Subcontracted capitalism and the polemical verification of rights: a Rancièrian interpretation of the politics of transnational private governance in Nike’s global production network

ABSTRACT

While some scholars dismiss transnational private governance instruments, such as codes of conduct, social auditing and monitoring initiatives, as an instrument of corporate power, propaganda and control, others provide a positive assessment. This paper criticises both approaches by applying concepts developed by the French philosopher Jacques Rancière. Against the background of worker-driven discontent in the Nike supply chain, the paper argues why a Rancièrian reading may offer an alternative way of conceptualising the politics of transnational private governance, one that provides a more promising way to ‘ground’ it in both conceptual and empirical terms.

KEYWORDS:

• Jacques Rancière
• politics
• global production networks
• Nike
• transnational private governance
• sweatshops
• corporate social responsibility
• transnational labour networks

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

An early version of this paper was presented at the special issue workshop on ‘Grounding the Politics of Transnational Private Governance’, University of Lausanne, Switzerland, 7–8 March 2019. I thank the following for their contributions to this research: Jean-Christophe Graz, Christian Scheper, Inge van der Welle and Virginie Mamadouh for their valuable comments and suggestions. I am also grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their insightful feedback. Any mistakes or shortcomings in this paper are solely my own responsibility.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1 In French, a distinction is made between politics (la politique) and the political (le politique). For Rancière, la politique refers the to ‘logic of equality that encounters the order of domination constituted by la police [while] le politique is the ground or space of such an encounter’ (Chambers, 2011a, p. 314; Rancière, 1995).

2 For example, neo-Gramscianism questions how oppositional groups can institutionalise their ideas, instead of viewing governing bodies as solely a tool of corporate power or a platform for global democratic deliberation. In this context, multistakeholder initiatives and mechanisms are the contested outcomes of social struggles. However, by equating politics with power struggles, their approach is markedly different from the way Rancière defines and approaches politics, namely, ‘that activity which turns on equality as its principle’ (Rancière, 1999, p. ix), explicitly noting that ‘politics is not the exercise of power’ (Rancière, 2010, p. 35)

3 Corporate capture can be defined as the situation where a regulatory body, created to act in the public interest, is controlled by the industries it is supposed to regulate, such as the butcher judging his own wares.

4 The author has been involved with the Clean Clothes Campaign for over a decade (2003–13) and has met with activists from the Bed and Bath case.

5 See https://www.dignityreturns.org