Reflections on writing for/about charity, day 28

I'm almost half way through the fundraising period. Gofundme.com only allow 60 days to raise your funds. The £500 target looks like something akin to a mountaintop peeking over a distant horizon. In the meantime, I've been thinking about things like ideological reproduction, complicity and epistemic violence. Great words, but what does it all mean?

During the documentary film Black Gold I wondered whether it was appropriate or not for me to have a coffee. On one level it seemed to be a blatant disregard for the messages in this film (which explores the injustices of the coffee trade). My coffee is not Fair Trade, after all. Am I not the very beacon of hypocrisy as I tut at the cruelty of the coffee trade while my slow roast arabica blend quietly brews on the table before me? Yet to righteously disavow coffee for the duration of the film only to inevitably have a cup later on anyway seemed doubly hypocritical. The answer is that it really doesn't matter. Both options are shrouded in a symbolism that only serves to justify my complicity. Yet these unspoken gestures of righteousness have a pretty big presence in our ideological stance towards the Other. Whereas recently the subject has been taken to be formed through ideology and discourse, in a manner relatively autonomous from the Marxist economically-determined construction of the subject (Althusser, Foucault, etc., etc.,), the developments of Fair Trade and human rights show that the economic has entered the realm of the ideological. 25 years ago Spivak was trying to address a refusal to acknowledge this in the intellectual academy which instead relied on a "'nationalist' view of 'productivity'" (In Other Worlds, 167) and a "'culuralism' that disavows the economic" (168). Nowadays, we are (on some problematic level) only too aware of how things are produced, and 'ethical consumption' is all the rage. It seems barmy to exclude this knowledge from the identities we have. Yet, the 'ghostly presence of labour' in the commodity (Marx) still seems obscured, and the nature of the economic relationship with the third world still seems impenetrable to the consumer who finds their knowledge in outbursts from charities and the haphazard guesswork of economists on Newsnight seeking a solution to the Euro crisis. What we can alleviate, however, is peace of mind. Perhaps Fair Trade, charity, or foregoing a coffee while I watch Black Gold, can do this. 

So considering the amount of ethical consumption we engage in, acts which hope to alleviate some undesireable by-products caused by big industry for the world (ecology) or the third world (poverty), then something is evidently working. It may not work to save the world from global warming or the pull the third world towards the first, but it's getting us westerners moving, doing stuff. How do we translate these plighti (plural of plight, made up by me just now) into values that allow us to express them through consumption?

To donate, see http://fallinginpublic.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/writing-for-charitychangecoffee.html

Reflections on writing for/about charity, day 26

"She would deny the workers their cappuccino!" Such was the reaction to Gayatri Spivak as she pointed out the connection between western consumer culture and 'third world' production. How can one escape this trap? By purchasing coffee off the Zapatistas? Does that not just slip into a form of enlightened do-goodery which sets itself apart from regular charity by being somehow less ignorant of the situation, finding another gap in the market of conscientious western liberals? Or does it actively participate in an alternative relation which evades exploitation? Does it express solidarity? 

'Solidarity', a keyword form the dissenter's dictionary, seems to be opposed to the word 'support', which is more at home in the handbook of Aid. The former suggests equivalence, shared visions and the dismantling of hierarchies; the latter dependency, distance, a token or a gesture. Solidarity evokes The Internationale, support evokes LiveAid. The sociologist Zygmunt Bauman says solidarity is "the recognition of other people's misery and suffering as one's own responsibility, and the alleviation and eventually the removal of misery as one's own task." Costas Douzinas says this implies that human rights are based on the always already existing pain and suffering of the Other. Our obligation is thus to make this suffering our own. 'Support' on the other hand seems to suggest the managing of such misery, but not a path out of it. This path out of it would involve the two parties finding common direction, making their hierarchal relationship obsolete, to envisage a globalised world in which economics no longer determines global relations of production. Do we cappuccino drinkers 'support' those who produce coffee when we give to charity or buy Fair Trade, or are we 'in solidarity' with them? Might solidarity risk denying ourselves our cappuccinos? Surely, to make suffering our own sounds inadvisable to he who prefers not to suffer, and risking the comforts of western culture in a gesture of solidarity to those who have been producing the things we consume sounds equally dangerous. Maybe this is why we prefer to support them.

...

Writing for Charity/Change/Coffee

This is an alternative to the Facebook page here which is presented in a fairly complicated way (such is Facebook's layout system).

I am asking for pledges for the gruelling struggle that is writing a thesis and I'm doing it on behalf of two causes, listed below, and you can donate to one or both. Think of it along the lines of a sponsored run, but swap running for writing. I am writing about charity and our relationship with those in distant lands whom we hope to help.


Oxfam charity: http://www.justgiving.com/Adam-Hutchings
Zapatista coffee: http://www.gofundme.com/otpss

In 1953 Ramón Rivero walked 80 miles to raise money for the Puerto Rican League Against Cancer. This became the first known charity walkathon in history and has since inspired sponsored fundraising in its many forms - climbing, fasting, running, cycling etc.

I am using my dissertation. Just like climbing, fasting, running, cycling a dissertation is a big struggle, and quite a mountain to climb. Indeed I am sacrificing my summer for this.

I am fundraising for two causes, listed below. Feel free to sponsor one or both, and please leave comments either way. If you don't want to pledge any cash, comments on your thoughts are still welcome.

So sponsor my dissertation and help change the world!

1. Oxfam.
A well known humanitarian international aid non-governmental organisation (NGO), that states that 'We stand against poverty. For humanity.'
For every pound they get, 36p goes to emergency response, 7p to fundraising costs, 10p to support and running costs, 40p to development work, and 7p for campaigning for change (http://www.oxfam.org.uk/donate/how-we-spend-your-money).

Fund this here: http://www.justgiving.com/Adam-Hutchings

2. Zapatista coffee.
Trade with cooperatively run coffee farmers in a Mexican state called Chiapas which is autonomously run by the Zapatista Army of National Liberation. The Zapatistas oppose economic globalisation, North American-style Free Trade, and the Mexican state's embrace of capitalism. The Zapatistas synthesise 'traditional Mayan practices with elements of libertarian socialism, anarchism and Marxism' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_Army_of_National_Liberation).
Your money goes into a pot which, at the end of the 60 days, will be used to purchase an equivalent amount of coffee from the Chiapas co-operative coffee producers.
Your money will go towards the income of the farmers in Zapatista communities, and towards 'the autonomous programs of education, health, and to other social structures.' According to this Wikipedia page, 'the coffee cooperatives operate as a driving force of the Zapatista movememt' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zapatista_coffee_cooperatives).

Fund this here: http://www.gofundme.com/otpss


Thanks! Comments will help too, almost as much as cash.