Although fair trade has grown exponentially in the U.S. in recent years, we do not have a clear understanding of why small U.S. firms choose to participate in it. To answer this question, we use a qualitative case study approach and grounded theory analysis to explore the motivations of 35 small fair trade businesses. We find that shared values and the desire to help others, often triggered by a critical incident, lead social entrepreneurs to found and sustain fair trade businesses. (...) The relationship between shared values and engagement in fair trade and the relationship between altruism and engagement in fair trade are strengthened by four motivating factors: direct relationships with producers, support for social causes, the desire for the preservation of craftsmanship, and the desire to share aesthetic products. These links are strengthened by four facilitating factors : the acquisition of business knowledge, family member involvement in the firm, assistance from faith communities, and assistance from the fair trade community. Additional analysis reveals three types of fair trade social entrepreneurs: “ethics first” entrepreneurs, primarily motivated by human rights and social justice concerns; “faith first” fair traders, motivated primarily by their religious faith; and “business first” businesspeople, motivated by what they perceive to be an opportunity to build a successful business while simultaneously doing “good” and helping others. (shrink)

Schizoanalysis is Deleuze and Guattari's fusion of psychoanalytic-inspired theories of the self, the libido and desire with Marx-inspired theories of the economy, history and society. Schizoanalysis holds that art's function is both political and aesthetic - it changes perception. If one cannot change perception, then, one cannot change anything politically. This is why Deleuze and Guattari always insist that the artists operate at the level of the real (not the imaginary or the symbolic). Ultimately, they argue, there is no necessary (...) distinction to be made between aesthetics and politics. One is simply the flipside of the other because both concern the formation and transformation of social and cultural norms. Deleuze and the Schizoanalysis of Visual Art explores how every artist, good or bad, contributes to the structure and nature of society because their work either reinforces social norms, or challenges them. On this view of things, we are all artists, we all have the potential to exercise what might be called a 'aesthetico-political function' and change the world around us; or, just as easily, we can dwell like assassins, and not only let the status quo endure but fight to preserve it as though it were freedom itself. (shrink)

The essay consists of three parts: the first argues that Deleuze's moral philosophy in The Logic of Sense provides an ethical model of counter-actualisation; the second shows how three different practices of art therapy offer a means to effect this counter-actualisation and thereby demonstrate the restorative power of art; the third explores how such a power might form part of what Guattari calls the ‘ethico-aesthetic paradigm’ (Guattari 1995).

This paper utilises Deleuze's Logic of Sensation to critique the concept ‘Figure’ that he raises to formulate this theory in his monograph of Francis Bacon. Deleuze engages with Bacon's paintings to demonstrate how sensations from Figural artworks rupture through representation and disrupt binary logic. However, in his argument Deleuze seems to use the same kind of thinking that he intends the Figure to disrupt, since he prioritises and secludes art deemed Figural over and above abstraction. Such problematic categorisation is challenged (...) here, by juxtaposing Figural and abstract paintings by Francis Bacon and Wassily Kandinsky. Both Figural and abstract works resound with The Logic of Sensation, which thereby spills over those boundaries posited by Deleuze's Figure. (shrink)