Globaliztion

INTRODUCTION TO GLOBALIZATION (SOCI 2306)

FINAL ASSIGNMENT, WINTER 2014

There was an interesting news story out of Vancouver last month, concerning two entrepreneurs who were attempting to apply the TOMS Shoes model to housing.

TOMS FOR HOUSES

The first thing Pete Dupuis asked his wife and daughter after he got home to Vancouver one evening in October, 2010, was: Do you know about TOMS? Dupuis, who was in a down year of a thirty-year career selling condominiums, had never heard of TOMS, the shoe brand, before his flight in from Los Angeles, but he’d gotten an earful about it from the hipster type who happened to sit next to him. The hipster was Blake Mycoskie, who founded TOMS, in 2006, on a promise to give away a pair of shoes to one of the world’s insufficiently shod for each pair of shoes it sold. Mycoskie had built TOMS into the fountainhead of for-profit, buy-one-give-one marketing. Its annual sales are currently said to be approaching three hundred million dollars.

Dupuis listened, and was “deeply moved,” he wrote later. His family’s closets, it turned out, were full of TOMS shoes, and the Web was full of Mycoskie: pictures of him kneeling before dark-skinned children, slipping TOMS shoes over their bare feet. Everyone in the the pictures was smiling (except, possibly, the village shoemaker). That night, Dupuis found himself wondering: Could he devise a way to make the sale of a luxury condo to a rich family in a rich country trigger the gift of a modest house to a poor family in a poor country? Could he, in other words, apply the buy-one-give-one stratagem to real estate?

He and Sid Landolt, his business partner, were soon feeling “the entrepreneurial excitement of concepting a ‘big idea,’ ” as Dupuis puts it in his literature. More than three years later, they have incorporated World Housing, based in Vancouver, which they describe as “the world’s first one-for-one real-estate gifting model.” In its first eight years, World Housing aims to shelter poor people in five thousand free houses that would cost fifteen million dollars to build; the money would come from the luxury developers who sign up to participate. The gifts would be set in motion by rich people, who would move into five thousand condominiums costing them more than three billion dollars to buy.

Dupuis stayed in touch with Mycoskie, receiving pointers via email. He summarizes one as follows: “Marketing should always be geared to create ‘top of the mind awareness,’ to leverage public relations, media, all social media tools, and your contacts to the fullest.” Which is why, on a slushy afternoon, Dupuis was in a booth at the Hudson Eatery, on West Fifty-Seventh Street, with two public-relations advisers, preparing to announce World Housing’s first “certified” condo: a twisted, fifty-two-story tower, still in the planning stage, to be built in Vancouver by the Canadian developer Westbank.

Dupuis, who is fifty-six, has the weathered look of someone who skis a lot. He ordered tea, with the bag on the side, and proffered a World Housing brochure. The slogan on the cover read, “Roofs over heads. People over poverty. Families over fear.” One of the P.R. reps called World Housing “a passion project.” Dupuis, who was letting his tea go cold, agreed. “It’s a passion for us,” he said.

The buy-one-give-one phenomenon (one-point-four million Google hits) hasn’t yet surpassed the buy-one-get-one-free phenomenon (three-point-four million hits), but it’s gaining ground. Eyeglasses and vitamins; blankets and comforters; dog beds and dog collars; candy bars and soap; fuzzy toys and woolly hats—buy one, and a poor man, woman, child, or dog will get one for nothing. Buy-one-give-one enterprises share a devotion to the goodness of profit and the profitability of goodness. When health workers in poor countries put on a free set of scrubs from FIGS (Fashion Inspires Global Sophistication), “their sense of self-worth and identity skyrockets.” OAK (Ordinary Acts of Kindness) gives a backpack to a poor kid for each one sold; the purchased backpacks have pouches for holding “a few dollars to give to a homeless person, tip a musician, or pay for a stranger’s beverage.”

Not every buy-one-give-one deal is evenly balanced. Project 7 won’t plant ten “fruit bearing trees into the Earth” until it sells twelve recycled test tubes of “Save the Earth Fresh Mints.” Before an Indian family gets one concrete water filter, Faucet Face must sell five of its glass water bottles. But for buy-one-give-one imbalances, World Housing seems destined to claim world leadership.

Dupuis and Landolt’s real-estate company, S&P Destination Properties, calls its inventory “the finest real estate in the finest places on earth.” In eight hours of a single day in 2006, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reported, S&P sold units in the Trump International Hotel & Tower, in Waikiki, for a total of seven hundred million dollars. After the housing bust, its revenues dropped to two million dollars, in 2009, from forty-four million at the height of the bubble. All but forty-five of its two hundred and seventy staffers were let go, and Dupuis took two years off to write the master’s thesis that he had failed to submit in 1992. After meeting Mycoskie, he had his topic. Put simply: How can a real-estate guy from Canada give houses to poor people in poor countries? “Looking at Blake’s model, I knew my mission was to find the worst real estate in the world,” Dupuis wrote. A friend suggested, “It’s the people who live in garbage dumps.”

Dupuis flew out to see Scott Neeson, who runs the Cambodian Children’s Fund, a nonprofit that cares for children who work picking garbage in Phnom Penh. The dump where they and their families worked, Stung Meanchey, was closed in 2009, but the pickers still lived in and around it, in shacks made of scrap. Neeson agreed to lease land on the dump’s edge and rent it to responsible pickers, at a subsidized rate of about twenty dollars a month. Dupuis—with a million dollars in seed money from a group of like-minded contacts—has paid to build a workshop that hires some of the pickers, selected by Neeson, to assemble the new houses. World Housing pays for the materials, which cost twenty-five hundred dollars per house. Families moved into the first five homes last year. Dupuis wants to build fifty houses a month in Phnom Penh. He’s scouting other dumps, too, in the Philippines and Mexico.

At several nongovernmental organizations, specialists in the complexities of developing-country slums had doubts about World Housing’s ambition to keep expanding as long as there are poor people and condominiums. Slum dwellers generally have no shortage of materials to build their own homes. They don’t build nicer houses of the kind that Dupuis has designed because what they lack, more than materials, is security. Many are squatters. Those who rent homes face eviction at any time.

At the Hudson Eatery, Dupuis was prepared to respond to such misgivings. He reached into a bag and pulled out a clear plastic cube containing an architect’s model of a World Housing house, decorated with little green trees. Made of corrugated dark-green steel and set upon stilts, the full version is the size of a suburban garden shed, with a solar panel on the roof to power a light bulb.“We’re O.K. if they’re squatters,” Dupuis said. “These homes can be disassembled. We go in there, unbolt the thing, find another piece of land, and move the family. We’ll hit some bumps,” he went on. “That’s O.K. My life’s been a bunch of bumps. It’s just one more bump.”

Back in North America, developers and house hunters are going to need persuading. “We’ve had our noses bloodied by developers all over,” Dupuis said. “They are very single-minded. We’re finding some who understand that we’d make projects more marketable.”

Dupuis conducted an online survey for his thesis, to gauge World Housing’s prospects. One developer wrote that the “developer would be seen as having a moral conscience.” A condo owner wrote, “The one-for-one idea is THE most important part of the gifting. People see that when they buy a home and their life changes, a deserving family receives a home and their life changes. You can’t touch this part!”

Still, a cohort of developers worried that the one-for-one approach would not work as well for home buyers as it had for shoe buyers. “I have a concern that people may think they are paying more for the condo,” one wrote. Dupuis explains in his thesis that he and Landolt finally decided to “reduce the risk of non-participation” by “not requiring the buyer to make a financial contribution.”

For every sale, instead, the developers themselves will pay World Housing three thousand dollars (including a service fee) and account for it as a marketing expense. That way, a buyer of a million-dollar condo won’t have reason to think that it was worth only nine hundred and ninety-seven thousand. Since the selfless choice of a World Housing property “activates the funding,” buyers can still feel generous.

Condo families, Dupuis said, would receive snapshots of their corresponding dump families, and would be welcome to pay them a visit. “People visiting slums is the fastest-growing sector of third-world tourism,” he said, putting his model house back in its bag. (“It’s called ‘poorism,’ ” one of his P.R. reps explained.)

There is no telling whether World Housing will succeed on a grand scale, but its appeal to condo buyers has been given a test run. For one week, last June, a developer let Dupuis and Landolt market seventy apartments with their buy-one-give-one pitch, on behalf of the pickers in Phnom Penh. The apartments were in a condo hotel under construction in Waikiki, a block from the beach. The prices ranged from nine hundred thousand to fifteen million dollars. The Web site for the building shows sunset views of elegant couples embracing on balconies: “It is a world you never want to leave and long to return to.”

The World Housing apartments in the building quickly sold out. Dupuis wanted to include the name of the international luxury hotel chain that manages the condotel in his publicity blast, but “they asked us not to,” he said. “They didn’t want pictures of their project next to pictures of kids in garbage dumps.” He added, “It’s awkward, I guess.” (The New Yorker, February 18, 2014)

It’s worth having a little more background on TOMS and the Buy One Given One (BOGO) business model.

TOMS OVERVIEW

In 2006, American traveler Blake Mycoskie befriended children in a village in Argentina and found they had no shoes to protect their feet. Wanting to help, he created TOMS, a company that would match every pair of shoes purchased with a pair of new shoes given to a child in need.

We give in over 60 countries. We've given 10 million pairs of shoes to children in need, teaching us 10 million lessons.

Since 2006, people like you have helped us achieve this amazing number – and it’s leading to bigger, better things! Like giving different types of shoes based on terrain and season, or creating local jobs by producing shoes in countries where we give. TOMS Shoes are always given to children through humanitarian organizations who incorporate shoes into their community development programs.

Realizing this movement could serve other basic needs, TOMS Eyewear was launched. With every pair purchased, TOMS will help give sight to a person in need. 150,000 have had their sight restored through purchases of TOMS Eyewear since 2011.

We give sight in over 10 countries, providing prescription glasses, medical treatment and/or sight-saving surgery with each purchase of eyewear. Not only does a purchase help restore sight, it supports sustainable community-based eye care programs, the creation of professional jobs (often for young women), and helps provide basic eye care training to local health volunteers and teachers. (From www.toms.ca)

THE RETURN OF BLAKE MYCOSKIE

Blake Mycoskie rapidly built a brand with a well-crafted, feel-good story. But in 2012, after six years of tirelessly traveling the world to tell the Toms Shoes tale to anyone who would listen, the founder took a self-prescribed sabbatical. Simply put, he got tired of hearing himself talk. With a solid management team in place to run the business, Mycoskie relocated to Austin, Texas, from California, married his girlfriend and contemplated his next big career move.

“What happens with a lot of entrepreneurs is they get to a point where they’ve built a business, loved the early days and then decide this isn’t as much fun or isn’t what they wanted to do. That’s when they usually sell the company. I reached that point,” he recalled. “But because of what Toms is and that no one would ever be as committed to the mission as I am, I wouldn’t sell the business. My version of ‘selling’ and doing the entrepreneurial thing was to take time off.

During a recent interview with Footwear News in his office — which looks more like the living space of a rugged, world-weary traveler than a CEO — Mycoskie confided, “Toms became something much larger than I ever anticipated. I didn’t start Toms to create a big company. All of a sudden, I’ve got this big organization and a company president who is keeping things on track. I began to feel a little less passionate.”

In his time away, though, the serial entrepreneur realized he missed the mission. He longed to innovate and wanted to be closer to his “work family.” He was ready to get back to his crusade of using business to better people’s lives.

Mycoskie slowly began returning to the Los Angeles-based firm last summer, and in November again became a permanent state resident.

Then, on the morning of Dec. 10, 2013, Mycoskie arrived at the company headquarters earlier than usual. He knew that a busy morning awaited where he’d be called on to meet with senior staffers and work the phones. After all, the firm’s president, Laurent Potdevin, had officially resigned to become CEO of yoga-wear maker Lululemon.

Mycoskie wasn’t thrown by the departure. In fact, he put a positive spin on it. For one, he said, the poaching showed how the job market viewed the talent at Toms. But most important, it allowed him to be more fully engaged with the daily duties of running the business without being the founder who has to “tip-toe around.”

And one thing became clear during FN’s visit to Los Angeles: Blake is back.

His magnetic charm has had an immediate impact. With Mycoskie around more, many of the 350 employees were visibly excited by his presence. They gravitated toward him with product and questions as he roamed the headquarters, which features a coffee bar, interdepartment slide and camp-like outdoor space with picnic tables and safari tents. The office is designed to “create those spontaneous moments where great ideas happen.”

But of course, Mycoskie already has a lengthy list of big, new initiatives.

For instance, next month, at the South by Southwest Interactive Festival, he is expected to unveil the latest installment to Toms’ one-for-one model, which, in addition to footwear, includes eyeglasses. While Mycoskie and other company officials were tight-lipped on the product revelation, he did divulge it will “improve people’s lives” and will come from outside the fashion industry.

Additionally, it also will drum up newfound excitement around the Toms brand and for its re-energized founder.

“When we’re determining a new product, we don’t even start thinking about what we’re going to sell until we have a clear understanding of how we are going to give,” Mycoskie said.

That thinking continues to resonate with retailers and consumers.

“[After all these years], our customers are still passionate about Toms and believe in the Toms mission,” said Scott Meden, EVP and GMM of shoes for Nordstrom. “They’ve responded well to new product offerings season after season. This customer is very socially aware, wants to make a difference and loves what the brand has to offer.”

Mycoskie is banking on that passion. For the new product launch, he said the firm will tease the public beforehand, much as it did in 2011 when it launched eyewear. (Today those sales account for roughly 5 percent of the business.) Buzz-building tactics, he added, could include staging mystery boxes in key locations or treasure hunt-type clues — “hints to get people engaged. Theater is important.” The company also is considering introducing an additional fourth product category for fall.

Still, Mycoskie knows that to take the do-good mission to a greater business level he will need to reignite the emotional connection with customers and cement the company’s long-term vision. To get there, he said, Toms must evolve the product line, penetrate more countries overseas and sharpen the brand’s marketing.

“When I [took time off], our messaging wasn’t as clear and crisp and inspiring as when I was involved every day. It’ll be about the way we communicate on social media, the authenticity. We want people to feel an intimate connection to a movement, not like they are a purchaser of a company. It started to get a bit corporate.”

For starters, Mycoskie is working to recapture some of the marketing magic with cool collaborations.

For holiday ’13, Toms created a small collection with popular designer Tabitha Simmons. And for spring ’14, it will release colorful women’s and unisex styles with home-furnishings guru Jonathan Adler.

What’s more, the firm will continue to produce other limited-edition lines with like-minded celebrities and organizations. It has previously worked with Ben Affleck’s Eastern Congo Initiative and Charlize Theron’s Africa Outreach Project.

Toms also will make a big push into the men’s category this year. It has boosted production of men’s-specific styles, such as brogues and tribal boots, and will tweak its website to be more gender-neutral.

The reason, Mycoskie explained, is that even though the men’s business is healthy, it could be much bigger. He said men often tell him their wives and children have multiple pairs of Toms, but when pressed about their own shoes, the men admit the simple-sole canvas styles aren’t for them. That answer, said the founder, proves the company isn’t effectively communicating the scope of its products.

“We don’t have to get guys to believe in our brand and our ideology, because that already exists,” he said. “We have to let them know they can participate in Toms by wearing the brogues. It’s not all alpargatas.”

Sitting in his office, Mycoskie was eager to talk about the company’s next chapter, while around him were personal reminders of the places he’s visited and all that he’s accomplished in a short span. Pictures with presidents and foreign leaders line the shelves. A framed copy of The New York Times’ best-seller list, featuring his book “Start Something That Matters,” sits in one corner, with a photo of the first five Toms employees in another. Scattered throughout are throw pillows, blankets and other knick-knacks picked up along his global jaunts.

But on the front wall is a map showing the countries Toms plans to expand into or enter for the first time. According to Mycoskie, the company this year will focus heavily on China, Dubai, Germany, Greece and Turkey.

While Toms is sold in 27 countries and hands out product in more than 60, Mycoskie said he aims to improve the quality of its giveaways and measure the effects of foreign aid. To that end, two years ago he hired Sebastian Fries, a former Pfizer executive, to lead a small research team within Toms. Fries regularly meets with non-governmental organizations to determine the best partnerships, as well as to gain ideas that will enhance how Toms gives to the needy.

“I am most proud of Blake’s decision to go into local manufacturing,” said Fries, chief giving officer. “We didn’t have to do that. That is a game changer.”

In recent years, the company has set up factories in countries where it donates — Argentina, Kenya and Ethiopia among them — but the operations were on a small scale. That changed last October.

Speaking on stage in New York to a group of powerful leaders at the Clinton Global Initiative, Mycoskie announced that Toms will establish a 10,000-sq.-ft. factory in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, that is slated to open in April. Even better, the company intends to hire locals and train them to make shoes. “This commitment is not just jobs,” Mycoskie said from the podium. “Our vision is to provide these workers with true career paths by investing in their well-being and their families. We believe these Haitian workers will become the leaders of a growing footwear industry in Haiti. What brought us to Haiti was philanthropy, but what will keep us in Haiti is business.”

The audience, which included Haiti Prime Minister Laurent Lamoth and activist-actor Sean Penn, applauded. Some even gave a standing ovation. Soon after, President Clinton stepped on stage and directly addressed Mycoskie: “I’m very grateful to you for putting this plant there. It will help a lot and will help induce others to move facilities there.”

Closer to home, Mycoskie has partnered with other do-gooders to jointly launch an e-commerce marketplace devoted to businesses striving for change. And the brand works to give back to its local community through its flagship store in Venice, Calif., which serves as a community hangout. The space is its only retail location so far, though plans are in the works to bow another in Austin in March and a third in New York later this year to further the Toms mission.

“I’ve never felt better about what we are doing,” Mycoskie said. “When I left, we had a difficult time with me being gone. But now we have our clarity. We have our strategy, and it just feels good. Sometimes it takes going through what we went through to get to that place.” (Women’s Wear Daily, February 10, 2014)

It’s also worth noting TOMS and the BOGO model more generally are not without their critics.

TOMS SHOES AND THE NEOLIBERAL GOSPEL

Here they are, smiling and crying, the words catching in their throats as they place tiny shoes to the feet of tiny children. Seven strangers, the YouTube video tells us—a recycling truck driver, a retired nurse, a special education teacher, a college student—all astonished to be invited on a special mission: to deliver free pairs of TOMS shoes to needy children in Honduras.

If you’re unfamiliar with TOMS, here’s the backstory: When he founded TOMS in 2006, Blake Mycoskie pledged to give away one pair of shoes for every one he sold. The results make for strong emotions and good theater. The American head of the Honduran orphanage tells the promotional video’s viewers: “TOMS givers, you did amazing! We just put 93 pairs of shoes on children’s feet!” Jackie, a student and part-time waitress, strapping a pair of shoes onto a child, says: “My first shoe give was this little boy … there was a language barrier but the connection that we shared transcended all of that.” Others recount, in the same tones, their takeaway lessons: “Children are children wherever they are” and, in another video, “When you’re not seeing how you’re going to get through the day, you can realize that … I’ve been there, I’ve touched the feet, I’ve hugged the children, It’s all worth it.”

On first blush, these “Ticket to Give” trips—a regular part of TOMS public relations—seem so transparently good-intentioned that they scarcely warrant comment. What is hidden behind the obvious, however, is something much more powerful—call it the emotional, even religious, side of neoliberal capitalism. Not only TOMS, but also Starbucks and even Lockheed Martin and Wal-Mart have learned that linking their products to charitable causes makes for good business. We no longer buy only what we need, or even what broadcasts our identity. We buy what makes us feel like good people, and what makes us feel like members of a good, global community.

The easy way to look at TOMS is to praise their charitable work. The harder, more troubling way to look at TOMS is to acknowledge it as an example of how corporations have assumed work most often associated with self-identified religious organizations: building community, engaging in charity, and cultivating morals. It scarcely matters if we are comfortable with this new vision of a corporate gospel. Whatever we think, it is spreading like wildfire. So it is worthwhile to risk looking behind the appeal of charity to the transformed meaning of consumer spending—like buying TOMS shoes—that occurs in the background.

TOMS is not alone in its willingness to link progressive social action with consumer spending. In fact, it exemplifies a broader corporate embrace of “conscious capitalism.” Coined by Whole Foods CEO John Mackey, this business model assumes that “the best way to maximize profits over the long-term” is to orient business toward a “higher purpose.” So Starbucks sells coffee to “Put America Back to Work,” the (RED) campaign raises money to fight AIDS, and—in the best example yet—Sir Richard’s Condom Company sends a condom to Haiti for each one it sells (“doing good never felt better”). Meanwhile, Bank of America logos decorate PRIDE banners and Lockheed Martin brags that it is a “champion of diversity.”

The globalization of neoliberal capitalism, and particularly the popularity of “conscious capitalism” as a practice and a discourse, signals a change in the landscape of U.S. religion and politics. “Neoliberalism” most often refers to a loosely cohering set of economic, social, and political policies that (1) seek to secure human flourishing through the imposition of free markets and (2) locate “freedom” in individual autonomy, expressed through consumer choice. But it is also a mode of belonging, where ritual acts of consumption initiate individuals into a global community of consumer agents. Within neoliberal logics of religious and political action, consumer transactions and corporate expansion are recast as forms of spiritual purification and missionary practice. And within conscious capitalism, the “higher purpose” is a world in which all people have a chance (or obligation) to participate in free markets—understood as a multicultural community of consumers.

For Mycoskie—whose title is “Chief Shoe Giver”—building this multi-cultural community is a theological mandate. He frames his Christian faith as a component of his personal relationship to the company. At the evangelical Global Leadership Conference, keynote speaker Mycoskie answered a question about whether TOMS represents any “biblical principles”: “TOMS represents a lot of different biblical principles. But the one I go back to again and again is the one in Proverbs. Give your first fruits and your vats will be full. … Because we did that and stayed true to our one-to-one model [even amidst financial strain], we’ve been incredibly blessed. We really did give our first fruits.”

In non-confessional settings, TOMS proffers a humanistic version of this prosperity gospel, recast for a neoliberal age. Losing the Bible quotes, the company emphasizes that the “fruits of faith”—in this case, economic success—abound for those who embody the ideals of authenticity, good intentions, and service. Or, “higher purpose” is profitable. TOMS is successful because it creates opportunities for people to live into their own “purpose” through a simple transaction: buying a pair of shoes. As Mycoskie says, “I wanted to make it easy to make a difference.”

Customers are not just guarantors of a better life for barefoot children; they also are rewarded with inclusion in a global TOMS family, documented on a company blog. Here, staff post baby pictures on Mother’s Day; Mycoskie announces that until readers help him raise $2,000 for a water purification project in Kenya, he is “striking” from taking showers; and interns share recipes. Beaming faces, styled and accessorized bodies, and accounts of freewheeling adventures greet us; it scrapbooks a community that is at once laid back and on fire for change, not to mention emotionally and aesthetically alluring. Here, TOMS is not a profit-motivated “company.” It is rather a “family,” a “community,” and—because these intimate connections have borne good fruit—a “movement.”

The movement doubles as a ministry of healing for both barefoot children and First World consumers yearning for authentic connection in an alienating world. This orientation, in which corporate community binds up the wounds of social fragmentation, is not unique to TOMS. In To Serve God and Wal-Mart: The Making of Christian Free Enterprise, Bethany Moreton showed how Wal-Mart’s appeals to its evangelical “family values” and “servant leadership” drove its rise to power as a multi-national corporation. In Oprah: The Gospel of an Icon, Kathryn Lofton demonstrated how Oprah’s Harpo Corporation offers a gospel of therapeutic consumption for disciples who seek respite from their chaotic modern worlds. These three corporations, although quite different on the surface, have at least one commonality: transactions, initiated individually, are the first step to belonging in a community of choice, freedom, and authenticity. Now all that’s left is spreading the gospel.

Each April TOMS urges its consumer base to go barefoot for 24 hours, on a “holiday” that it has dubbed “One Day Without Shoes.” The goal is physically to feel what it is like to live without shoes and to “raise awareness” about the plight of those who go barefoot every day. An infographic explains the chain of events that this “movement” is designed to spark: curiosity → conversation → action → change. Corporations—including AOL, AT&T, Microsoft, Lucky Magazine, and L’Oreal—organize company “barefoot marches” each year. TOMS distributes street stencils (“to get rebellious with”) and requires its campus groups to hold events that day—preferably a rally, march, or dance marathon.

Of course, these efforts downplay the fact that many these material inequalities in question—like not having shoes, like needing to have them in order to participate in a global economy—are traceable to the humanitarian crises that neoliberal economic restructuring inflicts in the first place. “One Day Without Shoes” may emphasize an isolated experience of denial-through-bare-feet, but its ultimate impact is to highlight what is required to participate in a global economy.

Or, as one participant put it, “I’m going barefoot this year so I can truly understand the importance of wearing shoes.” Shoes are the first step to full access to a globalizing neoliberal economy and, by extension, the intimate public that compassionate consumption makes possible. It is no mistake that the promotional materials frame shoes as an issue primarily because they ensure children’s education and future earnings, or that they are referred to as children of “developing countries.” This is a movement for what the economic and political systems are already winning. It promotes feelings of political empowerment and spiritual discipline, minus a call for substantive change in economic or social orders.

Furthermore, TOMS’ invitations to step into the shoes (or bare feet) of impoverished children are highly racialized. Through both the “Day Without Shoes” and “Ticket to Give” narratives, the company urges its primarily white First World consumers to access a sense of belonging and purpose by performing and replicating the experiences of poor children of color. As the company constantly reminds us, to purchase a pair of TOMS means that a child in a Third World country will receive shoes just like yours. By extension, it means that you are walking in the same shoes, moving through the world in the same ways, and your purchase forged this solidarity. Here, the object of consumer desire shifts: it is no longer the pair of shoes; it is the child who wears them.

To wear TOMS becomes a race and class status symbol, denoting not only membership in a “family” but also the proof of one’s benevolent commitment to building a world in which all children have shoes. In the physical act of wearing TOMS shoes—or opening a Bank of America account after a Pride March, or shopping at Wal-Mart based on its working-class family values, or buying a special red iPod to fight AIDS—is to assert an ideal formation of spiritual piety and political initiative, whether it is explicitly theological or not.

The legitimacy of such initiatives is, of course, always up for debate. TOMS has been criticized for making charity into a for-profit business modality that undermines local businesses, fails to actually alleviate poverty, and does not translate to its shoe-manufacturing practices, and ultimately is not really modeling the do-good global citizenship that it claims. The most strident critiques of TOMS and business models like it have focused on the inconsistencies between its claims to benevolence and its actual material impact.

While such arguments may disabuse us of optimistic notions that TOMS or other purveyors of conscious capitalism leave a soft footprint on the world, they do little to examine why the company has met such broad-based appeal, and they underrate the attachments, desires, and anxieties of those who purchase its products. This company’s success ultimately has very little to do with its ability to convince consumers of its responsibility and “corporate citizenship”; indeed, these questions may be irrelevant to the TOMS consumer base. Rather, TOMS is successful because it has established its products, and the purchase of its products, as avenues toward emotional, physical, and spiritual belonging in a fragmented world.

Is this religion? Is it politics? Not as such. And Mycoskie would distance himself from such an assertion, avoiding any semblance of sectarianism in favor of a family where all agents have a chance to flourish in the global economy. Yet this is exactly what makes TOMS and its conscious capitalist counterparts so alluring. TOMS consolidates religion and politics under a rubric of benevolent consumption and multicultural belonging—ever on a mission to spread a neoliberal gospel and, on the way, bind up the wounds that it inflicts. It feels amazing. (Utne Reader, March/April 2014)

My question for you is this: If you were hired as an advisor to World Housing, what would you tell them to do? Can they grow their business? If yes, how should they do it? How might they address the concerns of critics who are certain to emerge along the way?

The information here provides a good starting point. However, you will likely need to do some additional research to fully support your response.

Your response should be approximately 8 pages double spaced using 12 point font. You may have 1 -2 pages of exhibits.

Prepared by Susan Hedley (Course Professor, SOCI 2306) March 2014. 9