Pervasive Corporate Threats to Public Health & Environment Spur Resistance

Pervasive Corporate Threats to Public Health & Environment Spur Resistance

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RACHEL'S ENVIRONMENT & HEALTH NEWS #818
http://www.rachel.org
May 26, 2005

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Rachel's Environment & Health News #817 - Part 1 of 2: A Systemic Approach to Occupational and Environmental Health, May 12, 2005

By Skip Spitzer*

There are signs that public awareness about corporate impacts on society is rising.[1] A 1999 industry-sponsored global survey warned that citizens in general feel that protecting the environment and the health and safety of employees are more important corporate responsibilities than making a profit.[2] In the U.S., a 2000 Business Week/Harris poll noted with some alarm that 40% "agree" and 32% "somewhat agree" that "business has gained too much power over too many aspects of American life."[3] Likewise, there are indications that progressive movements around the world are increasingly focusing on the role of the corporation, even among liberal groups for which this is new terrain.

As the corporate role in occupational, public health and other problems receives scrutiny, it is essential to recognize that it is not sufficient to identify specific acts of malfeasance or influence, or even to campaign to address them. A more comprehensive and systemic framework for understanding the role of corporations requires consideration of corporate power and its effects as endemic features of national socio-economic systems and the rapidly integrating global order. The present contribution offers such a perspective, highlighting the need for systemic change and providing a useful picture of the "structure of harm" -- the underlying social structures (or institutional arrangements) that produce social and environmental problems, and undermine reform. It also presents implications for researchers, policy-makers, activists and others trying to address environmental and occupational health problems, particularly with regard to integrating efforts to address immediate impacts with those for longer-term, systemic change.

The need for systemic change Many contemporary social movements are characterized by efforts to resolve particular problems as quickly as possible.[4] This is, of course, often a direct response to immediate harm or inequality, frequently life-threatening or environmentally catastrophic. It is also a reasonable approach given limited power and capacity.

Relatively near-term, issue-focused public action generally focuses on:

* Educating the public to raise awareness about an issue

* Changing consumer behavior to influence market dynamics (e.g., to eliminate a product or type of production, promote alternatives or reduce consumption generally)

* Pressuring corporations or other private actors to cease, clean up or provide compensation for a harmful practice

* Pressuring government for a socially just or environmentally sound policy or other action

* Developing alternatives (e.g., organic farms, local food systems, Community Supported Agriculture programs,[5] micro-lending, communities based on popular principles) These responses are frequently successful, sometimes achieving extraordinary improvements in economic welfare, democratic participation, environmental safeguards, and racial, gender and other rights. Pesticide reformers, for example, have achieved bans, restrictions, stronger enforcement, worker protections, reporting systems, research on and use of alternatives, development and growth of organics, international agreements and more. The Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs), for example, protects human health and the environment by requiring governments to eliminate or reduce the release of certain toxic chemicals that persist in the environment, travel widely and accumulate in the fatty tissue of living organisms.[6] Nonetheless, near-term, issue-focused reform efforts are typically frustrated (and in many cases rendered futile) by the dynamism of entrenched power, in several important ways. First, change efforts regularly face an extraordinary range of built-in hurdles in the form of governmental and corporate misinformation, legal action, surveillance, etc.; lack of funding; public apathy, ignorance and preoccupation; media bias and lack of attention; and the like.[7] Second, even where public action is successful, at least four kinds of systemic dynamics commonly prevent fundamental change:

1. Shifts in production. Curtailing one harm often results in increases in another. For example, the banning of DDT in the U.S. led to broad adoption of chlorpyrifos.

2. Innovation. New, risk-posing technologies are continually
commercialized. For instance, genetically engineered crops pose serious new problems, including: novel health risks, irreversible genetic contamination, harm to wildlife, corporate control of seeds through new intellectual property rights, biopiracy[8] and threats to organic agriculture.[9]

3. Co-optation. Alternative approaches are undermined and co-opted. For example, the extraordinary growth of the organic foods sector has led to the growing problem of "industrial organics." Through growth and acquisitions, U.S.-based Horizon Organics, for example, now controls 70% of the U.S. organic retail dairy market and is fully owned by Dean Foods, one of the top 25 food giants globally.[10,11]

4. Limited accommodation. Problems that are least challenging to the economic order may change (e.g., leaded gasoline), whereas there is little response on more threatening issues (e.g., carbon dioxide emissions). Finally, systemic dynamics may simply overwhelm reform efforts through the amount of harm they produce. In the U.S., for example, about 85,000 chemicals are registered for use -- most with no or inadequate testing -- with 2,000-3,000 new substances registered every year.[12] The harms and risks of industrial chemicals alone are staggering, yet there is an astonishing array of other social and ecological problems: environmental wounds (like global warming,[13] ozone depletion and species extinction), small producer hardship (loss of family farms, for example), undemocratic institutions (such as money-distorted political systems and the World Trade Organization), militarism and intervention (from Iraq to Haiti), social ills (like homelessness, hunger, poverty, crime and discrimination) and violation of human and animal rights, among many other issues. Is it possible to catch up? How significant are irreparable impacts? At what point do change efforts become too little too late?

Many of those who experience these frustrations recognize that underlying causes and barriers to change must ultimately be addressed. One common reconciliation of the tension between near-term action and underlying causes is the idea that, over time, progress on specific issues will achieve systemic change. This approach is reflected, for example, in sustainable agriculture movement slogans such as "Changing the world one farm at a time." Some "green" businesses are based on this idea or have adopted it in their advertising, such as California-based Give Something Back business products, which is "Saving the world one paperclip at a time."[14] In fact multinationals and others committed to the status quo promote this idea: for example, partnering with low-income housing builder Habitat for Humanity, Dow Chemical declared that it is "changing lives one home at a time."[15] The efforts behind the "one at a time" concept are often significant. Yet incrementalism, in the sense of cumulative successes fundamentally transforming societies, ignores the actual nature of underlying social structures.

The structure of harm What then are the underlying causes of harm that must be addressed? Many explanations of the cause of harm overlook that societies are integrated systems of institutionalized and organized patterns of behavior, values and beliefs. That is, while factors such as lack of awareness, greed, money, technology, dangerous Prime Ministers and uncaring corporations may be intermediate causes of harm, it is important to look at the functioning of a given society as a whole, or what we might call the "structure of harm."

The literature addressing the fundamental nature of modern societies and the global system is vast.[16] The intent here is not to survey this field or provide a new totalizing theory, but rather to identify basic structural features of harmful societies, drawing primarily on the case of the United States. These characteristics are somewhat generalizable to other advanced market economies of the global North, parts of the global South, and the world system. They are a good starting point for conceptualizing the structures of harm at the root of contemporary social and ecological crises.[17] Corporations are a central aspect of social life In 1787, fewer than 40 corporations operated in the United States.[18] As late as 1920, there were approximately 314,000.[19] In 2003, there were more than four million.[20] Corporations now account for about 74% of all U.S. production.[21] This means that the core economic decisions (what, how and how much to produce, using what resources) are largely in corporate hands. Through work and consumption, virtually everyone is profoundly affected by corporations. Corporations are also powerful social actors, affecting virtually every other aspect of social life. Corporations largely ignore social and environmental costs

Corporations are compelled to maximize profit or shareholder value or face elimination by competitors.[22] In the U.S., officers and managers who do not work to maximize shareholder value are in fact subject to legal action for violating fiduciary obligations to act in the best interest of the
corporation.

Focusing first and foremost on profitability means that decisions are explicitly based on consideration of a firm's own costs and revenues, while costs and benefits to society (or "externalities") such as pollution or use of recycled materials, are largely ignored. Modern microeconomic theory specifically prescribes this: to maximize profit, individual firms should keep producing units of a product until the unit (or marginal) revenue earned is just equal to the firm's cost to produce it. Even decisions to spend on community development, charity and other "corporate responsibility" programs are generally treated as "investments" and limited to projects for which there is a "business case."[23]

Reagan Administration economist Robert Monks described it this way: "The corporation... became something of an externalizing machine, in the same way that a shark is a killing machine --no malevolence, no intentional harm, just something designed with sublime efficiency for self-preservation, which it accomplishes without any capacity to factor in the consequences to others."[24] If corporations had to take into account external costs and benefits to society, they would make radically different production decisions.[25]

Competition creates economic concentration Competition between firms striving to maximize profit leads some corporations to get bigger than others. Through growth and expansion, mergers, acquisitions and other consolidation within and across sectors, many corporations have become extremely large and many industries are now dominated by relatively few producers. Some corporations dominate in multiple industries. For example, the top six agrochemical producers control about 65% of U.S. pesticide market[26] and four of them are leaders in transgenic seeds. Overall, just 1% of businesses control 80% of U.S. private sector production.[27] Concentration leads to remarkable economic and social power. It also undermines the market. While bigger firms may achieve economies of scale, markets retain their self-regulating capacity only when there are many buyers and sellers (such that no one firm can influence prices), few barriers for new firms to enter and other competitive features.[28] Competition drives harmful models of production Competition at the top of concentrated industries continually leads to rapid development and broad adoption of far-reaching new technologies and production practices. For example, agribusiness giants have dramatically transformed agriculture in just the last 50-60 years.

Today food is produced on large-scale, machine- and chemical-intensive farms specializing in single animal products or hybrid high-yield crops -- one part of a segmented system involving inputs (such as seeds), farms, storage, processing, distribution, food manufacture and marketing, insurance and lending. Industrial farming deeply disrupts ecologically-based processes of plant cultivation and animal husbandry, by preventing beneficial crop interactions and complimentary relationships between plant cultivation and husbandry (e.g., on-farm manure used for fertilization), limiting fertility-enhancing crop rotations, creating uniform targets for pests, and undermining beneficial soil organisms, pollinators and natural pest predators. These conditions require the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides that further erode soil fertility, kill beneficial insects and accelerate the development of pest resistance, creating a systemic cycle of increasing reliance on such chemicals. Other impacts include: soil depletion; loss of arable land; energy use; impacts on wildlife; air and water pollution; ozone depletion; global warming; loss of genetic diversity; unhealthy food products; farmworker abuse and poverty; transgenic seeds; loss of farmer independence; farm failure; and breakdown of rural communities.[29] Within such models of production, dominant corporations use their ability to influence markets for special advantage over competitors, suppliers, labor and consumers. For example, consolidation in the agricultural inputs sector allows providers like pesticide manufacturers to set artificially high prices for goods and services growers need. Likewise, concentration in commodity markets has led to artificially low farm-gate prices for what growers sell. This is one of the reasons farmers are losing their farms. While technology providers like pesticide companies market their products as solutions for low profit, technology adoption by businesses in competitive industries (such as farming) provides little lasting benefit. Production may increase, but as a new technology is broadly adopted, overall growth of supply reduces prices, eliminating the new technology's economic benefit.[30] The general trend of innovation in production has been technologies and practices which greatly increase the use of natural resources and energy (resulting in vast resource depletion and environmental waste impacts),[31] substitute technology in place of human labor and push the limits of regulation.[32] Cases where regulatory frameworks may at best catch up to technology already in commercial use or development include food irradiation,[33] genetically engineered crops, synthetic biology,[34] nanotechnology,[35] wireless telephone communications[36] and the commercialization of outer space for communications, thrill rides, tourism and other services.[37] Growth is imperative, yet unsustainable Free market economies require perpetual economic growth. Sustained periods without real positive growth are characterized as recessions or depressions. They are marked by decreased business activity, increased unemployment and bankruptcies, lower incomes and demand for goods, and other aspects of economic crisis.

Arguably, the continual growth needed to keep market economies stable, particularly on a global scale, is fundamentally at odds with environmental well-being.[38] A continuous average growth of just 3% annually would mean that worldwide industrial production would double every 25 years -- clearly an unsustainable rate.[39] Agricultural expansion alone is projected over the next 50 years to cause unprecedented ecosystem degradation and species extinctions.[40] Corporations wield extraordinary social power As we have seen, corporations maintain decisive economic power. Yet they also exercise wide political and other social influence. In fact, in the U.S., a variety of court cases have endowed corporations with rights as "persons" under law.[41] Numerous laws, policies and international agreements have also granted corporations rights unavailable to individuals.[42] It is important to note that many business leaders think about this influence not just in terms of government policy (such as subsidies, infrastructure, tax breaks, privatization and deregulation), but on the level of social structure. During the late Industrial Revolution in the U.S., to take a stark early example, industrialists faced a severe crisis of under-consumption, with factories producing more goods than the public wanted or could afford.[43] One banker, investor and government advisor warned: "We have learned to create wealth...[but] we have not learned to keep that wealth from choking us."[44] To bolster consumption, industrialists engaged in broad "social planning,"[45] undermining immigrant and working class values of thrift and self-reliance based on insights from the developing field of social psychology (in which one pioneer declared "It is now possible to control and regiment the masses according to our will without their knowing it"[46]). Through advertising, industry explicitly set about to instill personal dissatisfaction and fear of social censure among the public, based on insights such as "My idea of myself is rather my own idea of my neighbor's view of me"[47]. These social change efforts gave rise to modern advertising, public relations and contemporary mass-consumer culture.

Today, systemic analysis and planning takes place in exclusive clubs, private forums, think tanks, casual encounters and other settings. One such venue is the long-standing, all-male Bohemian Club annual gathering, in which George W. Bush, Henry Kissinger, the Chairman of Dow Chemical and other corporate and political elites were recent participants.[48] [To be continued.]

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This article will appear in a forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health.

[2] The millennium poll on corporate social responsibility [executive briefing]. Toronto: Environics International Ltd.; 1999.

[3] Bernstein A, Arndt M, Zellner W, Coy P. Too much corporate power? Business Week 2000 Sep 11.

[4] There are of course others, such as the global Via Campesina, that make immediate demands in the context of calls and action for broader change.

[5] In Community Supported Agriculture programs, supporters help secure a farm's yearly expenses by purchasing shares of a season's harvest.

[6] For more on POPs and the Convention see: Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants [Web site]. Available at: URL:http://www.pops.int/.

[7] Regarding explicit opposition to activism, see: Marx GT. External efforts to damage or facilitate social movements: some patterns, explanations, outcomes, and complications. In: Zald M, McCarthy J. The Dynamics of Social Movements. Cambridge, MA: Winthrop Publishers; 1979.

[8] Biopiracy refers to the use of patents and other vehicles to appropriate the knowledge and genetic resources of traditional farming and indigenous communities.

[9] For more on genetically engineered crops see: Ho M, Ching L. The case for a GM-free sustainable world. London: Institute of Science in Society;2003.

[10] Industrial organics share many of environmental and social impacts of the industrial food system generally. Horizon, for example, produces highly processed goods, ships long distances and undermines local producers.

[11] Sligh M, Christman C. Who owns organic?: the global status, prospects, and challenges of a changing organic market. Pittsboro, NC: Rural Advancement Foundation International USA; 2003. Also see: Pollan M. Behind the organic-industrial complex. New York Times 2001 May 13.

[12] Wakefield J. Human exposure assessment: finding out what's getting in. Environ Health Perspect 2000 Jan;108(1):A24-6.

[13] A recent study concluded that global warming might be twice as severe as predicted by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. Stainforth DA, Aina T, Christensen C, Collins M, Faull N, Frame DJ, et al. Uncertainty in predictions of the climate response to rising levels of greenhouse gases. Nature 2005 Jan 27; 433.

[14] Give Something Back [Web site]. Available at: URL:http://www.givesomethingback.com/.

[15] Dow and Habitat for Humanity: changing lives one home at a time. Available at: RL:http://www.dow.com/dow_news/feature/2004/06_18_04/index.htm . Accessed September 22, 2004.

[16] For an accessible overview of classical and contemporary social theory see: Jones P. Introducing Social Theory. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press; 2003. For a similar overview of political economy see: Sackrey C, Schneider G. Introduction to Political Economy. Somerville, MA: Dollars and Sense; 2002.

[17] Some of the ideas below are taken from the literature on the "Treadmill of Production," originated by Allan Schnaiberg. For an overview see: Special issue on the environment and the treadmill of production. Organization & Environment 2004 Sep;17(3).

[18] Bleifuss J. Know thine enemy: a brief history of corporations. In These Times 1998 Feb 8.

[19] U.S. Internal Revenue Service. Statistics of income --1920.Washington, DC: Government Printing Office; 1922.

[20] Overall, there were 5,891,000 corporations. U.S. Internal RevenueService. IRS data book, FY 2003. Publication 55b. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Treasury; 2004. Of these, roughly 1.5 million are non-profitcorporations. O'Neill M. Nonprofit Nation: A New Look at the Third America.2nd ed. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass; 2002.

[21] The public sector accounts for about 16% of production and the non-corporate private sector about 10%. Calculated from gross domestic product by sector data from: Bureau of Economic Analysis. Gross domestic product: fourth quarter 2003 (final). Washington, DC: U.S. Department ofCommerce; 2004 Mar 25. And: Bizstats.com. Total number of US businesses [Web page]. Available at: URL:http://www.bizstats.com/businesses.htm. Accessed May 23, 2003.

[22] Other factors, such as compensation unrelated to profit, may also play a role in driving corporate behavior.

[23] The preoccupation with the need for a business case for acts of corporate responsibility is apparent in the dialogue of many in the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement (see for example: Ethical Corporation Online [Web site]. Available at: URL:http://www.ethicalcorp.com). One CSR advocate attributed the ineffectiveness of good corporate citizenship in part to "letting business get away with cosmetic makeovers." Visser W. Five corporate sustainability challenges that remain unmet. Ethical Corporation Magazine 2004 Jul 23. Also see: Athanasiou T. The age of greenwashing. Capitalism, Nature, Socialism 1996; 7(1):1-36.

[24] Monks R, Minow N. Power and Accountability. New York: HarperCollins;1991. p. 24.

[25] For example, economist A. C. Pigou developed an approach to address externalities in which costs are internalized through producer taxes equal to the value of external impacts. It is important to note that approaches to environmental externalities within mainstream economics emphasize the idea of pricing (if not privatizing) elements of the environment so that externalities become regulated by the market. Although these schemes ignore the impossibility of assigning appropriate values to things like streams and bacteria, they nonetheless support efforts for greater commodification of nature.

[26] The Freedonia Group. Pesticides to 2006 (Freedonia Industry Study; vol1523). Cleveland, OH: The Freedonia Group; 2002.

[27] Eitzen S, Baca-Zinn M. Social Problems. 8th ed. Boston: Allyn and Bacon; 2000. p. 27.

[28] Note that competition still takes place in less-competitive markets. Highly concentrated markets are generally characterized by oligopolistic competition.

[29] For a broad critique of industrial agriculture, see: Kimbrell A, editor. Fatal harvest: the tragedy of industrial agriculture. Washington: Island Press; 2000.

[30] For more on this see: Ikerd J. Sustainable farming: reconnecting with consumers. Proceedings of Agricultural Leadership Foundation of Hawaii Agricultural Conference; 2002 Oct 24; Honolulu, HI. Available at: URL:http://www.ssu.missouri.edu/faculty/jikerd/papers/HawaiiSA. html.

[31] Foster JB. Global ecology and the common good. In: Grover WF, Pescheck JG, editors. Voices of dissent: critical readings in American politics. 5th ed. New York: Longman; 2004.

[32] "Labor-saving" technology of course can result in quality of life enhancements, but it also forces independent producers into wage labor, deskills the labor process, maintains a reserve of unemployed and underemployed workers, weakens labor as a class, increases scale of production and creates barriers to competition, among other important impacts. On labor impacts see: Braverman H. Labor and monopoly capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press; 1974.

[33] For an advocate's summary of research on risks of food irradiation see: Public Citizen. The problems with irradiated food: what the research says. Available at: URL:http://www.citizen.org/documents/Research_(PDF).PDF. Accessed September 22, 2004.

[34] This term describes an emerging field in which biologists genetically reengineer and create new organisms. See: Ball P. Synthetic biology: starting from scratch. Nature 2004 Oct 7;431:624-626. [35] On nanotechnology see: ETC Group. The big down: from genomes to atoms. Ottawa: ETC Group; 2003.

[36] See for example: Salford LG, Brun AE, Eberhardt JL, Malmgren L, Persson BR. Nerve cell damage in mammalian brain after exposure to microwaves from GSM mobile phones. Environ Health Perspect 2003 Jun;111(7):881-3.

[37] For a proponent's description of lagging regulation governing space commerce in the U.S. and the "limited regulation" of the new Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004 (now in Senate committee), see: Commercialization of space: Commercial Space Launch Amendments Act of 2004. Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 2004;17(2).

[38] For a compelling case, see: Foster JB. Ecology against capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press; 2002.

[39] Foster JB. Global ecology and the common good. In: Grover WF, Pescheck JG, editors. Voices of dissent: critical readings in American politics. 5th ed. New York: Longman; 2004. [40] Tilman D, Fargione J, Wolff B, D'Antonio C, Dobson A, Howarth R et al. Forecasting agriculturally driven global environmental change. Science 2001 Apr 13;292(5515).

[41] For more on corporate personhood see: Mayer CJ. Personalizing the impersonal: corporations and the Bill of Rights. Hastings Law Journal 1990 Mar;41(3). [42] For more on the development of corporate power in the U.S. see: Nace T. Gangs of America: the rise of corporate power and the disabling of democracy. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler; 2003.

[43] Much of the following is based on: Ewan S. Captains of consciousness: advertising and the social roots of the consumer culture. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1976. [44] Bernard Baruch quoted in Forbes Magazine 1927Apr. [45] Industrial retail pioneer Edward Filene in his book: Filene EA. Successful Living in the Machine Age. New York: Simon & Schuster; 1932. p. 12.

[46] Edward Bernays (a nephew of Sigmund Freud) quoted in: Ewan S. Captains of consciousness: advertising and the social roots of the consumer culture. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1976. p. 83.

[47] Floyd Henry Allport quoted in: Ewan S. Captains of consciousness: advertising and the social roots of the consumer culture. New York: McGraw-Hill; 1976. p. 36.

Industry in the U.S. explicitly set out to transform society using advertisements creating fear of social censure. A 1927 ad promoted Lysol Disinfectant as a feminine hygiene product by attributing interpersonal and social problems to a failure of personal health that the ad attributed to improper feminine hygiene. [See E. Jones, Those Were The Good Old Days (N.Y. Simon and Schuster, 1959).]

[48] Bohan S. Movers, shakers from politics, business go Bohemian: annual Sonoma fete draws Bushes, Kissinger, Powell, Gingrich. Sacramento Bee 1999 Aug 2. For more on dominant class consciousness see: Domhoff W. Who rules America: power and politics in the year 2000. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield Publishing; 1998.

Part 2 of 2: A Systemic Approach to Occupational and Environmental Health

By Skip Spitzer*

[In this second part of a two-part series, activist campaigner Skip Spitzer continues describing "the structure of harm" -- some of the institutional and cultural features of U.S. society that make large-scale harm inevitable. Corporate power and economic concentration, patriarchy, racism, governments beholden to corporate wealth, media that reflect and reinforce the corporate system, and an international trade regime that has weakened governments' influence on corporate behavior -- make up the "structure of harm." We will all want to continue working locally, but if we can tie our local work to a bigger-picture analysis -- and to a growing global justice movement with a common agenda of democratic inclusion; environmental sustainability; class, racial, and gender justice; diversity; and fundamental change -- perhaps we can transform the "structure of harm" itself into something life-affirming and life-sustaining. That is the hope. --Editor] Government safeguards the basic needs of industry That corporate wealth buys broad influence in law and public policy is well documented and widely acknowledged.[1] Yet much government predisposition toward industry is less direct.

Holders of high office themselves frequently have significant ownership in large corporations and other corporate ties and histories. For example, virtually every member of the Bush cabinet has extensive corporate connections,[2] including outgoing Secretary of Agriculture Ann Veneman, who was a director of the biotech company Calgene[3] (now owned by Monsanto) and served on the International Policy Council on Agriculture, Food and Trade, a group funded by Cargill, Nestle, Kraft, and Archer Daniels Midland.[4] Many Clinton cabinet members had similar ties.[5] Governmental bias toward industry is also based on the state's dependence on economic growth as a generator of tax revenues and creating conditions favorable to perpetuation of political power. This structural position of the state is reflected in a general nonpartisan orientation of government toward ensuring a prosperous business climate, particularly for the largest companies. Clinton Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, for example, reflected this "What's good for General Motors is good for the rest of America"[6] perspective when he said that the good news about economic concentration in agriculture is that it means that "We're strengthening our global competitive edge."[7]

Media and other institutions reinforce corporate values and ideas Institutions of beliefs and knowledge-such as the mass media, public relations, science and education-also reflect the exigencies of the corporate system. As with politics, there are direct avenues of corporate influence, including: legal threats; lobbying, flak and other manipulation of journalists; and funding university research, research institutes and think tanks. In education, corporations provide schools with curriculum, funding, teacher training, advisors, exhibits and contest programs to, in the words of one industry newsletter, "get them started young."[8] Interestingly, while many acts of corporate influence are orchestrated in-house, the market itself generates goods and services for extending corporate influence. For example, Lifetime Learning Systems develops "corporate sponsored" materials for schools and asks corporations to "Imagine millions of students discussing your product in class. Imagine their teachers presenting your organization's point of view."[9] Many mechanisms of ideological influence are less direct. In science, for example, many researchers sit on corporate boards, own stock or have other financial ties to the companies to which their research relates. One member of a National Academy of Sciences panel on agricultural biotechnology acknowledged, "It would be kind of hard to find [scientists] who didn't have some funding from biotechnology groups."[10] In media, likely the most important institution of beliefs and knowledge, there are numerous ways in which the structure of the industry passively shapes the range of news and entertainment content. For example, media is itself an extremely concentrated industry and depends on the good graces of business advertisers. Journalists and writers are selected from the ranks of the mainstream.[11] Larry Grossman, former president of NBC News, put it this way: "the press are terribly conventional thinkers.... and that's why they are there. That's why they reach millions."[12] The general effect of direct and indirect corporate influence is that the mass media portray the world in ways that are consistent with the basic needs of industry. For example, a recent Associated Press story on biomonitoring[13] for pesticides and other industrial chemicals concluded "There's still debate among advocates over which of the 75,000 chemicals to specifically look for when biomonitoring. And even when chemicals are found, there's little an individual can do."[14] In fact, the more significant discussion among advocates is how best to challenge the chemical industry by mobilizing the public with this new documentation of corporate "chemical trespass." A study of sources for U.S. TV network news found such bias across the board, concluding that there is "a clear tendency to showcase the opinions of the most powerful political and economic actors, while giving limited access to those voices that would be most likely to challenge them."[15] Much debate about news media focuses on the issue of liberal
vs. conservative bias. This framing misses the point that what liberal and conservative outlets have in common is that they rarely question the systemic role industry plays in causing social and environmental problems or its extensive institutional influence, or describe what the public can do to change the structure of harm.

Patriarchy and racism While the structural features sketched above focus the corporate power, patriarchy and racism are also systemic sources of harm, which interact with the market dynamics.[16] Patriarchy refers to male dominance in a society, a universal condition that predates and is influenced by the market economy. For example, gender relations changed dramatically as industrialization broadly shifted economic production from the home to separate workplaces, and again with the relatively recent mass entry of women into the paid economy.

Today, women in the U.S. workforce face unequal pay, hiring standards, working conditions, training opportunities, prospects for promotion, participation in workplace decision-making, as well as segregation in lower-level occupations. These factors lead directly, and through lower social status, to negative occupational health and other
impacts. Assessments of "safe" levels of pesticide and other chemical exposure, for example, have typically relied on male subjects and generally ignore women's greater sensitivity to exposure.[17] For women, patriarchy also results in domestic violence, disproportionate shares of poverty and household work (even when holding a paid job) and other impacts.[18]

Likewise, racism occurs independently of and is influenced by the corporate system. Racism, in the broadest sense, refers to prejudice or discrimination based on race (i.e., perceived physical differences) or ethnicity (i.e., socially defined cultural characteristics), and to institutional discrimination (i.e., differing treatment regardless of individual attitudes about race and ethnicity). Racism plays a significant role in education, occupational, health and other disparities. For example, African American, Latino, Native American and Asian American communities are disproportionately impacted by hazardous waste sites, landfills, incinerators, and polluting
industries. In fact, race is the most significant variable associated with the location of hazardous waste sites.[19,20]

Culture

The most general expression of the structure of harm is a dominant culture that reflects and reinforces values, beliefs, actions and lifestyles that are essentially consistent with the corporate system. A citizenry engrossed by individualism, the mythology of the free market and the measurement of personal success by wealth, and that is consumption-fixated, inwardly focused and often unaware and too busy for political engagement, enables business and politics as usual and undermines public action. It is difficult, for example, to mobilize the U.S. public in opposition to court appointments given that, according to a recent national poll, 64% of respondents could not name a single member of the Supreme Court, but 66% could name all three characters used to market Rice Krispies cereal.[21,22] Global dimensions Of course, the social structures of harm discussed above have important international dimensions. U.S. corporations have remarkable global reach. Exports of goods and services in July 2004 alone were roughly $96 billion[23] and private investment abroad for 2003 was about $7.8 trillion.[24] One result of international investment is the ability of corporations as a group to influence public policy in weaker economies on threat of capital flight.[25] Likewise, the U.S. government pursues a wide range of foreign political, economic and military policy, often to advance corporate interests. For example, international financial institutions such as the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank are mechanisms through which industrial powers are able to influence national policy, principally within the global South. As conditions of lending, these institutions impose Structural Adjustment Programs, which typically require shifts to export production, slashes in social spending and other terms that prioritize expansion of markets for foreign firms and servicing debt held by foreign banks.[26] Similarly, corporate rights are globalizing through powerful new international trade and investment agreements such as those of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and a battery of new regional and bilateral pacts. These emphasize "freeing" the market through sweeping limits on regulatory policy, while granting corporations new intellectual property and other rights and largely ignoring the anti-competitive nature of multinational corporations.

Military policy is also geared toward corporate interests.

Extreme lobbying and other influence by the arms industry to promote military spending and shape U.S. foreign policy constitutes a "military- industrial complex," about which outgoing president Eisenhower warned.[27] Some have argued that this has lead to a "permanent war economy," in which military spending and intervention play a central role in national economic stability.[28] At a minimum, it is clear that in most cases, geopolitical concerns, access to resources and markets, and corporate positioning underlie official pretexts for
intervention. In Iraq, for example, the Bush administration brought in business leaders to head up reconstruction (such as former Cargill executive Dan Amstutz in agriculture) and established a neo-liberal interim government with U.S. advisers in all departments.[29] U.S. corporations are acquiring reconstruction contracts (more than $20 billion so far), ownership of Iraqi resources (including oil and water)[30] and intellectual property protections[31] (playing a key role in the corporatization of the nation's agriculture).

Corporate activities overseas, foreign policy, international institutions and military action profoundly exacerbate social and environmental problems. Looking at just pesticides and the WTO, for example, free-trade rules undermine national policy-making and international environmental agreements which can reduce pesticide use, and foster the industrial agricultural model at the center of pesticide-reliant farming.[32] Seeing structure Although social structures are by nature difficult to see, the above sketch should begin to form a picture of key underlying institutional features that are the context of contemporary change making. In sum:

** Corporations are pervasive, economically and socially powerful actors compelled to pursue narrow self-interests in a system that drives economic concentration, generates socially and environmentally harmful models of production and requires perpetual growth.

** Those charged with public policy are fundamentally compelled by corporate influences and the primacy of economic growth to safeguard corporate interests.

** Mass media, public relations, science, education-and the dominant consumption- and wealth-oriented culture as a whole-significantly reflect and reinforce the corporate system.

** Patriarchy and racism are sources of harm that interact with the corporate system.

** Corporate interests are projected internationally through economic, military, political and other activity, including a rapidly developing trade and investment framework undermining the ability of governments to control corporate behavior.

From this vantage point, strategies for moving beyond near-term, issue-based action can be more easily assessed. For example, it is clear that there is nothing about incrementalism that necessarily transforms the structure of harm.

Making systemic change How can those engaged in near-term, issue-oriented approaches advance systemic change? Fortunately, this is not a matter of "reform or revolution." It is true that partial victories and reformism can drain potential for mobilization (as when banning residential uses of a pesticide, while leaving only farmworkers and other marginalized communities affected). This is an important strategic point. However, the notion that conditions should be allowed to worsen so that mobilization for systemic change can more readily take place overlooks the fact that in many ways conditions for deep change already exist. One useful reconciliation of the reform/transformation question is to integrate the near-term with the transformative, such that issue-based action explicitly functions to advance systemic
change. This approach accommodates the reality of urgent harm that cannot be ignored. It also maintains a focus on concrete entry points for engaging and mobilizing the public. The point, however, is not that both orientations are useful; it is that they can be integrated so that they are mutually reinforcing.

The following are a few practical points for furthering this
integration.

Building a broad, global movement One crucial insight drawn from a structural perspective is that movements must be bigger, multi-issue and international.

Fortunately, if there is anything opportune about the structure of harm it is that it is emerging as a unifying concern of people and progressive movements around the world. For example, most toxics groups in the U.S. taking a "NIMBY" (Not In My Backyard) position in the early 1980's developed at least a perspective of the larger context of harm.[33] Today there are truly global movements (such as the anti- or alternative-globalization movement and Via Campesina[34]), processes (like the World Social Forum[35]) and statements of unity (like the "Rio Earth Summit Declaration of Principles"[36])-all of which emphasize common themes of democratic inclusion; environmental sustainability; class, racial and gender justice; diversity; and fundamental change.

There are ample opportunities to tie near-term change efforts to these expressions of the unifying global progressive movement.

Making connections and deeper alliances Alliance-making based on common near-term goals is an obvious strategy. Yet identifying connections based on a common structural perspective can provide a basis for deeper alliances, fostering new synergies and broader movements. For example, the equitable distribution and growth of organic foods, which often cost more than conventional counterparts, suggest additional reasons for raising prevailing wages. The role of pharmaceutical companies provides a deep connection point for joint action between AIDS and other healthcare activists, opponents of genetically engineered foods and sustainable agriculture advocates. Issues such as corporate power, intellectual property rights and the production of drugs using transgenic "biopharm" crops will appeal to target audiences of multiple movements, which can be mobilized in new ways.

Building alliances between labor and other movements is particularly important. Human labor plays an essential role in production and therefore has the potential to disrupt it. This is a special form of resistance, but one that has been plagued by anti-labor policy, union cooptation, and undemocratic practices and narrow focuses by unions. Fortunately, there is a resurgence of the idea of "social movement unionism," in which the labor movement makes linkages between workplace, civil society issues and the larger structure of harm.[37] Solidarity and agenda broadening Deep alliances require deep solidarity-acts of mutual support that extend beyond a group's specific mission or objectives.

One way to achieve greater solidarity is to reexamine organizational agendas. Most groups with a particular focus are run and supported by people concerned about a wide range of
issues. Reconsidering a group's work in light of the structure of harm can suggest useful restatements of mission that make deep solidarity a more explicit goal, without losing particular focus.

Reframing problems Another way to integrate systemic change is to recast the problems a group seeks to remedy. Pesticide reform groups, for example, frequently make the case that pesticides are harmful and need to be banned or restricted, and that pesticide manufacturers undermine the regulatory process. A broader framing, however, might include that:

** Most of what happens in the food system is based on the decision- making of an increasingly small set of increasingly large corporations (such as DuPont, Conagra, Kraft Foods and Wal-Mart)-which, by design, pay little attention to externalities such as pesticide poisonings, genetic contamination, excessive energy use, abuse of farm labor and obesity;

** these companies have created an ecologically and socially devastating model of food production and continually develop new technologies which pose new risks or harms (such as biopiracy and contract farming[38]);

** government fundamentally works to support the industrial food system, seeing its success as part of the national interest; and

** media, public relations, science, education and other institutions orient the public in support of the industrial food model through incomplete and tainted information, and the promotion of cultural traits (such as the desire for unblemished produce) that are typically antagonistic to campaigns for reform.

Systemic reframing places big picture issues in plain view, raising public consciousness, identifying connections and suggesting goals and requirements for long-term change.

Integrated campaigning Campaigns are strategic programs of action designed to move targets and other social forces so that a specific set of goals is obtained. It is a highly focused path to specific victories, generally at the expense of issues outside of the campaign frame. Yet there are ways to integrate systemic transformation goals into campaigns.

In integrated campaigning, campaign goals are determined not simply by asking the question "What do we want our campaign to change?" The broader question is "What larger systemic changes do we want to achieve toward which our campaign will move us?"

In this way, near- term, winnable goals can be developed that are important in their own right and serve as a foundation for or step to broader change. For example, if the broader systemic goal is to create a national regulatory system based the Precautionary Principle,[39,40] campaign goals might include:

1. enacting such an approach around a specific local issue, and

2. taking concrete steps to position the movement for a national campaign (through building relationships with untraditional allies, creating an international network, developing popular language about the structure of harm, raising awareness about corporate power and the limits of contemporary regulatory systems, and the like). Developing alternative institutions Just as issue-based change often requires development of alternatives (such as benign methods of pest management), systemic change requires the development of alternative institutions and visions of how societies can be organized to maximize justice and sustainability. There are many intriguing contributions in this area, from alternative global institutions to participatory economics.[41] Yet much more of this work needs to be done. What, for example, would a viable precautionary approach to regulation of production really look like? Developing concrete systemic alternatives helps answer legitimate questions about structural critiques, inspires mobilization for near- and long-term reform, helps activists and the public break out of mainstream ideological frameworks and offers real options when opportunities for deep change occur.

Springboarding

Many projects contribute on a local level to the development of alternative institutions. These include community gardens, local currency ventures, energy independent homesteads, community-run healthcare facilities, and green and worker-owned businesses. Yet much of this work reflects an incrementalist notion of change, with no or little engagement with movements for systemic change.

"Springboarding" entails using such points of public engagement to raise awareness and support action around the structure of harm. Some community gardens, for example, have displays providing information to participants and visitors not only about the merits of organic production or green space, but also about the problems with the industrial food system, corporate power and how to join campaigns. Springboarding helps integrate local alternatives with broader movements.

Hope

Systemic change, of course, can be overwhelming, requiring change- makers to communicate a sense of hope. Fortunately, there are in fact good reasons to be optimistic. Virtually all societies are highly contradictory and subject to relatively rapid change. Nominally democratic societies provide at least some avenues to influence the balance of political power.

Harmful societies invariably generate resistance. Mechanisms of social control are imperfect. Thus, expansion of popular rights and other fundamental change has occurred over decades, sometimes just years. Arguably, there has never been a time of so much popular action worldwide around so many issues stemming from the structure of harm. The global progressive movement has people-power, rich capacities, moral positions and increasingly a structural awareness, common vision and organization with which to chart a new institutional order in which the earth and popular rights come before the free market.

Ultimately, however, hope is something independent of optimism- something we may therefore always hold and convey. As Vaclav Havel put it:

"Hope is a state of mind, not of the world.... Either we have hope or we don't; it is a dimension of the soul, and it's not essentially dependent on some particular observation of the world or estimate of the situation.... Hope, in this deep and powerful sense, is not the same as joy that things are going well, or willingness to invest in enterprises that are obviously heading for success, but rather an ability to work for something because it is good, not just because it stands a chance to succeed."[42] Positive systemic change may be daunting, but it is essential.

Recognizing this need, understanding underlying structures of harm and creating an integrated activist practice are some key steps in raising the likelihood and pace of success.

============

This article will appear in a forthcoming special issue of the International Journal of Occupational and Environmental Health.

*Skip Spitzer coordinates corporate accountability and industrial agriculture work at PANNA, Pesticide Action Network North America, in San Francisco. He has worked for almost 25 years as an activist on a wide range of social and environmental issues. As part of PANNA's Resources for Action work, he provides training in grassroots organizing, campaign development, non-violent direct action, and other activist skills. [1] See for example: Sifry M, Watzman N. Is that a politician in your pocket?: Washington on $2 million a day. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley; 2004. [2] See for example: Center for Responsive Politics. The Bush administration: corporate connections [Web page]. Available at: URL:http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet.asp. Accessed September 22, 2004. [3] Vidal J. GM lobby takes root in Bush's cabinet. Guardian (UK) 2001 Feb 1. [4] Center for Responsive Politics. The Bush administration: Ann M. Veneman [Web page]. Available at: URL:http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet/cabinet.veneman.asp <http://www.opensecrets.org/bush/cabinet/cabinet.veneman.asp . Accessed May 20, 2003. [5] Savio N. The business of government: Clinton's corporate
cabinet. Multinational Monitor 1993 Apr;15(4). [6] General Motors Chairman Charlie Wilson said this to a
Senate committee in 1955. See: Hartman D. What's good for
General Motors.... Chronicles Magazine 2002 May.

[7] United States Department of Agriculture. Remarks of Secretary Dan Glickman at the USDA Small Farms Commission
public forum; Memphis, TN; July 28, 1997; release no. 0251.97
[Web page]. Available at:
URL:http://www.usda.gov/news/releases/1997/07/0251. Accessed
September 22, 2004. [8] Manning S. Students for Sale. Nation 1999 Sep 27. [9] Jacobson MF, Mazur LA. Marketing madness. Boulder, CO:

Westview Press; 1995.

[10] Fred Gould on: National Public Radio. Science Friday: Ag
biotech and developing countries [radio program, April 14,
2000]. Available at: URL:http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=107293 <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=107293 2. [11] For more on the structure of the mass media see: Herman E,
Chomsky N. Manufacturing consent: the political economy of the mass media. London: Vintage; 1988. [12] Pack journalism: horde copy [transcript of television program Nightline]. ABC News 1989 Sep 27. [13] Biomonitoring refers to analysis of blood, urine, serum, saliva or tissue to identify exposure to, or the presence of, chemicals in the human body. [14] Elias P. Scientists measure pollution in humans. 2003 Dec
27. [15] The study also reported that 92% of all U.S. sources interviewed were white, 85% were male and, where party affiliation was identifiable, 75% were Republican. Howard I. Power sources. Extra! 2002 May. [16] For literature emphasizing interactions between race, gender and class see: Belkhir J, American Sociological Association. Race, gender, and class bibliography [Web page]. Available at: URL:http://www.asanet.org/sections/rgcbiblio.html. [17] Ostlin P. Gender inequalities in occupational health. Harvard Center for Population and Development Studies working papers 2000 Sep;10(9). [18] For more about patriarchy in the U.S. see: Sapiro V. Women in American society. 4th ed. Mountain View, CA: Mayfield; 1999.
For a global survey of the status of women, see: United Nations
Statistics Division. The world's women 2000: trends and statistics. New York: United Nations Publications; 2000. [19] Commission for Racial Justice. Toxic wastes and race in the United States. New York: United Church of Christ; 1987. For an interesting analysis of EPA data, showing disproportionate exposure to environmental hazards in communities with higher concentrations of lower income people and people of color, see Ash M, Fetter RT. Who Lives on the Wrong Side of the Environmental Tracks? Evidence from the EPA's Risk-Screening
Environmental Indicators Model. Amherst, MA: University of
Massachusetts Political Economy Research Institute; 2002. (Working Paper Series; number 50). [20] For more on racism in the U.S., see: Shaefer RT. Race and ethnicity in the United States. 3rd ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ:

Prentice Hall; 2004. [21] A lack of awareness about the judicial system is particularly important in advancing business interests, since corporate rights typically have been advanced through court decisions. For an activists's summary of such cases, see:

Women's International League for Peace and Freedom, Timeline of Personhood Rights and Powers. Available at http://reclaimdemocracy.org/personhood. Accessed September 22,
2004. [22] The Polling Company. More Americans can name Rice Krispies characters than Supreme Court justices! April 19, 2002 [Web page]. Available at: URL:http://www.pollingcompany.com/News.asp?FormMode=
ViewReleases&ID=50. [23] Bureau of Economic Analysis. U.S. international trade in goods and services. Washington, DC: United States Department of Commerce; 2004 Jul. [24] Includes private U.S.-owned assets and direct investment abroad at market value. Bureau of Economic Analysis. U.S. net international investment position at yearend 2003. Washington,
DC: U.S. Department of Commerce; 2004 Jun 30. [25] This is also true of national policy in the U.S. (were it to become out of kilter with corporate interests), owing to the high degree of foreign investment in the U.S. (which exceeds U.S. investment abroad). [26] For more on these programs see: The Structural Adjustment Participatory Review International Network (SAPRIN). Structural adjustment: the SAPRI report. London: Zed Books; 2004. [27] Hartung WD. Eisenhower's warning: the military-industrial complex forty years later. World Policy Journal 2001;18(1). [28] Melman S. In the grip of a permanent war economy. CounterPunch 2003 Mar 15. [29] Mekay E. U.S. business pushes for Mideast trade. Inter Press Service News Agency 2004 Oct 7. [30] Juhasz A. The corporate invasion of Iraq. LeftTurn Magazine 2003 Aug. [31] Coalition Provisional Authority Order No. 81: patent, industrial design, undisclosed information, integrated circuits and plant variety law of 2004. CPA/ORD/26 April 04/81. Available at: URL:http://www.iraqcoalition.org/regulations/20040426_CPAORD_81 _Patent s_Law.pdf. Accessed October 20, 2004. [32] Spitzer S. The WTO and pesticide reform. Global Pesticide Campaigner 2000;10(1). [33] Epstein B. Grassroots environmentalism and strategies for social change. New Political Science 1995;32(Summer). [34] For more see: Via Campesina [Web site]. Available at: URL:http://www.viacampesina.org/. [35] For more see: World Social Forum [Web site]. Available at URL:http://www.forumsocialmundial.org.br/home.asp.

[36] See: Report of the United Nations Conference on Environment and Development June 1992, Annex I: Rio declaration on environment and development. Available at URL:http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.h <http://www.un.org/documents/ga/conf151/aconf15126-1annex1.h tm. Accessed October 20, 2004. [37] See for example: Lambert R. Globalization: can unions resist? South African Labour Bulletin 1998;22(6). [38] In contract farming, agribusinesses manage certain aspects of production through highly constrained contracts with farm producers. [39] In essence, the Precautionary Principle affirms that regulatory restrictions may be appropriate even if causal relationships are not fully established scientifically. [40] For more see: American Public Health Association. The Precautionary Principle and children's health. In: Policy statements adopted by the governing council of the American Public Health Association, November 15, 2000. Am J Public Health 2001;91:495-496. [41] See for example: Alternatives Task Force of the International Forum on Globalization. Alternatives to Economic Globalization: A Better World is Possible. San Francisco, California: Berrett-Koehler; 2002. And: Albert M. Parecon: Life After Capitalism. London: Verso; 2003.

[42] Havel V. Disturbing the Peace. London: Faber & Faber;
1990.

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