The Social Effects of Global Trade

Rezensionen / Stimmen

Global trade is a double-edged sword. It not only helps alleviate poverty and opens new market opportunities but also accelerates the exploitation and unequal use of natural resources and social capital. An ever-growing net of complex, global supply chains increases the distance between producers and consumers, diluting any sense of connectedness or responsibility. This book expertly pieces together a puzzle of global economic activity and explains how trade creates and reinforces detrimental social impacts and affects our social capital. It provides unprecedented insights into how and where our social capital is affected by trade. Written by academics and practitioners and covering a wide range of often underrepresented topics, this book is a milestone in uncovering the true social effects of global trade.

Dr. Thomas Wiedmann
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of New South Wales, Sydney

This important book informs readers how to quantify attributes of specific supply chains and the corresponding 'footprints'. A crucial innovation is that it supplements the familiar economic and environmental footprints by creating social footprints, exemplified in a set of case studies that reveal instances of human rights offenses, corruption and abuse of workers. Consumers' growing acceptance of responsibility for social consequences of their purchases makes this volume vital reading for policy makers and business leaders wanting to make public the problems they have identified, and remedied, in their supply chains. The book opens by situating trade within the wider context of neo-liberal capitalism, and it ends with examples of successful business initiatives, some voluntary and others for compliance with regulations, to eliminate problematic links in their global supply chains.

Faye Duchin

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, USA