Conscious daily

Formerly professor at Cambridge and currently Full Professor of Contemporary European History at the University of Florence, the historian Paul Ginsborg is an important point of reference for the world of socially committed voluntary and charitable organisations. It’s a world that includes a vast number of persons who all feel the need to actively participate through small and large daily actions in collectively striving to improve the sad lot of the world we live in. In his latest book, “The politics of everyday life: making choices changing lives”, Ginsborg analyses and interprets the evolution of modern-day society starting from the primal form of social organisation, the family, the foundation stone on which to build for a conscious and informed change of the current state of affairs.

The course of technological development is fairly self-evident, but concepts such as democracy, the family, and society are presumed to be immutable. You, however, seem to have taken a different and contrary stance. Can you give us your views on this subject?
My point of view is unusual because it focuses on the family, and that’s not what historians and political theorists normally look at. We’ve all got a family and a home, so I started asking myself what possible relationship there was between the private sphere, a primary source of pleasure and pain for all of us, and the problems of the world at large.

I was especially interested in understanding what possibilities each family had in its day-to-day routine of getting into synch with the super-fast changes we’re going through and to what extent it could affect, through its simple daily choices and behaviour, general future developments.

Your contention is that consumption is based on insatiability and incremental growth. Do you think consumer concern for the origins of a product may become a decisive factor in determining consumer behaviour?
This idea is growing. I’d even go so far as to say that there’s an underground revolution taking place on this score The consumer is increasingly concerned about wanting to know where a product hails from, under what conditions it’s made, how much and in what way it has travelled.

What we’re increasingly concerned about when purchasing any commodity or service is whether the workers behind them are entitled to trade-union representation, whether they’re given fair wages and enough to make a living out of, whether they’re entitled to hospital benefit, and so on. In practice there’s a growing awareness and concern for what’s behind what we purchase. Not that there’s much media coverage on the subject, but it’s a trend that’s increasing in exponential terms.

Would you say that the consumer’s desire to be more informed depends on an increased general awareness, on the greater circulation of news and information, or on a guilt complex?
There’s a desire to know more and that depends, I believe, on the fact that people are more educated.

That’s not to say there isn’t a hefty dose of guilty feelings also going around. After 9/11 we’ve become more aware of minorities. Not so much because they remind us of the poverty that is raking and ruining the south of the world but because they bring home to us all the hard feelings that are being built up against us and that could end up severely hurting us in our little, relatively comfortable corner of the world.

There’s a sense of urgency and helplessness that can only be overcome by dedicating a little more attention to what we’re doing day by day.

For instance, we can switch over to purchasing our commodities from fair trade outlets or give our preference to “industrially-correct” products.

There are complex attitudes at play determining equally complex social behaviour patterns that take into account the principles and practices instantiated in the commodity we choose to give our preference to.

What role do you reckon the web has in this process and do you think it is over- or underestimated?
So far, its role has been more often than not overestimated and its dangers under-estimated. Internet has chiefly two characteristics for the user: it’s first and foremost a solitary affair (“me and my computer”), and it’s virtual (contact with other users is tool-mediated). All studies on the new-found desire to set up clubs and associations clearly show that there’s an urge for face-to-face contact.

The fact that people can meet in each other’s homes or at a public gathering means that they can also more fully exchange body language, and even touch each other, and this seems to be highly important in human relations. Internet’s function is essentially vectorial, in the sense that it’s a means for circulating news and information. I don’t think, though, that it has a great role to play when people want to come together or to give themselves a social charter, when they really want to confront each other’s ideas and opinions.

Is the entrepreneur to be understood as merely a player in the economic and financial arena or as someone with an important project to accomplish, someone with a mission?
The two terms of the question are indeed the two poles between which we see the issue being played out every day.
It’s a challenge and it’s difficult to say who will be the winner. The market and business imperative seems to be, without any second thoughts, “shoot and profit”, in other terms, “hit and run”. Transnational corporations are no less driven by this imperative, which is to produce and make a quick buck, the faster the better.

If this is the scenario, then there’s a lot of room for discussion and improvement. Will Hutton, a renowned journalist working for The Observer has discussed the possibility and viability of encouraging a more socially accountable and responsible approach as part of corporate culture and outlook. In this respect, smaller businesses run by entrepreneurs who meet the approval and have the esteem of their workers and of the community at large, who operate in a market niche and are in good standing with consumers, are far more flexible and in a better position to out-manoeuvre competition without having recourse to socially and environmentally “non-friendly” means than a large corporation.

The small and caring business enterprise not only makes for conflict-free industrial relations but also projects a favourable image outside. If the entrepreneur sends out signals witnessing farsightedness and intelligence, then there’s a possibility for a socially-and environmentally-friendly culture to take root. It’s important to create small trickles of such culture and to let them seep in and start soaking the world of industry, the chambers of commerce so as to off-set the prevailing figure of the entrepreneur as a low-brow business person only concerned with racking in profits and oblivious to the issues raised by the fact that human and natural resources are involved in the economic process. The challenge may be great, but the rewards make it worth facing.

Is a return to the family-run business something to be hoped for, do you think?
The way the economy is going it isn’t favourable in this sense.

Marx has proven right on this score. The trend is for mergers, joint-ventures, partnerships, and so on.
The typical business unit is getting increasingly bigger. Fiat is an example; as it stands it’s considered to be too small! The scenario where the challenge confronting us is to be played out is one in which the prevailing tendency of modern-day capitalism is to build up ever greater business agglomerations. Under such conditions, it must honestly be said that it’s an uphill struggle for the family-run business and for the business principles and practices of an enlightened, socially- and environmentallyconscious entrepreneur.

Corporations and consumers: what’s their attitude to natural resources?
There’s a general growth in interest for environmental issues, as even the number of programmes broadcast by Italian networks dealing with these topics go to show.

It’s a field, though, rife with rhetoric and lip-service.

Blair’s government, for instance, has always proclaimed to want to be in the forefront in adopting and implementing the Kyoto parameters. But the track record over the last three years shows that matters have indeed worsened.

Rhetoric and reality, words and facts … politicians are always inventing new stories to capture media attention and coverage.
That’s not to say I’m not hopeful for the future. It’s just that I think we’ve got to move faster and there’s an urgent need for ongoing capillary monitoring.

The fact, for instance, that the United States have so far failed to sign the Kyoto protocol [ http://www.unfccc.int12860.php ] is a major setback that needs to be quickly overcome.

Paul Ginsborg recommends
The politics of everyday life: making choices changing lives
Paul Ginsborg, Yale University Press, 2005

www.ifat.org
Fair trade website.