Buying Foreign and Quality Standards

Your notion of "buying foreign to support local workers" is a striking formulation. Also fascinating is your description of the "film of workers wearing UAW hardhats and badges on their shirtsleeves," which illustrates some of the ways in which labor sells: images that we might mistake for socialist posters are instead recuperated to sell cars.

One may be skeptical about the effects of representing labor to support the automotive industry. In an era in which labor seems to be losing ground--often literally, when territorially restricted by borders that regulate labor flow--to the relative liquidity of capital, to whom are these representations of labor selling? Why this now? What does this move say about our historical moment?

The ISO 9000 standard is interesting because it has been used by businesses to sell "end products and services" even though, as you quote, the standard is intended only to certify business processes. Which raises the question: is the conceptual border between "business processes" and "end products and services" a porous boundary? Is this conceptual flexibility being used to sell colleges and universities, with consequences for how administrators, students, and other stakeholders envision knowledge production? Perhaps "production" is worth emphasizing here: the "product" of knowledge here may be linked not only to "quality" indicators as ISO 9000, but also college rankings and ambiguous terms such as "excellence" that are used by alumni organizations, state legislators, and disciplinary (and cross-disciplinary) award systems.

Can you clarify how you're thinking about fair trade in the context of "Support America and American Unions: Buy Foreign"?