7 research outputs found
The terror that underpins the ‘peace’: The political economy of Colombia’s paramilitary demobilisation process
Studies on terrorism have traditionally focused on non-state actors who direct violence against liberal states. Such studies have also tended to focus on political motivations and, therefore, have neglected the economic functions of terrorism. This article challenges the divorce of the political and economic spheres by highlighting how states can use terrorism to realise interconnected political and economic goals. To demonstrate this, we take the case of the paramilitary demobilisation process in Colombia and show how it relates to the US-Colombian free trade agreement (FTA). We argue that the demobilisation process fulfils a dual role. Firstly, the process aims to improve the image of the Colombian government required to pass the controversial FTA through US Congress in order to protect large amounts of US investment in the country. Secondly, the demobilisation process serves to mask clear continuities in paramilitary terror which serve mutually supportive political and economic functions for US investment in Colombia
Aproximaciin a La Responsabilidad Social Empresarial Hotelera En Colombia: Reflexiones a Partir De La Perspectiva Cualitativa (Approach to Corporate Social Responsibility Hospitality in Colombia: Reflections on Qualitative Perspective)
Upgrading or Decline? Globalization, Retail Structure, and Labour in the Chilean Textile and Clothing Industry
Contesting ethical trade in Colombia's cut-flower industry: a case of cultural and economic injustice
Based on a case study of Colombia's cut-flower industry, this article draws strategically on Nancy Fraser's model of (in) justice to explore the mutual entwinement of culture and economy. It examines responses by cut-flower employers and their representatives to ethical trade discourses demanding economic justice for Colombia's largely female cut-flower workers. It argues that employers' misrecognition of both ethical trade campaigners and cut-flower workers may serve to deny and redefine claims of maldistribution. Through a 'home-grown' code of conduct, employers also seek to appropriate ethical trade in their own interests. Finally, a gender coding of worker misrecognition ostensibly displaces workers' problems from the economic realm to the cultural, offering the 'modernity' of full capitalist relations as the solution. In further examining the 'responses to the responses' by workers and their advocates, the contestation of ethical trade is highlighted and its prospects assessed