar, Drugs and World Health: An International Consumer Perspective

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suggest important parallels and similarities to other social movements. Furthermore, the magazines themselves have attracted literally millions of subscribers from all over the world and while such figures are not directly equivalent to the committed donations of members of environmental and human rights organisations, a sizeable minority of consumers have regarded themselves as part of a social movement helping to make the market a safer, fairer and more just place for everybody.10 The following summary of the modern international consumer movement will demonstrate both the extent to which consumers have been prepared to organise as critics of the marketplace and their commitment to correct in buses which not only assist the affluent individual but consumers as a whole. It will begin by overviewing the growth of the modern consumer movement in western Europe and America from the 1930s onwards, before moving on, in the second half of the paper, to highlight certain aspects of the international consumer movement. It will demonstrate the extent to which an essentially western-based comparative testing movement was able to adapt to the consumer concerns of the developing that is theconcerns over access to basic needs and the ways in which these resulted in a new politics of consumption which came to have a profound influence on the shape and nature of global civil society in the 1980s. What such an examination will demonstrate is the ways in which consumers have sought to act as political agents in the marketplace rather than as the passive recipients of the fruits of economic growth. The growth of the modern consumer movement in comparative perspective. The modern, comparative-testing form of consumer expertise began in the United States.11 In 1927, a civil servant for the Labor Bureau, Stuart Chase, and an engineer, F.J. Schlink, published Your Moneys Worth, a critique of the exploitation of the consumer in the modern marketplace.

Nevertheless, the focus on the testing of goods and services was clearly an inspiration to European shoppers. In the 1950s, a number of consumer testing organisations began to emerge. In France, in 1951, the Union Fdral des Consommateurs (UFC) was formed and began publishing its testing magazine, Que Choisir, in December 1961. The UFC was soon joined by family and rural groups which had formed just previously in the 1940s as well as co-operative organizations and trade unionists through bodies such as the Organisation Generale des Consommateurs (ORGECO, 1959), set up specifically to represent consumers who were also union members. In response, the state initially created the National Consumer Council (Conseil National de la Consommation) in 1960 to act as a forum for consumers to interact with government, though this has been followed with more comprehensives measures, most notably the National Consumption Institute (Institute National de la Consommation) in 1968, which published 50 millions de S. Chase & F. J. Schlink, Your Moneys Worth: A Study in the Waste of the Consumers Dollar (NewYork: Macmillan, 1927).

THE GLOBAL CONSUMER MOVEMENT

10 C. Williams, Milk and Murder: Address to the Rotary Club of Singapore in 1939.

11 IOCU & IBFAN, Protecting Infant Health: A Health Wokers Guide to the International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.

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To varying degrees at the national level, then, the desire for greater guidance in the Market place gave rise to comparative testing magazines and the emergence of organised consumerism as something of a social movement. However, where the consumer movement has most closely resembled the new social movements of environmentalism or the peace movement, is in the international arena. In 1960 the First International Conference on Consumer Testing was held to discuss opportunities for future collaborative efforts between the principal national consumer organizations of western Europe and North America. Significantly, this led to the further establishment of the International Organisation of Consumers Unions (IOCU),consisting of the four comparative testing organisations from France, Belgium, the Netherlands and the UK that had been largely founded on the American model, as well as US Consumers Union.12 The original aims of the new body were simply to extend and assist comparative testing consumerism, yet it soon extended beyond this model.

GLOBALIZATION AND CONSUMERISM

A connection between globalization and consumerism could be established within the domain of three main factors which are-

1) Access to resources and markets on a global basis

2) Production of consumers all over the world with an extensive range of products and services that were not easily available before, and

3) Central and fundamental understanding of globalization and the modern world being the notion of consumerism

Globalization therefore sets the conditions for consumerism through an interrelated process which works through the above mentioned factors. To elaborate this connection more explicitly, it is necessary to understand the nature of present consumption. At present, a variety of resources and products are being consumed having moved beyond basic needs to include luxury items and technological innovations.13 Even though such consumption beyond minimal and basic needs should not necessarily be negatively perceived, what should be understood is what lies behind the form of consumption and consumerism in the present world .In the present world some characteristics of consumption are;

(i) choices of consumption are being influenced by certain actors,

(ii) what is to be produced and not are being decided by certain actors,

12 IBFAN, Breaking the Rules 1991: A Worldwide Report on Violations of the WHO/UNICEF International Code of Marketing of Breastmilk Substitutes.

13 PAN & IOCU-ROAP, 1988); K. Balasubramaniam, Health and Pharmaceuticals in Developing Countries: TowardsSocial Justice and Equity.

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(iii) a uniformity of consumption patterns are being created throughout the world and

(iv) material value influence relationships among people (Shah, 2006).

The evolved consumption patterns as such are imposed globally due to globalized markets. Market led globalization denotes the emergence of the free market (Aimaq, 2003). This produces consumers all over the world with an extensive range of products and services that were not easily available before (Niello, 2003).14 Market led globalization intensifies commodity exchange thereby capturing global markets promoting consumerism through lucrative promises such as fair and efficient use of resources to meet basic human needs, increased access to more goods (Evenett, 1999), reduced prices due to competition with local monopolies and enabling poor people in certain countries to buy cheaper imported goods rather than poor quality goods produced by local monopolies (Graham & Krugman, 1991). Given this nature of consumption, it could be asserted that these consumption patterns have evolved overtime based on the influence of those who have more power to control the means and resources, fluent economic conditions and trade. Control of resources and markets are granted to powerful actors on a global basis through globalization which enables access to resources and markets on a global basis. Focusing particularly on America as one of the powerful actors in the contemporary globalized economy, statistics on American resource uses are such that, America consumes 25% of worlds resources, including 26% of the worlds energy, although having only 3% of the worlds known oil reserves. American industries generate roughly 30% of worlds waste. An Americans impact on the environment is 250 times greater than a Sub-Saharan African Within this context, it could further be asserted that the notion of consumerism itself becomes fundamental in understanding the current forms of globalization and the modern world because there is a market as well as economic orientation in globalization which aims consumption of resources to generate profit. Consumerism is central to this phenomenon. Thus, a connection between globalization and consumerism could be established based on the factors which are-

1) access to resources and markets on a global basis

2) production of consumers all over the world with an extensive range of products and

3) the notion of consumption being fundamental and central in understanding the current forms of globalization.

As stated above, there is a system behind present forms of consumption and consumerism which is operated by the actors of a global economy that have the power to control the global market forces of a globalized economy. Within this context, there are trends that have been identified around globalization and consumerism which have made consumerism an issue at present (Shah, 2006).

14 G. Goldenman & S. Rengam, Problem Pesticides, Pesticide Problems: A Citizens Action Guide to the International Code of Conduct on the Distribution and Use of Pesticides.

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Some of the trends of present consumption are:

Inequality of consumption (not redistributing from high-income to low-income consumers)

Use of pollutant goods and production technologies instead of cleaner ones

Promoting goods that discourage poor producers rather than promoting goods to empower poor producers

Creating a priority among consumers for consumption to conspicuous display rather than to meeting basic needs

Hence, globalization and consumerism today are accelerating the dynamics of the consumption-poverty-inequality-environment nexus (Shah, 2006).15 Moreover, two of the major criticisms of globalization and consumerism are unequal distribution of wealth and unsustainable consumption patterns (Shah, 2006). One major problem of consumerism is that consumption patterns today are not to meet everyones needs. The system that drives these consumption patterns contribute to inequality as well as unsustainability. Thus, globalization and consumerism creates two important issues viz;

1) Patterns and effects which exacerbates inequalities and

2) Unsustainable consumption and the depletion of the environmental resources (Shah, 2006).

CONCLUSION

The unrealistic sound of these propositions is indicative, not of their utopian character, but of the strength of the forces which prevent their realization.

Our final project, like most, has changed significantly from our initial proposal but this does not reflect poorly on our final product. We initially hoped to compile the disconnected information from activist organizations that has take so much effort to gather and unite it all into one source that could be easily navigated through by even novice computer users. We proposed that this source would be an internet database that could be freely accessed by any interested parties. The compiled information would come from human and animal rights organizations, consumer advocates, and environmentalists. By creating a centralized source we hoped to streamline the process of evaluating corporations on a large number of relevant issues, for both individuals and consumer activism organizations. After further research we

15 C. Medawar, Drugs and World Health: An International Consumer Perspective (London: Social Audit, 1984); IOCU

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were pleasantly surprised to find that several organizations had, for the most part, already accomplished the major goals of our project.

After examining the existing projects, namely Responsible Shopper and Alonovo, we decided to shift the focus of the project to making the existing information of interest portable. This decision was reinforced by our interview with Alice Tepper Marlin where she stressed her own trouble with the important task of bringing information to the point of purchase. She explained that the best way to get [valuable] information to very large numbers of people would be to get your information at the point of purchase. Getting information to the point of purchase was the same problem [her organization] had with Shopping for a Better World, an otherwise very successful project. By the time of this interview we had decided to work towards implementing a portable method of distributing the information, utilizing existing technology. Marlins interview helped to confir the value of our undertaking, showing that portable technology could be a viable solution to the problem of getting consumer information to the point of purchase. With a new set of goals and final product we began researching viable existing technologies and perfecting techniques for delivering data gathered for the project.

While working on the prototype we did extensive research on the origin of the modern boycott in an attempt to acclimate ourselves to the current movement and in an attempt to educate the reader on what makes a boycott successful. This research reflected our pragmatic approach to our project and the problem of corporate brutality; our number one goal was to create something effective and valuable, not an esoteric or overly idealistic paper to be read once and then cast aside. In addition to researching the origin of the boycott we studied various philosophical positions contrary and complementary to the project. We chose to focus on the ethics of care due to its radical re-envisioning of the problems at hand and its ability to offer previously unconsidered moral solutions.

After working on the paper for a significant amount of time we realized that we hadnt truly demonstrated the severity of the problems that we hoped to mediate with our project. This led us to write the case study section, which has come to be one of the largest sections of the paper.