1. Agricultural "killing fields": the poisoning of Costa Rican banana workers.
- Author
-
Sass R
- Subjects
- Antinematodal Agents poisoning, Commerce economics, Commerce standards, Costa Rica epidemiology, Food Industry legislation & jurisprudence, Food Industry standards, Fruit parasitology, Humans, Infertility etiology, International Agencies, Investments, Political Systems, Propane poisoning, Public Policy, Social Responsibility, Agriculture economics, Food Industry economics, Hazardous Substances poisoning, Occupational Exposure legislation & jurisprudence, Pesticides poisoning, Propane analogs & derivatives
- Abstract
The poisoning of Costa Rican banana workers by multinational corporations' excessive use of pesticides is not a local issue; it is embedded in a dominant ideology expressed by the phenomenon of globalization. This ideology seeps into every aspect of our social institutions--economic, political, and legal. The practice of this ideological perspective is evident in the industrialization of global agriculture and the shift from "developmentalism"--liberal welfarism, industrialization, and urbanization--to a dominant, undemocratic, global financial elite with "economism" and a neoliberal political agenda overriding the nation-state polis. A specific effect is to transform the agricultural workers of developing countries, such as Costa Rican banana workers, into politically superfluous flesh-and-blood human beings.
- Published
- 2000
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