Our work is concerned with investigating images of stereotypes, the images our society generates to underpin prevailing paradigms of
thought and the inherent disparities of power. These are images embodying models of choice-choice of products, choice of services, choice of life-style-unlimited
opportunity, unlimited growth and almost unlimited individualism.
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 |
 In
contrast to the period of the Industrial Revolution where business was organised on an international basis but with local (national) controls and loyalties,
economic life nowadays has become so complexly inter-related that it has become relatively independent of national boundaries as far as social responsibilities
and social policy are concerned. Where once local textile markets were systematically destroyed by imported cloth, especially cotton, manufactured in
the industrial countries using raw material from the colonies - often underwritten by slave labour-manufacturing processes today have moved away from
Europe to areas where labour is cheap, and socio-legal controls in the area of worker
safety, working hours and conditions  lax
or non-existent. This applies irrespective of whether those areas are nation states or separate, quasi-independent, duty-free
zones within them.
Where once slaves provided profit-as chattels-being bought and sold in exchange for other, exported goods, or in the form of manpower
generating profit through their work on cotton, sugar,
and tobacco plantations throughout the Caribbean, North and South America; workers in Third World (often including children) now fulfil that function. |
Individual initiative is placed on a par with freedom to do anything. In the interests of consumerism products are uncoupled from their
consequences (environmental, medical etc.) allowed to drift alone in their availability, saleable, up for grabs. Nowhere is this quite so obvious as
in the field of economics and business. |
