Buyer Engagement and Labour Conditions in Global Supply Chains: The Bangladesh Accord and Beyond

The Accord on Fire and Building Safety in Bangladesh (‘the Accord’) has received both praise and criticism concerning its implications for corporate responsibility and power. This article contributes to the debate by situating the Accord within a broader set of activities that buyers are engaged in to promote better labour conditions in their supply chains. The authors identify three approaches of buyer engagement: auditing, capacity building and advocacy. Drawing on interviews conducted with European brands and retailers, the article shows how buyers perceive the merits and challenges of these approaches, and whether and how they discharge responsibility and power through these activities. The study shows that the Accord is seen primarily as part of the auditing approach with a key feature being its use of collective leverage as a means of enforcement. While greater buyer power has not necessarily been accompanied by greater responsibility, the article highlights heterogeneity among buyers in how they take up different approaches, painting a more nuanced picture of buyer responsibility and power.     

Resistance and Negotiation: “Herbivorous Men” and Murakami Haruki’s Gender and Political Ambiguity

In recent years, both Japanese and Western media have devoted a great deal of attention to a new type of Japanese man, so-called sōshoku-kei danshi (“herbivorous men”), as an example of a new, “softened” masculinity. In this paper, I draw a parallel between the growing number of “herbivores” and the increasing popularity of Japanese contemporary author Murakami Haruki, and in particular of the young male protagonists of his novels. Apart from the apparent similarities in the personalities of Murakami’s characters and the herbivores, a significant commonality can be found in their way of relating to their representation, especially their rebellious image constructed by society. Through an analysis of the formation of such an image, we will find that their popularity is closely associated with the history of Japanese masculinity, and more importantly with their astute distancing from society and their complicity with the capitalist system. In this article I examine Murakami’s and the herbivores’ ways of positioning themselves in Japanese society in order to provide a more nuanced understanding of both types of men.     

Assessing the resilience of irrigation agriculture: applying a social-ecological model for understanding the mitigation of salinization

This paper creates and applies a computational model of irrigation agriculture in order to study the effects of salinization in Mesopotamia, with the model developed applicable to cases beyond that studied here. Scholars have long suspected that central and southern Mesopotamia present environments which limited agricultural production over the long-term. In regions such as central Mesopotamia, where salinization likely affected settlement and agriculture in different periods but was more manageable than in more southern regions, fallowing regimes, natural and engineered leaching, and decisions made on when to crop were strategies applied in order to limit the effects of salinization. In this paper, we assess the effectiveness of these coping strategies by incorporating projected climate, soil, and landscape conditions with agricultural practices. The simulation results not only demonstrate the effectiveness and limitations of inhibiting progressive salinization, but they can be compared with the archaeological record in order to determine if the results could reasonably be matched with past events and help to interpret settlement history.