Episode 8 — The Scaffolding Company

Show notes

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- Around 30 to 45 worker deaths a year in the Australian construction industry, with the most recent annual figure 36 per cent above the five-year average. Falls from a height are the second-leading cause of all workplace fatalities, with the construction sector accounting for nearly half of all fall-from-height deaths. Around 188 traumatic worker fatalities in total in 2024, 37 of them in construction.

- The model Work Health and Safety Act 2011, adopted by the Commonwealth and most states and territories, providing the framework for primary duties of care to workers.

- Industrial manslaughter as a specific criminal offence: Australian Capital Territory (2003), Queensland (October 2017), Northern Territory (February 2020), Victoria (July 2020), Western Australia (March 2022), New South Wales (June 2024).

- High proportion of workers most at risk in Australian construction are on visa conditions, in labour-hire arrangements, or working through multiple layers of subcontracting.

South Korea

- The death of Kim Yong-gyun, a 24-year-old subcontracted worker, on 11 December 2018 at the Korea Western Power thermal plant in Taean. Kim was inspecting a malfunctioning coal conveyor belt alone on a night shift after only three hours of safety training. His mother led a national campaign in the months that followed.

- The "Kim Yong-gyun Act" — amendments to the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed 27 December 2018, in force 16 January 2020.

- The Serious Accidents Punishment Act, enacted 26 January 2021, in force 27 January 2022, making corporate officers criminally liable when their companies fail to prevent serious workplace accidents.

New Zealand

- The Pike River Mine disaster on 19 November 2010, when 29 miners were killed in a methane explosion at the underground coal mine on the West Coast of the South Island.

- The Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, reporting October 2012.

- The establishment of WorkSafe New Zealand as a stand-alone regulator in December 2013.

- The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, which passed Parliament with cross-party support.

International

- The International Labour Organization's Convention on Safety and Health in Construction (Convention No. 167), adopted 20 June 1988, in force 11 January 1991.

REFERENCES

[1] Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (New York: Farrar and Rinehart, 1944).

[2] Pun Ngai, Made in China: Women Factory Workers in a Global Workplace (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2005); Migrant Labor in China: Post-Socialist Transformations (Cambridge: Polity, 2016); Pun Ngai and Lu Huilin, "A Culture of Violence: The Labor Subcontracting System and Collective Actions by Construction Workers in Post-Socialist China," The China Journal 64 (2010): 143-158.

[3] Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics Australia 2024. https://data.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/insights/key-whs-statistics-australia/latest-release

[4] Commonwealth of Australia, Work Health and Safety Act 2011, and state and territory industrial manslaughter legislation across ACT (2003), Queensland (2017), Northern Territory (2020), Victoria (2020), Western Australia (2022), and New South Wales (2024).

[5] Migrant Workers' Taskforce, Report of the Migrant Workers' Taskforce (March 2019); Laurie Berg and Bassina Farbenblum, Wage Theft in Australia (UNSW Sydney and UTS, 2017).

[6] Republic of Korea, Serious Accidents Punishment Act, Act No. 17907; Al Jazeera, "South Korea puts CEOs on notice with contentious work safety law" (27 January 2022).

[7] Royal Commission on the Pike River Coal Mine Tragedy, Report of the Royal Commission (Wellington: New Zealand Government, October 2012); Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 (New Zealand).

[8] International Labour Organization, C167 — Safety and Health in Construction Convention, 1988 (No. 167). Geneva: ILO, 1988.

[9] E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (London: Victor Gollancz, 1963); Friedrich Engels, The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 (1845); Steve Tombs and David Whyte, The Corporate Criminal (London: Routledge, 2015).

FURTHER READING

Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation (1944). Foundational text on labour as fictitious commodity and the political countermovement against treating workers purely as a market input.

Pun Ngai, Migrant Labor in China (2016). Extended treatment of the political construction of migrant labour and the institutional weakening of supports around the migrant worker.

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class (1963). Foundational labour history on the political formation of working-class consciousness through workplace politics.

Steve Tombs and David Whyte, The Corporate Criminal (2015). On corporate harm and the political fight to make corporate violations of worker safety prosecutable.

Joanna Howe et al., research on labour exploitation across Australian industries with significant migrant labour content.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

CIVICS AND COMMERCE

Episode 7 — The Butcher

Show notes

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- The ACCC Supermarkets Inquiry 2024-25, with final report delivered 28 February 2025 and published 21 March 2025. The inquiry formally found that Woolworths and Coles together account for approximately 67 per cent of national supermarket grocery sales, and described the sector as an oligopoly.

- Wholesale meat processing concentration in Australia, with major processors largely owned by transnational firms including JBS S.A. (Brazil) and Cargill (US).

- Mixed-use rezoning of suburban shopping strips across Australian state capitals over the past fifteen years, contested by trader associations, resident action groups, and community-led save-our-strip campaigns.

Belgium

- The founding of La Via Campesina in Mons, Belgium in May 1993. The international peasant movement is now active in over 80 countries and represents an estimated 200 million small-scale farmers, peasants, agricultural workers, rural women, and Indigenous communities.

Japan

- The founding of the Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative in Setagaya Ward, Tokyo, in 1965 by Shizuko and Kuniyo Iwane, when 200 women organised to buy 300 bottles of milk directly from producers. Incorporated as a consumers' cooperative in 1968. Today operates as a federation of approximately 33 cooperatives across 21 Japanese prefectures, with around 307,000 to 400,000 member households. Awarded the Right Livelihood Award in 1989.

REFERENCES

[1] Australian Competition and Consumer Commission, Supermarkets Inquiry 2024-25: Final Report (Canberra: ACCC, 28 February 2025). https://www.accc.gov.au/inquiries-and-consultations/finalised-inquiries/supermarkets-inquiry-2024-25

[2] Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest: The Hijacking of the Global Food Supply (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2000); Earth Democracy: Justice, Sustainability, and Peace (2005); Who Really Feeds the World? The Failures of Agribusiness and the Promise of Agroecology (2016).

[3] La Via Campesina, "The International Peasants' Voice." https://viacampesina.org/en. Founded in Mons, Belgium, May 1993.

[4] Carolyn Steel, Hungry City: How Food Shapes Our Lives (London: Chatto and Windus, 2008); Sitopia: How Food Can Save the World (London: Chatto and Windus, 2020).

[5] Seikatsu Club Consumers' Co-operative Union. https://seikatsuclub.coop/eng. Right Livelihood Foundation, "Seikatsu Club Consumers' Cooperative — Laureate 1989."

[6] Australian Retailers Association, Australian Meat Industry Council, and various community-led save-our-strip campaigns across Australian state capitals.

FURTHER READING

Vandana Shiva, Stolen Harvest (2000). On the political enclosure of food, seed, and agriculture by corporate intermediaries.

Carolyn Steel, Sitopia (2020). On how food provision shapes cities and how planning has separated the two.

Annette Aurélie Desmarais, La Vía Campesina: Globalization and the Power of Peasants (2007). On the founding and global growth of the international peasant movement.

Aegean Leung, Charlene Zietsma, and Ana Maria Peredo, "Emergent Identity Work and Institutional Change: The 'Quiet' Revolution of Japanese Middle-Class Housewives," Organization Studies 35, no. 3 (March 2014). On the Seikatsu Club as a sustained countermovement to supermarket concentration.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

CIVICS AND COMMERCE

Episode 6 — The Brow and Lash Studio

Show notes

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Cyprus

- Sophia Hadjipanteli, Cypriot-British model, and the Unibrow Movement, her ongoing project foregrounding her natural unibrow as a deliberate political and aesthetic choice. Career documented from around 2017 across international fashion press.

Industry / Trade History (not country-event anchors)

- Threading, an ancient hair removal technique with roots across the Indian subcontinent and the Iranian plateau, now a global beauty service.

- Modern eyelash extension techniques developed in the Japanese and South Korean beauty industries in the early to mid-2000s. The "Russian volume" technique, developed in Russia, exported internationally through training programs from the early 2010s.

International

- The shift in dominant Western brow aesthetics from the plucked-thin look of the late 1990s and early 2000s toward the thick, fuller, more "natural" look that dominates from the mid-2010s onward.

REFERENCES

[1] María Lugones, "Heterosexualism and the Colonial/Modern Gender System," Hypatia 22, no. 1 (Winter 2007): 186-209.

María Lugones, "Toward a Decolonial Feminism," Hypatia 25, no. 4 (Fall 2010): 742-759.

Lugones builds on Aníbal Quijano, "Coloniality of Power, Eurocentrism, and Latin America," Nepantla: Views from South 1, no. 3 (2000): 533-580.

[2] Heather Widdows, Perfect Me: Beauty as an Ethical Ideal (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018). https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691160078/perfect-me

[3] Sophia Hadjipanteli, Unibrow Movement. https://www.unibrowmovement.com

[4] Threading as a hair removal technique with origins across South Asia and the Iranian plateau.

[5] Modern eyelash extension industry references: International Beauty Show industry publications, 2010-2025.

FURTHER READING

María Lugones, "Toward a Decolonial Feminism" (2010). Foundational essay arguing that gender is a colonial imposition with beauty rules embedded in it.

Heather Widdows, Perfect Me (2018). On beauty as an ethical ideal that women are morally pressured to meet.

Fatima Mernissi, Scheherazade Goes West (2001). On Western and Arab beauty standards as parallel forms of bodily constraint.

Mimi Thi Nguyen, "The Biopower of Beauty" (2011), in Signs 36, no. 2: 359-383. On how beauty operates as political infrastructure in geopolitical contexts including post-2001 Afghanistan.

Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety (2005). On bodily practice as a site of agency, not only of subjugation.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

CIVICS AND COMMERCE

Episode 5 — The Plumbing Business

Show notes

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- Chronic sanitation infrastructure failures in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, documented across Closing the Gap reporting and Australian National Audit Office reviews over decades.

- The Australian plumbing trade workforce, including apprenticeship intake programs and ongoing political contests about vocational training funding and the role of the public training system.

Pakistan

- The Orangi Pilot Project (OPP), founded in Karachi in 1980 by social scientist Dr Akhtar Hameed Khan.

- Community-led construction of low-cost underground sewerage by residents of one of Asia's largest informal settlements, when the municipal government would not extend services.

- The OPP's component-sharing model has since been studied and replicated globally, including through World Habitat Awards recognition.

United States

- Catherine Coleman Flowers and her work in Lowndes County, Alabama, documenting raw sewage and tropical disease in poor, predominantly Black communities of the American South.

- The 2017 peer-reviewed study finding more than one in three Lowndes County residents tested positive for hookworm, an intestinal parasite long thought to have been eradicated from the United States.

- Flowers's 2020 MacArthur Fellowship, her book Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret, and the federal civil rights investigation into Lowndes County concluded in 2023.

International

- United Nations General Assembly Resolution 64/292 of 28 July 2010, recognising water and sanitation as human rights.

- The UN Special Rapporteur on the right to safe drinking water and sanitation, producing country reports for more than a decade.

REFERENCES

[1] United Nations General Assembly, Resolution 64/292, "The Human Right to Water and Sanitation" (adopted 28 July 2010). https://digitallibrary.un.org/record/687002

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "Special Rapporteur on the Human Rights to Safe Drinking Water and Sanitation." https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-water-and-sanitation

[2] Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather: Race, Gender, and Sexuality in the Colonial Contest (New York: Routledge, 1995). https://www.routledge.com/Imperial-Leather-Race-Gender-and-Sexuality-in-the-Colonial-Contest/McClintock/p/book/9780415908900

[3] Akhtar Hameed Khan, Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflections (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1996).

Arif Hasan, Akhtar Hameed Khan and the Orangi Pilot Project (Karachi: City Press, 1999).

Orangi Pilot Project. https://oppoct.wordpress.com

World Habitat, "Orangi Low-cost Housing and Sanitation Programme." https://world-habitat.org/awards/winners/orangi-low-cost-housing-and-sanitation-programme/

[4] Catherine Coleman Flowers, Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret (New York: The New Press, 2020). https://thenewpress.com/books/waste

Megan L. McKenna et al., "Human Intestinal Parasite Burden and Poor Sanitation in Rural Alabama," American Journal of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene 97, no. 5 (8 November 2017): 1623-1628. https://doi.org/10.4269/ajtmh.17-0396

Center for Rural Enterprise and Environmental Justice. https://creej.org

[5] Closing the Gap. Annual reports. https://www.closingthegap.gov.au

Ross S. Bailie and Kayli Wayte, "Housing and Health in Indigenous Communities," Australian Journal of Rural Health 14, no. 5 (2006): 178-183.

[6] National Skills Commission, Australian Government, "Plumber: Labour Market Insights." https://www.jobsandskills.gov.au

Master Plumbers Australia. https://www.masterplumbers.com.au

FURTHER READING

Anne McClintock, Imperial Leather (1995). On nineteenth-century imperialism and the political coding of soap, plumbing, and sanitation as markers of civilisation.

Akhtar Hameed Khan, Orangi Pilot Project: Reminiscences and Reflections (1996). The founder's own account of one of the world's most studied community-led sanitation programs.

Catherine Coleman Flowers, Waste: One Woman's Fight Against America's Dirty Secret (2020). Environmental justice advocate on sanitation as a continuation of racial geography in the United States.

McKenna et al., "Human Intestinal Parasite Burden and Poor Sanitation in Rural Alabama" (2017). The peer-reviewed study that re-introduced hookworm to the American sanitation conversation.

Arif Hasan, Akhtar Hameed Khan and the Orangi Pilot Project (1999). Biography and analysis from one of OPP's closest collaborators.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

CIVICS AND COMMERCE

Episode 4 — The Farming Family

Show notes

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- Federal water plan for the Murray-Darling Basin (Water Act 2007 and Murray-Darling Basin Plan 2012), administered by the Murray-Darling Basin Authority.

- The Millennium Drought, the long Australian drought ending around 2010.

- ABC Four Corners and Fairfax water theft investigations of July 2017 and the South Australian Royal Commission into the Murray-Darling Basin Plan (2018-2019).

- First Nations water organising through Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN) and Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations (NBAN).

- Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder and the federal buyback program returning water from agriculture to environmental flows.

- Inspector-General of Water Compliance, established as part of post-2017 reform.

Bolivia

- The Cochabamba water wars of 2000, a popular uprising against the privatisation of municipal water under Aguas del Tunari, a consortium led by Bechtel (United States) and Suez Lyonnaise des Eaux (France).

- The role of the Coordinadora de Defensa del Agua y de la Vida, with participation of Aymara and Quechua communities and the Federación Departamental Cochabambina de Regantes (irrigators' federation).

- The reversal of the privatisation contract on 10 April 2000.

India

- The Narmada Bachao Andolan (Save Narmada Movement), formed in the mid-1980s under the leadership of Medha Patkar and others.

- The campaign against the Sardar Sarovar Dam and related projects on the Narmada River, and the displacement of Adivasi communities from the Narmada Valley.

- The movement's contribution to the establishment of the World Commission on Dams (2000) and global thinking on dams, displacement, and Indigenous water rights.

REFERENCES

[1] National Farmers' Federation. https://nff.org.au

NSW Irrigators' Council. https://www.nswic.org.au

[2] Maude Barlow, Blue Covenant: The Global Water Crisis and the Coming Battle for the Right to Water (Toronto: McClelland and Stewart, 2007).

Australian Conservation Foundation, "Murray-Darling Basin Reform." https://www.acf.org.au/healthy-rivers

Wentworth Group of Concerned Scientists. https://wentworthgroup.org

[3] Murray Lower Darling Rivers Indigenous Nations (MLDRIN). https://www.mldrin.org.au

Northern Basin Aboriginal Nations (NBAN). https://www.nban.org.au

[4] Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk: How Indigenous Thinking Can Save the World (Melbourne: The Text Publishing Company, 2019). https://www.textpublishing.com.au/books/sand-talk

[5] Oscar Olivera with Tom Lewis, ¡Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia (Cambridge, MA: South End Press, 2004).

Jim Shultz and Melissa Crane Draper, eds., Dignity and Defiance: Stories from Bolivia's Challenge to Globalization (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008). https://content.ucpress.edu/chapters/11049.ch01.pdf

[6] Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, "Ch'ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization," The South Atlantic Quarterly 111, no. 1 (2012): 95-109.

[7] Narmada Bachao Andolan. http://www.narmada.org

Sanjeev Khagram, Dams and Development: Transnational Struggles for Water and Power (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2004).

Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (London: Flamingo, 1999).

[8] Melbourne Water. https://www.melbournewater.com.au

Sydney Water. https://www.sydneywater.com.au

[9] Water Act 2007 (Cth). https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2007A00137/latest/text

Murray-Darling Basin Authority, "Basin Plan." https://www.mdba.gov.au/water-management/basin-plan

ABC Four Corners, "Pumped: Who's Benefitting from the Billions Spent on the Murray-Darling?" (24 July 2017). https://www.abc.net.au/4corners/pumped/8727826

Murray-Darling Basin Royal Commission, Report (Adelaide: Government of South Australia, 31 January 2019). https://www.mdbrc.sa.gov.au

[10] Commonwealth Environmental Water Holder. https://www.dcceew.gov.au/water/cewo

FURTHER READING

Maude Barlow, Blue Covenant (2007). Canadian water justice campaigner on water as a global commons and public good.

Tyson Yunkaporta, Sand Talk (2019). Apalech scholar on Indigenous knowledge systems and how country, water, and ecological relationships are understood.

Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, Ch'ixinakax utxiwa (2010, English edition 2020). Bolivian Aymara sociologist on Indigenous political continuity and decolonisation.

Oscar Olivera, ¡Cochabamba! Water War in Bolivia (2004). Firsthand account from the leader of the Coordinadora.

Sanjeev Khagram, Dams and Development (2004). Transnational struggles over dams and water across India and beyond.

Arundhati Roy, The Cost of Living (1999). Includes the essay "The Greater Common Good" on the Narmada Bachao Andolan.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth) and its reporting requirements on supply chain due diligence.

- Indigenous Procurement Policy under the Department of Finance and Supply Nation as the verified Indigenous business directory.

- Victorian Social Procurement Framework and the broader Australian social enterprise sector advocacy through Social Traders and Social Enterprise Australia.

- The Australian Indigenous political genealogy referenced in the script: the 1938 Day of Mourning, the 1965 Freedom Ride led by Charles Perkins, the 1972 Aboriginal Tent Embassy, the Land Rights movement, and the Reconciliation movement.

- The 2017 Uluru Statement from the Heart and Megan Davis's work in Australian and United Nations Indigenous rights forums.

Qatar

- The kafala employment system and its role in migrant worker exploitation in the lead-up to the 2022 FIFA World Cup.

- More than 6,500 migrant worker deaths reported since Qatar won the World Cup bid in 2010, with workers drawn from Bangladesh, India, Nepal, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Philippines, and Kenya.

- Documented labour rights abuses during and after the tournament, including wage theft, recruitment fee debt, restricted job changes, and limited remedy.

Argentina

- The Empresas Recuperadas (worker-recovered enterprise) movement emerging from the 2001 sovereign debt crisis.

- Hundreds of factories occupied and re-opened by workers as cooperatives, with the movement continuing to grow over the two decades since.

REFERENCES

[1] Anti-Slavery International, "Our History." https://www.antislavery.org/about-us/history/

[2] Anti-Slavery International, "World Cup 2022: The Reality for Migrant Workers in Qatar." https://www.antislavery.org/latest/world-cup-2022-the-reality-for-migrant-workers-in-qatar/

Human Rights Watch, "Qatar: Six Months Post-World Cup, Migrant Workers Suffer" (16 June 2023). https://www.hrw.org/news/2023/06/16/qatar-six-months-post-world-cup-migrant-workers-suffer

[3] Modern Slavery Act 2018 (Cth). https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2018A00153/latest/text

[4] National Museum of Australia, "Day of Mourning." https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/day-of-mourning

National Museum of Australia, "Freedom Ride." https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/freedom-ride

National Museum of Australia, "Aboriginal Tent Embassy." https://www.nma.gov.au/defining-moments/resources/aboriginal-tent-embassy

[5] Supply Nation, "About Us." https://supplynation.org.au/about/

[6] Megan Davis and George Williams, Everything You Need to Know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart (Sydney: NewSouth Publishing, 2018).

Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, "Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples." https://www.ohchr.org/en/hr-bodies/hrc/expert-mechanism/emripindex

[7] Mariana Mazzucato, The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy (London: Allen Lane, 2018).

Centre for Local Economic Strategies, "Community Wealth Building." https://cles.org.uk/community-wealth-building/

[8] Jodie Thorpe, Marina Cannon, and Stefano Emili, 'Empresas Recuperadas': Argentina's Recovered Factory Movement, IDS Case Summary No. 4 (Brighton: Institute of Development Studies, 2019). https://opendocs.ids.ac.uk/articles/report/_Empresas_Recuperadas_Argentina_s_Recovered_Factory_Movement/26429935

[9] Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics: The Real and the Possible (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2020). https://www.dukeupress.edu/pluriversal-politics

J. K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006). https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/a-postcapitalist-politics

[10] Social Traders. https://www.socialtraders.com.au

Social Enterprise Australia. https://socialenterpriseaustralia.org.au

Victorian Government, Social Procurement Framework. https://www.buyingfor.vic.gov.au/social-procurement-framework

[11] Australian Government Department of Finance, "Indigenous Procurement Policy." https://www.indigenous.gov.au/indigenous-procurement-policy

Craig Furneaux and Robyn Barraket, "Purchasing Social Good(s): A Definition and Typology of Social Procurement," Public Money and Management 34, no. 4 (2014): 265-272.

FURTHER READING

Anti-Slavery International. The world's oldest international human rights organisation, founded 1839. https://www.antislavery.org

Megan Davis and George Williams, Everything You Need to Know about the Uluru Statement from the Heart (2018). Cobble Cobble Australian constitutional lawyer on the architecture of constitutional Indigenous recognition.

Arturo Escobar, Pluriversal Politics (2020). Colombian anthropologist on the recognition of many forms of economic life alongside the dominant model.

J. K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (2006). Foundational text on the diverse economies and community wealth already operating within capitalist countries.

Jodie Thorpe, Marina Cannon, and Stefano Emili, 'Empresas Recuperadas': Argentina's Recovered Factory Movement (2019). Institute of Development Studies case summary on Argentina's worker-recovered enterprise movement.

Mariana Mazzucato, The Value of Everything (2018). On public value and the political philosophy of collective wealth.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032 and the Victorian Free from Violence strategy as the long-running funding architecture for prevention work.

- Family violence prevention in Victorian local government, including council family violence prevention strategies built over decades of advocacy by survivors, women’s services, and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women’s organisations.

- The National Family Violence Prevention Legal Services Forum and the broader frontline sector that produced today’s policy architecture.

- Australian working-class and Indigenous boxing histories across Sydney and Melbourne, with documented gyms in Newtown, Brunswick, and Footscray.

- Women’s Olympic boxing first contested at London 2012.

Iran

- The 2022 uprising following the death of Mahsa Amini in state custody on 16 September 2022.

- Iranian women athletes’ defiance of state hijab policy during and after the uprising, including climber Elnaz Rekabi (Seoul, 16 October 2022) and the broader documentation of athletes facing exile, arrest, and execution.

- Earlier cases including boxer Sadaf Khadem’s exile in 2019 and taekwondo medalist Kimia Alizadeh’s defection in 2020.

Mexico

- Las Hijas de Violencia, founded by Karen and other Mexico City university theatre students using confetti guns and punk performance against street harassment.

- The 2019 Glitter Revolution in Mexico City following the mishandling of the assault and murder of a minor.

- Un Día Sin Nosotras, the national women’s strike of 9 March 2020.

- The ongoing femicide crisis (around ten women killed per day according to official statistics) and the feminist organising response across Mexico.

REFERENCES

[1] Pamela D. Toler, Women Warriors: An Unexpected History (Boston: Beacon Press, 2019). https://www.beacon.org/Women-Warriors-P1502.aspx

[2] Kath Woodward, Sex Power and the Games (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012). https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/9781137291110

Jennifer Hargreaves, Sporting Females: Critical Issues in the History and Sociology of Women’s Sports (London: Routledge, 1994).

[3] International Olympic Committee, “Women’s Boxing Debut at the Olympic Games London 2012.” https://olympics.com/ioc/news/women-s-boxing-debut-at-the-olympic-games-london-2012

[4] Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will: Men, Women and Rape (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1975). https://www.susanbrownmiller.com/susanbrownmiller/html/against_our_will.html

[5] Center for Human Rights in Iran, “Iranian Athletes Killed, Tortured, Sentenced to Death for Supporting Protests.” https://iranhumanrights.org/2023/01/iranian-athletes-killed-tortured-sentenced-to-death-for-supporting-protests-1/

[6] Amnesty International, “Mexico: Authorities Used Illegal Force and Sexual Violence to Silence Women Protesting Against Gender-Based Violence” (9 March 2021). https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/press-release/2021/03/mexico-autoridades-usaron-violencia-sexual-para-silenciar-mujeres/

Lucie Bauce, “In Mexico, Women Are Protesting a Wave of Brutal Murders with Performance,” VICE. https://www.vice.com/en/article/in-mexico-women-are-protesting-a-wave-of-brutal-murders-with-performance/

[7] Gary Lynch and Larry Writer, Australia’s Boxing Hall of Fame (Sydney: Murray Books, 1999).

Colin Tatz, Black Gold: The Aboriginal and Islander Sports Hall of Fame (Canberra: Aboriginal Studies Press, 2000).

[8] National Family Violence Prevention and Legal Services Forum. https://nationalfvpls.org

Australian Government Department of Social Services, National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022-2032. https://www.dss.gov.au/ending-violence

Our Watch, “Change the Story” (2nd edition, 2021). https://www.ourwatch.org.au/change-the-story/

[9] Municipal Association of Victoria, “Family Violence Prevention in Local Government.” https://www.mav.asn.au/what-we-do/policy-advocacy/social-community/family-violence

Victorian Government, Free from Violence: Victoria’s Strategy to Prevent Family Violence and All Forms of Violence Against Women. https://www.vic.gov.au/free-violence-strategy

[10] bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (Boston: South End Press, 1984).

Sara Ahmed, On Being Included: Racism and Diversity in Institutional Life (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2012). https://www.dukeupress.edu/on-being-included

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive: Property, Power, and Indigenous Sovereignty (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015). https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-white-possessive

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women: Making an African Sense of Western Gender Discourses (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1997). https://www.upress.umn.edu/book-division/books/the-invention-of-women

[11] Sara Ahmed, “The Non-Performativity of Anti-Racism,” Meridians: feminism, race, transnationalism 7, no. 1 (2006): 104-126.

FURTHER READING

Susan Brownmiller, Against Our Will (1975). Foundational 1970s North American feminist text on rape and the politics of sexual violence.

bell hooks, Feminist Theory: From Margin to Center (1984). Black feminist scholarship on whose perspectives are centred in feminist politics.

Sara Ahmed, On Being Included (2012). British-Pakistani scholar on diversity work in institutions and the gap between stated commitments and institutional practice.

Aileen Moreton-Robinson, The White Possessive (2015). Quandamooka scholar on Indigenous sovereignty and the institutional politics of whiteness.

Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí, The Invention of Women (1997). Nigerian feminist philosopher arguing that Western gender categories are political constructions, not universal facts.

Pamela D. Toler, Women Warriors: An Unexpected History (2019). Global popular history of women in combat across many cultures and centuries.

Centre for Human Rights in Iran. Ongoing documentation of Iranian human rights, athletes, and the 2022 uprising. https://iranhumanrights.org

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com

The story in this episode is composite, drawn from real events. Identifying details are changed. Real-world events the story draws on, full citations, and further reading are below.

REAL-WORLD EVENTS REFERENCED IN THIS EPISODE

Australia

- Road Safety Remuneration Tribunal, established 2012 under the Road Safety Remuneration Act, abolished 21 April 2016.

- Closing Loopholes Act 2023 and Closing Loopholes No. 2 Act 2024, introducing "employee-like" classification for road transport workers and gig workers.

- Heavy Vehicle National Law and Chain of Responsibility provisions, effective 1 October 2018.

- Documented Australian truck driver and food delivery rider deaths and the campaigning by transport workers and their families that has followed.

- Migrant Worker Justice Initiative findings on underpayment and ABN-classified work among migrant workers in Australian transport.

- Refugee resettlement into Australian trucking through Work and Welcome and similar programs.

Brazil

- Breque dos Apps, the national strike by Brazilian food platform delivery workers on 1 July 2020, organised across 13 states against iFood, Loggi, Uber Eats and Rappi.

- Subsequent waves of platform delivery worker organising in 2024 and 2025, including the 2025 National App Strike.

South Africa

- The cross-border road freight workforce in Southern Africa, including foreign-registered owner-operators and drivers from Zimbabwe, Mozambique, Malawi and other neighbouring countries.

- Documented attacks on foreign-registered trucking businesses and the disputes between South African and foreign trucking interests over classification and access to work.

REFERENCES

[1] Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume I (Hamburg: Verlag von Otto Meissner, 1867). https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/

[2] Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972). https://www.marxists.org/subject/africa/rodney-walter/how-europe/index.htm

Verónica Gago, Feminist International: How to Change Everything (London: Verso, 2020). https://www.versobooks.com/en-gb/products/2783-feminist-international

[3] Australian Council of Trade Unions, "Our History." https://www.actu.org.au/about-the-actu/our-history

[4] Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, section "Estranged Labour." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm

[5] Verónica Gago, Neoliberalism From Below: Popular Pragmatics and Baroque Economies (Durham: Duke University Press, 2017). https://www.dukeupress.edu/neoliberalism-from-below

[6] Louise Toupin, Wages for Housework: A History of an International Feminist Movement, 1972-1977 (Vancouver: UBC Press, 2018). https://www.ubcpress.ca/wages-for-housework

[7] International Labour Organization, World Employment and Social Outlook 2021: The Role of Digital Labour Platforms in Transforming the World of Work (Geneva: ILO, 2021). https://www.ilo.org/global/research/global-reports/weso/2021/lang--en/index.htm

[8] Road Safety Remuneration Act 2012 (Cth). https://www.legislation.gov.au/C2012A00045/latest

Transport Workers' Union of Australia, "Safe Rates." https://www.twu.com.au

[9] Claire Mayhew and Michael Quinlan, "Economic Pressure, Multi-tiered Subcontracting and Occupational Health and Safety in Australian Long Haul Trucking," Employee Relations 28, no. 3 (2006): 212-229.

[10] National Heavy Vehicle Regulator, "Chain of Responsibility." https://www.nhvr.gov.au/safety-accreditation-compliance/chain-of-responsibility

[11] Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (Geneva: United Nations, 2011). https://www.ohchr.org/sites/default/files/Documents/Publications/GuidingPrinciplesBusinessHR_EN.pdf

[12] Surya Deva, Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations: Humanizing Business (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).

UN Special Rapporteur on the Right to Development. https://www.ohchr.org/en/special-procedures/sr-development

[13] Laurie Berg and Bassina Farbenblum, International Students and Wage Theft in Australia (Sydney: Migrant Worker Justice Initiative, UTS Law, 2020). https://www.mwji.org

Transport Workers' Union of Australia, "Landmark Report on Migrant Underpayment Shows Need to Lift Standards in Transport." https://www.twu.com.au/press/landmark-report-on-migrant-underpayment-shows-need-to-lift-standards-in-transport/

[14] Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (London: Bogle-L'Ouverture, 1972; reissued London: Verso, 2018).

[15] Ricardo Antunes, O Privilégio da Servidão: O Novo Proletariado de Serviços na Era Digital (São Paulo: Boitempo Editorial, 2018). https://www.boitempoeditorial.com.br/produto/o-privilegio-da-servidao-1141

[16] Ludmila Costhek Abílio, Rafael Grohmann, and Henrique Amorim, "Breaking the Apps: The Making of the First National Strike by Food Platform Delivery Workers in Brazil," Social Movement Studies (2025). https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14742837.2025.2562886

Octavia Sibanda, "Attacks on Road-Freight Transporters: A Threat to Trade Participation for Landlocked Countries in Southern Africa." https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC8791686/

FURTHER READING

Karl Marx, Capital, Volume I (1867). The foundational text on labour, value, and the political economy of work under capitalism.

Verónica Gago, Feminist International: How to Change Everything (Verso, 2020). Argentine feminist political economy on uncounted labour and the feminist strike.

Wages for Housework movement (Italy, 1972). Movement history at https://www.ubcpress.ca/wages-for-housework

Michael Quinlan and colleagues, Counting the Costs of Industrial Death (Federation Press, 2006). Decades of Australian research on the economic structure of trucking deaths.

Walter Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa (1972). Guyanese historian on the colonial political economy of extracted labour.

Surya Deva, Regulating Corporate Human Rights Violations (Routledge, 2012). Global South legal scholarship on corporate accountability and supply chain human rights.

Ricardo Antunes, The Meanings of Work (Brill, 2013). Brazilian sociology on the contemporary "servant class" and platform labour.

About the host

Liv Roe is a civic and political adviser based in Melbourne. She works with businesses, organisations, and individuals on the political and civic context of their work. Book a consultation at livroe.org.

This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit civicsandcommerce.substack.com