Fairtrade failing to deliver benefits ?

've been hearing rumours lately of serious questions about the benefits of FT: that it might not be benefitting people as much as the normal market. Well, it could well be that what I've been hearing was the harbinger of this report -picked up by the Observer here: Fairtrade accused of failing to deliver benefits to African farmworkers.

The summary in one sentence:

Sales of Fairtrade-certified products from Uganda and Ethiopia are not benefiting poor farmworkers as profits fail to trickle down to much of the workforce, says a groundbreaking study.

It does make concerning reading for those of us who have long supported the idea of Fair Trade. However, don't just read the first two thirds or so of the article which lay out the basic findings. You need to read the last part of the article to learn that there may be factors that put it in a different, less alarming, light. As the reports authors themselves suggest, for example:

"One possibility is that Fairtrade producer organisations are always
established in significantly poorer, more marginalised areas where an
accumulation of disadvantages means smallholder farmers are unable to
pay even the paltry wages offered by smallholders in other areas without
Fairtrade producer organisations,

And then a comment from the FT foundation:

When comparisons are based more on like-for-like situations, such as the
study's own analysis of Ugandan coffee in small scale coffee production
set-ups, it finds key areas where workers in areas with
Fairtrade-certified farmer organisations in fact had better conditions
compared with those in non-certified, such as free meals, overtime
payments and loans and wage advances for workers. 

All of which seems to indicate a more complex situation and more research and certainly doesn't mean we should give up FT buying just yet.

Before we agress the telesales caller ...

"Our fight is not against flesh and blood ..."

I often find myself thinking that when brushing off a telesales call. I try not to do so angrily, but I try not to engage them too much -I'm usually trying to do something else when I take the call and part of me doesn't want to give them false hope. And sometimes I'm working hard to keep a lid on my irritation.

Now, when I pick up the phone and realise it is a salesperson, I picture the caller sitting in a cubicle with my first duty manager glaring aggressively over their shoulder. I know they are probably only doing it for the money and that they would rather be visiting their sister and her new baby, or studying for a Masters degree in systems engineering. But they feel they have no choice – they need the job.

So while part of me wants to immediately press the red button and end the call, I do my best to focus on the caller and treat them with decency. In an effort to make a personal connection, I sometimes find out their name and where they are phoning from, which can lead to surprising – if usually short – conversations about their lives, and my own.How to empathise with a telesales caller | Roman Krznaric: 

I've got to say that they often don't help 'themselves'  by the scripts they have to follow (I assume). For example, I  presume that by asking after how I am, they are supposed to be creating empathy. But the fact is, the only people I've  never met before who ask after my health are people who are trying to fast-track a sense of empathy in order to try to sell me something. So I find that I get irritated because I've been asked something manipulatively. I'd rather they actually didn't go in for the spurious attempt to create rapport but simply said a bit more directly what they are about.

But I'm still left with that irritation. How to deal with that? I don't want to be irritated, but I also don't want to spend time being sold to when I really don't want to buy whatever it is. Perhaps, taking a leaf out of Mr Krznaric's book, I should immerse rather than push away. Perhaps I should ask them how they are and keep asking further questions until some kind of genuine connection is reached and I am no longer their mark and they are no longer my psychological mugger. Do I have the courage? Maybe. My big issue may actually turn out to be feeling that i have the time.

Institutions get inside you

A piece of research that seems to confirm that having institutions does indeed achieve one of the aims of having them in the first place: they create systems that supervene loyalties and judgements based mainly on in-group loyalties. This gives them the possiblity of, in effect, pushing out 'love your neighbour' to out-group people.

with supportive government services, food security and institutions that
meet their basic needs were very likely to follow impartial rules about
how to give out money. By contrast, those without effective, reliable
institutions showed favoritism toward members of their local community. Strong institutions reduce in-group favoritism -- ScienceDaily:

But then we should note, too, how this isn't something merely external. I first became aware of this explicitly when I started working at Northumbria University and became acquainted with the way that their policy relating to equality and diversity actually had far-reaching effects in that it required that people actually become vigilant about the effects of discrimination, harassment and so forth. Since we spend more time at work than almost anywhere, then the attitudes are brought into our habit-range. So no surprise that one of the conclusions should be this:

In a world with well-functioning institutions, this gets inside of people and actually affects their basic motivations, even when they're in a situation when no one is watching, 

This lends some credence to the possibility that institutions (indeed corporisations) are providentially part of God's pedagogy of the human race. Though of course we need also to recognise the fallenness that shows up in a pedagogy of sin as well as of good-neighbourliness.

Rice growing and cultural differences

In a PhD thesis, it is being proposed that the co-operativeness demanded by rice growing has generated a distinct cultural psychology to that found among wheat-growing societies.

Talhelm and his co-authors at universities in China and Michigan propose that the methods of cooperative rice farming -- common to southern China for generations -- make the culture in that region interdependent, while people in the wheat-growing north are more individualistic, a reflection of the independent form of farming practiced there over hundreds of years.

"The data suggests that legacies of farming are continuing to affect people in the modern world," Talhelm said. "It has resulted in two distinct cultural psychologies that mirror the differences between East Asia and the West." 'Rice theory' explains north-south China cultural differences -- ScienceDaily:

To me this seems very plausible and could take its place alongside the effects of the tech-complex of move-able-type printing on rag-paper as generating quite important cultural mindscapes.



What I'm left looking for with this, is how this particular difference is handed down when societies move beyond such a large demographic investment in the agricultural bases. In other words, what mechanisms are there that continue to propagate the different mindsets in populations where rice-growing or wheat-growing are not big practical factors in people's lives?



Is it that the mindset is further embedded in other institutions which take over the propagation of attituteds? If so, what institutions might they be?

The New Covenant by Robert Emery

 For a number of years I've experimented from time to time with narrative sermons. For me, usually, this has involved telling a Bible incident as a more extended story. Usually I've found this easier to tell as a first-person narrative and I've tended to either take the part of a central character (eg Simeon in Luke's birth and infancy story) or to pick or make up a bystanding character. What this has enabled me to do is to use what I have learnt about the circumstances, culture, habits, mores and economics of the time to add depth and colour to the telling. It also enables me to teach about such things obliquely as part of driving the story forward.



So I was intrigued by Robert Emery's book when it was offered for review. At this point I've not read it all; just the first part, but already I can see that Mr Emery has done essentially the same sort of thing that I have done in my narrative sermons. It's been good for me to see how this technique reads when it's not been me that has created the story, and I've enjoyed it. I have found that social and cultural details that have figured as part of the story have 'come alive' more than if they are simply stated in a more textbook fashion. It also gives a chance to reflect on the biblical characters and what were the personal drivers and perspectives and struggles they might have had. It has to be said that as a means of conveying such information, it has a lot to commend it and it is preferable in terms of memorability and engagement to simple textbook tellings.



of course their are downsides in the form of potential pitfalls. The reader (or in my case listener) is at the mercy of the knowledge of the narrator and the ability to make imaginative connections and to understand the implications of cultural artefacts, ways of living etc in terms of the effects on human actors. So the possibility of slipping in anachronisms is very real and sometimes a crucual issue.



The other main potential downside is maintaining the balance between story, character and background. And in the temple tour narrative I think Emery only just manages not to get totally lost in the background at the expense of story and character. This pitfall is that the first-person narrative can simply become a lecture where the character speaking becomes a mere proxy for the author and so the character can end up giving what is effectively a textbook lecture on something (eg the architecture and furnishings and rituals of the temple) without it actually being part of the story or helping us to gain sympathy or insight into the characters. As I say, I think Emery just about manages to stay on the right side of the line in these respects, but the fact that I noticed the danger was a bit distracting. What I don't know is whether i noticed because this approach is familiar to me or whether it was because for most readers, the amount of detail being conveyed by the characters in 'conversation' was quite heavy.



It is hard to properly weave lots of such detail into narrative form in an engaging way, and consistently over a whole story arc. I'm looking forward to learning more from Emery's book both about the way of life of the times as he has discovered it and also about the relaying of insight into the times, people and events through this approach to narrative.



The New Covenant, a book by Robert Emery  #SpeakeasyNewCovenant

Although I'm not in the USA, I'm happy to meet with the guidelines for such reviews required in the USA: I received a copy of this book from Speakeasy for review. I'm not required to write a positive review.