Kourion - sun, sea and slavery
These are some photos we took last week at Kourion - one of the most important archaeological sites in Cyprus. It is a very large area comprising of buildings of various eras superimposed onto one another.
One of the main buildings is a large and ornate bath-house. Wealthy people could enjoy pools at various temperatures, shop in the adjacent arcade and pray in a nearby temple. So not much has changed under the Cyprus sun in the intervening 2000 years. I Am Not A Historian (IANAH) and there are a good number of competing theories as to why Kourion is now just a pile of rocks (including the effect of a big earthquake) and why the amazingly powerful Roman Empire collapsed. I am not qualified to lend an opinion to those debates. What does interest me is the extent that the Empire was built on slavery. At some points, it is said, there was one slave for every two citizens. People working, without pay, doing all the manual jobs. People who were unpeople, who could be bought and sold and abused like objects. A hidden underclass who did all the work whilst others lounged around and enjoyed the baths. The parallels to our own Empire are stark. Slaves are not normally around us. We have developed mechanical systems to replace most hard work in our homes and around us. Yet a huge army works ridiculously hard to keep us in luxury. It seems to me that the underlying question in our Fairtrade deliberations is the extent to which we participate in slavery-lite trading systems, allowing our own feelings of self worth and relatively minor improvements to the lifestyles of producers to justify them. Maybe these systems are not reformable and only the decline and fall of our own Empire will signal release for the millions we oppress.
5 comments
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slDmUB07St4
Welcome back from your OS travels. I am once again seeking clarification about the meaning of your post.
When you say "the extent to which we participate in slavery-lite trading systems, allowing our own feelings of self worth and relatively minor improvements to the lifestyles of producers to justify them" are you saying that in your mind the current fairtrade market system is in essence a 'slavery-lite' trading system. In other words, fairtrade, as it operates currently, is a system that is fundamentally based on poor marginalized producers working under slave-like conditions to produce goods for our consumption?
If this is the case, what do you see as necessary to change the current fairtrade system so that it does not reflect the qualities of a 'slavery-lite' trading system?
Cheers
Scott
All the evidence I have seen suggest that whilst fairtrade makes a difference - and sometimes a dramatic difference - it is far less that what is actually needed to allow these producers to have proper lives. I want to see dramatic changes to the lifestyles of those who produce these products and fairtrade is never going to be able to achieve those things. It is not really so hard to make a big difference to someone who has nothing. Anything you give them is 100% better than what they had. But when the difference they actually need is vast then fairtrade is akin to rearranging the deckchairs on the titanic.
Producers need a much stronger position in the trading systems so that they receive far more than they currently receive of the sale price. The real issue is whether the system is robust enough to allow that to happen. Somehow I doubt it.
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