Summary

There has never been a “natural” body: bodies have always been the expression of a specific period, geography, sexual, religious and cultural place. However, today only a few aspirational and idealised body types are taking the place of all possible bodies. We’re losing body variety as fast as we’re losing languages. Again like with languages, there’s a critical period for “body acquisition”. We can feel alienated of our own body (for the rest of our lives) if we don’t learn to feel comfortable with it in that critical period.

The individual is now deemed accountable for his/her body and judged by it, turning “looking after oneself” into a moral value. A search for contentment around the body is a hallmark of our times, and a belief in both the perfectible body and the notion that we should accede to improve it has contributed to a progressively unstable body.

The body is becoming akin to a worthy personal object. Body transformation is today less of a social ritual, and more wanting to produce an acceptable body (wounded soldiers vs. TV contestants on p. 84-85). We seem to believe that almost anything about the body can be changed by the individual, turning plastic surgery into a consumer item: a treat, like a holiday. Sexuality has to be conjured and performed, it doesn’t exist or flow naturally.

The new grammar of visual culture, which is not even real (Photoshop), produces that even children photos are “enhanced”, generating frustration and even making people lose accurate records of their visual history (very interesting notes on p. 87-90). We fall into the trap of us “enjoying fashion and beauty”, believing we’re agents instead of victims, but we aren’t being creative with our bodies or having fun with them: we feel at fault for not matching up to the current, impossible to reach imagery. We take for granted that looking good for ourselves is going to make us feel good, find faults in our bodies and say that it makes us feel better, more in control, to improve them.

Review

I generally liked the book, but sometimes I thought it was a bit too long. Many of the important points are already made in the introduction, and the rest of the chapters are more stories and references supporting the initial points. Worse yet, I sometimes found those arguments or stories not completely believable or convincing (eg. using controversial material like some Harry Harlow experiments or Victor of Aveyron‘s story to support her points). In other cases, some relatively bold claims were not backed up by references, which made me feel could be not representative or poorly-researched or, at least, made them weaker because of a lack of context.

However, the book is well written and made me reconsider several things, which is what books like this should do. Recommended if you’re interested in psychology or if you find it intriguing to learn about our relationship to our physical bodies. Although I skipped them in the summary, some of the stories (like the man who didn’t want to have legs) are pretty mind-blowing and interesting in themselves.

EDIT: Manuela wrote another, easier to read summary.

Escaping flatland

The methods in this book work to increase the number of dimensions that can be represented on plane surfaces and the data density. Nearly every escape from flatland demands an extensive compromise, trading off one virtue against another. Even our language often lacks capacity to communicate a sense of dimensional complexity. Some design strategies are found again and again (examples of over 380 years of sunspot data analysis). These design strategies are surprisingly widespread, albeit little appreciated, and occur independently of the content of the data.

Massive Java railroad line example on p. 24-25. The train diagonals cleverly multiple-function, recording six variables at once (p. 26). Example of criminal activity for a trial on p. 30-31. The chart invites reading both horizontally and vertically. The eyes detect curious patterns, which make these displays persuasive and memorable. Visual displays of information encourage a diversity of individual viewer styles and rates of editing, personalising, reasoning and understanding. Unlike speech, visual displays are simultaneously a wideband and a perceiver-controllable channel.

We envision information to reason about, communicate, document and preserve that knowledge. Chartjunk on p.34: data-thin, uncontextual graphs. Its promoters imagine numbers to be dull and tedious, requiring ornament. If numbers are boring, you got the wrong numbers. The audience might be busy or eager to get on with it, but not stupid. Chartjunk looks more like a poster, meant to be looked at from a distance (thin data density).

Micro/macro readings

Detail cumulates in coherent structures. Simplicity of reading derives from the context of detailed and complex information, properly arranged. To clarify, add detail. Stem-and-leaf plots of statistical analysis also rely on micro/macro design (examples on p. 46-47).

We thrive in information-thick worlds because of our marvellous and everyday capacities to select, edit, single out, structure, highlight, group, … Visual displays rich with data are not only an appropriate and proper complement to human capabilities, but also such designs are frequently optimal. If the visual task is contrast, comparison and choice, then the more relevant information within eyespan, the better. Low-density requires visual memory, a weak skill. High density also allows viewers to select, narrate, recast and personalise data for their own uses.

What about information overload? The question misses the point. Clutter and confusion are failures of design, not attributes of information. Interesting quote on typography on p. 51. The deepest reason for displays that portray complexity and intricacy is that the worlds we seek to understand are complex and intricate.

Layering and separation

This technique is one the most powerful devices for reducing noise and enriching the content of displays. The various elements interact, creating non-information patterns and texture simply through their combined presence (1 + 1 = 3 or more). Colour effortlessly differentiates between annotation and annotated (example on p. 54). What matters is the proper relationship among information layers (example of old + improved design on p. 54-55). For tables, try to do without rules altogether, only use when absolutely necessary. Example of map (good and bad) on p. 58. Example of (non-)dull background on p. 59. Notes on how 1 + 1 = 3 can also be applied to noise on p. 61-62. Example of use of colours (another bad + good design) on p. 63.

Information consists of differences that make a difference. A fruitful method for the enforcement of such differences is using layering and separation.

Small multiples

Quantitative reasoning is based on “compared to what?”. Small multiples answer by visually enforcing comparisons of changes, of the differences among objects, and the scope of alternatives. Information slices are positioned within the eyespan, so that viewers make comparisons at a glance. Example of drawing a Kana character on p. 69. Simultaneous two-dimensional indexing of the multiplied image, flatland within flatland, significantly deepens displays with little added complication in reading.

Colour and information

Example of Swiss mountain map on p. 80. Fundamental uses of colour in information design: label (colour as noun), measure (as quantity), represent or imitate reality (representation), enliven or decorate (beauty). Principles to minimise colour damage: (1) pure, bright colours have loud, unbearable effects when they stand unrelieved over large areas adjacent to each other, but can work very well when used sparingly on or between dull background tones; (2) placing of light, bright colours mixed with white next to each other usually produces unpleasant results, esp. if the colours are used for large areas; (3) large area background or base-colours should do their work most quietly, allowing the smaller, bright areas to stand out most vividly (strongly muted colours, mixed with grey, provide the best background for the coloured theme).

What palette of colours should we choose to represent and illuminate information? Use colours in nature (familiar and coherent, possessing a widely accepted harmony to the human eye), esp. those on the lighter side such as blues, yellows, and greys of sky and shadow. Great examples on p. 90.

In the ocean map, quantities are shown by a value scale, progressing from light to dark blue. Colour rainbows confuse viewers to mumbling colour names and the numbers they represent (“To see is to forget the name of the thing one sees”). Colours are sensitive to context. In the ocean map, contours (which are very helpful) are labelled with depth measurements. Edge lines allow very fine value distinctions, increasing scale precision. Example of bad map/good colour on maps on p. 94-95.

Narratives of space and time

Example of bad/good train schedule on p. 104-105. Space-time grids have a natural universality, with nearly boundless subtleties and extensions. Great, assorted examples on p. 110-111. Example of “tale of two cities” on p. 112-113.

Final notes

I’m aware that this summary is not very useful if you can’t see the different diagrams being examined, but it’s partly for myself :-) Anyway, if you like the ideas in the book, go buy it, it’s a great book in a big format, with really nice paper and full of very interesting examples of both good and bad information design.

Structure

The book teaches how to write web applications using Javascript, always following the MVC pattern. It’s divided in four parts:

1. The first two chapters serve as an introduction to both the MVC pattern and the Javascript language. Although this book is not aimed at total Javascript newbies, you don’t have to know that much to follow the book. For example, it explains prototypes and constructor functions.
2. Chapters 3 to 5 cover the implementation details of MVC in Javascript (one chapter for the Model, another for the Controller and the last one about the View).
3. Chapters 6 to 10 cover many practicalities of client-side web development, like dependency management, unit testing, debugging, interesting browser APIs and deployment tips.
4. The last three chapters cover Javascript libraries: Spine, Backbone and JavascriptMVC.

Additionally, there are three appendices covering jQuery, Less and CSS3.

Highlights and references

• Chapter 10 (“Deploying”) is full of very good tips and information.
• Both the Backbone and the JavascriptMVC chapters were brilliant, looking forward to use any of them soon.
• All the example code is on GitHub.
• Page 24: “The secret to making large Javascript applications is not make large Javascript applications”.
• HJS plugin for jQuery for a nice syntax to create classes.
• ES5-shim for browsers that don’t support Ecmascript 5 yet.
• Chapter 2 was a very good introduction about events. removeEventListener (p. 41), stopPropagation/preventDefault (p. 43), list of properties (p. 44), load vs. DOMContentLoaded (p. 45), delegating events (p. 46) and custom events (p. 47-49), among others.
• Reference to blog post about namespacing.
• Object.create discussed on page 55.
• Using URL hash for URLs on pages 82, 83.
• Didn’t really understand the explanation for the HTML5 history API on p. 85. Alternatively, see the HTML5 history API on Dev Opera.
• Very interesting file API on p. 103 and p. 111. Forget the drag-n-drop (reason) and the copy/paste.
• Tips about when to load your Javascript on p. 156.
• The JavascriptMVC chapter was brilliant, see p. 208-213 for the class syntax (nicer and more compact, supports this._super()), p. 210 for instrospection and namespaces, p. 211, 212 for model attributes and observables, and p. 213 for setters. Very cool server encapsulation on p. 215. Type conversion and CRUD events on p. 218. JMVC views on p. 219. Templated actions and final example on p. 226-228.

Note that all page references are pages in the PDF file, not pages in the book!

Wrapping up

This book is packed with very practical information and a lot of code that will teach you how to write applications in Javascript. It builds up from relatively simple code to more advanced stuff, including tips, use of libraries, etc. It’s one of those books that makes you want to play with all the stuff you’re learning, and try it all in your next project.

However, sometimes the amount of code makes the book hard to read. Some parts (eg. beginning of the chapter about controllers) are a bit tiring as you have to read and understand so much code, esp. if you’re not that used to reading more-or-less advanced Javascript. It also lacks information about some important tools like Dragonfly (it almost feels like there’s nothing for developing with Opera) or js-test-driver.

In summary, this is the perfect book if you know a bit of Javascript and want to learn modern techniques and libraries that will get you started in serious client-side programming. Especially if you are one of those server-side programmers that don’t like Javascript but has to use it anyway (because despite all its warts, it’s a really nice language!). If you’re a Javascript wizard and you have been developing client-side code for years, this book may not be for you.

• The first band we saw (only for around 10 minutes, though) was Nidingr, a black metal band. I have to say I didn’t really like them, and I didn’t even expect to like them that much, but there wasn’t anything else that I liked at that time slot, and the drummer playing in that band was Jan Axel Blomberg, Arcturus drummer. I really like how he played in Arcturus, but with Nidingr it was just very fast, uninteresting metal drumming. Oh well.
• Then we went to Victoria Jazzscene for something completely different: Chili Vanilla. This band is the weirdest jazz trio I’ve ever seen, comprised of voice, drums… and tuba. No piano, no guitar, no bass, no horns… just tuba and drums supporting the voice. It sounded quite interesting, possibly the best of the night.
• Then we checked the Danish punk-rock band Black City for a moment (just a few songs), but although they didn’t sound band, it wasn’t all that interesting and there were other bands we wanted to see…
• …so we went to see 22, a really glam-looking rock band. Some songs reminded me of Red Hot Chili Peppers (from relatively long time ago, that is), and other reminded me of Placebo. Although the whole paraphernalia and “marketing” was a bit teenage for my taste, they were quite fun to listen to and see live.
• After that we went to see Mary Me Young, a band I had already seen in Øyafestivalen. Although maybe their music has to evolve a bit, they reminded me of Veruca Salt, a band I used to like a lot (if you don’t know VS, check out Seether or Number One Blind). Cool band, and the bar had Havana 7 :-P
• And the end for us was Kommode, Eirik Glambek Bøe’s (of Kings of Convenience fame) new project. I think I like KoC better (their concert last year was amazing), but it was a pretty cool concert too.

All in all a fun night.

Ending the (product) chain

A lot of the commodities and products we buy have a little bit of slavery in them (documented cases: food, cotton, iron, steel, gold, diamonds, shoes & clothing, fireworks, rugs and carpets, bricks…). The problem is, it’s almost impossible to know which shirt or chocolate bar brings slavery into our home. Our first reaction might be boycott, but they can hurt the innocent more than the guilty: poor farmers have to fight against subsidised farmers and with their neighbours using slaves. If consumers also turn against the poor farmers not using slaves, the result can be even more slaves. This is a problem that can’t normally be fixed at the point of purchase. The point to stop slavery is where it’s happening.

Companies that use slave material always give excuses to not fight slavery. Already in 1850, the American slave cotton industry said it wasn’t illegal (not valid now), that they didn’t have the responsibility of making rules or act like police in a foreign country, and if they didn’t, their competitors would and they would be driven out of business.

When a law was going to be passed to require chocolate companies to have a slave-free label (in 2001), they were alarmed because no one could figure out a way to prove that some cocoa was slave-free. So the companies started lobbying against the law, pointing to the impossibility to find enough cocoa that could be guaranteed to be slave-free, so there was a compromise: the law would not be passed if the companies agreed to work with labour and anti-slavery groups to remove slavery from their product chain (the “Harkin-Engel protocol“). Three crucial action points:

1. A binding memorandum was signed by all stakeholders to agree on and setup a plan forward.
2. Create a joint international foundation paid by the companies but run by a mixture of businesses, human rights groups and unions. They would do the research and run projects to take child labour and slavery out of the cocoa production.
3. Put in place a “credible, mutually acceptable, voluntary, industry-wide standard of public certification, consistent with federal law” that cocoa wasn’t grown with child- or slave-labour.

The protocol was a historic document, the first “treaty” between an industry and anti-child-labour and anti-slavery movements. And it was quite precise in the plan of action, but not everything went to plan. The two biggest problems were:

1. The survey of the farms was carried out by an organisation specialised in African agriculture, but didn’t know about slavery, hence it didn’t ask the right questions.
2. Underestimating what it would take to mount a “credible, mutually acceptable [...]” by 2005. What makes it “credible”, who issues the “certificate”, and what does it certify? Plus the monitoring takes place within sovereign countries.

However, the protocol shows an important new way consumers and businesses can take part in eradicating slavery. It also showed how two US politicians could use pressure so fight slavery around the world.

Another example of “slave-free” mark is the RUGMARK system. Although proving that a particular rug without the mark has been indeed made by slaves is normally impossible, strong circumstantial evidence exists given the large number of enslaved workers. Also, RUGMARK and other anti-slavery groups have been very active publishing the facts of child slavery so few retailers could be ignorant of the strong possibility that they’re dealing with slave goods.

Ending poverty to end slavery to end poverty to end slavery

If we haven’t had great human or economic progress in 50 years, doesn’t fighting slavery make things harder? New research suggests than development is taking so long because we haven’t tackled slavery. Ending slavery might be one of the best weapons to fight poverty.

Robert Smith has studied why some poor countries have made much progress and others haven’t. He divided 139 countries into regional groups and measured development with UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), and included slavery and human trafficking, making the first large-scale study of modern development. The amount of slavery is what better explains the differences between countries, more than level of democracy, national debt, civil conflict or corruption. The analysis shows that in poor areas, slavery is the worst enemy of growth and living a decent life, not just for slaves but for everyone. Slavery is a major cause of depressed economies, low literacy levels and shorter lifespans for all citizens.

Combating poverty helps to end slavery, and viceversa. Ending slavery can have a significant impact on poverty (both for slaves and non-slaves). A great deal of thought and resources go to end poverty, rather less for slavery. What is clear is that these goals should go together, as the combined strength is greater than the sum of parts.

Coda: What you can do to end slavery

The cost of flying someone to help in a poor country would pay a full-time salary of an anti-slavery worker for a year. The most effective way to combat slavery is joining an organisation like FreeTheSlaves and give $10/month. Anti-slavery workers have enough to worry, they should be certain about funds. Although large donations are welcome, what the anti-slavery movement needs is small, regular donations.

Raising awareness about slavery is really easy: there are good books, films, web sites and blogs introducing people to slavery. For example, “How to combat modern slavery“, the TED talk that made me interested in the topic in the first place, or the video page in freetheslaves.net.

Appendix: Measuring the effectiveness of anti-slavery work

Characteristics of successful programs:

1. Flexibility to adapt to the local context, with programs that change yearly.
2. Evidence of leadership and problem solving ability within front-line workers.
3. A range of local, independent programs rooted in the affected communities. Those are better than large, multiregional programs.
4. Programs with secure financial base: multiple funders and multiyear funding (even if the funding is not large).

And this is, finally, the end of the (very long) summary. I hope you liked it :-)

Global problem, global reach

Slavery is global. Need to find a how to use global organisations to fight it. This chapter is about how groups like the UN, WTO and World Bank can help.

The United Nations

The Slavery Convention was created in 1926. It is important because it was the first time the world agreed officially that slavery must end and in even tried to define it. It was important in three ways: (1) it set the moral position, (2) it was the first global treaty to ban slavery and (3) it addressed slavery “in all its forms”. However, it wasn’t such a practical instrument to end slavery.

The International Labour Organisation was established in 1919. It 1998 it issued the Declaration of the Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work. This opened the door for Anti-Slavery International to lobby and in 2001 the ILO Special Action Program to Combat Forced Labour was created. An in-depth investigation was undertaken, which resulted in a global report in 2005 that helped bring the subject to the notice of governments. This research is so clearly documented that it can be repeated in a few years to compare. Because incredibly, no one knows if slavery is growing or shrinking, or how many slaves are men, women or children.

One of the reasons the UN and ILO don’t do more against slavery is that they’re completely dependent on its member nations. The UN is anything but democratic, because one primary body exercises the most control: the Security Council. It has five permanent members (Great Britain, France, Russia, China and the United States) and 10 rolling members elected on a rolling basis, allowed to participate for two years but not be re-elected. The General Assembly can recommend, but only the Security Council can decide. The five permanent members have veto power. Two examples:

1. Convention on the Rights of the Child (1989). Two countries failed to vote for it: Somalia, which didn’t have a functioning government that could vote for anything) and the US, which in part argued that it would ban 17-year-olds from military service.
2. International Criminal Court, an idea first explored in 1946. Idea: court where individuals could bring cases of fundamental human right violations when their national courts were unwilling/unable to give them a hearing. The US is now its most vigorous enemy. It joined six other countries (Iraq, Israel, China, Yemen, Libya and Qatar) to vote against it. As countries began to ratify the convention, the US bullied them shamelessly, threatening to pull foreign aid, credits, education grants, unless they promised the US a special exemption from the court’s jurisdiction (see p. 150 for references).

The UN can play a role no other can perform, but the cooperation of the Security Council is needed. That doesn’t need to be complex or difficult, and can be broken into clear and easy steps. It starts with the appointment of a special representative of the secretary-general on slavery. One of its main products is an in-depth report that assesses a problem and gives specific recommendations for addressing it. A special representative on slavery would not be revolutionary, and one is needed for two reasons:

1. the UN work on slavery is piecemeal and uncoordinated: he could resolve the different conventions since 1926 into a coherent single statement (slavery is one of the few crimes with “jus cogens” status, meaning all countries agree it’s illegal everywhere, all the time and no country is allowed to make it legal)
2. The UN needs a much more robust response to slavery (the Security Council passed a resolution in 2005 on children and armed conflict, but the only actions were monitor and report). It could be achieved by the Special Representative organising a Security Council meeting about slavery. This meeting would have 4 objectives:
   1. Make it clear the UN is serious about it
   2. Demonstrate that the Security Council supports the work of the Special Representative and the secretary-general
   3. Make the Security Council set up a small group of experts to review all existing UN conventions
   4. Make the Security Council establish a commission to determine how the existing UN inspection mandate could be extended to slavery (the inspection mandate is what made the UN look for weapons in Iraq and ultimately punish when there wasn’t cooperation; see p. 153-155).

Other ways in which the UN can help (p. 156):

• Bread: although the food the WFP (World Food Programme) delivers is sometimes the difference between life and death, dropping large amounts of free food in a weak economy can threaten the viability of local agriculture, increasing poverty and vulnerability to exploitation. It has its uses though: free lunches in a local school quells the hunger that pushes many parents to give their children for promises of jobs, it draws children to school where they get education and helps them crawl out of poverty, and it’s much more likely that teachers come every day. The UN food programme knows how to get food to the people who need it. Only two steps are needed to make it fight slavery as well: (1) build awareness of slavery into its planning, and (2) make sure it has the resources to assemble a special unit that searches out and attacks slavery through food aid.
• Pills: when slaves come to freedom, one of the first things they need is medical care for their children and themselves. If the World Health Organisation incorporates slavery, when health workers find slaves they will recognise them and liberation will be hastened. Medical care for them will improve their chances of staying out. This is just adding slavery sensitivity, like when gender sensitivity was added as part of UN policies.
• Guns: if a UN peacekeeper force can open the door, other UN agencies can bring the food, education and medical care that ensures lasting freedom.
• Roses: UNESCO has the kind of global reach for a campaign to end slavery. Its programs filter into schools.
• Satellites: slavery is often hidden in unmapped areas, but they’re hard to hide from satellites, especially as usually they destroy the environment and those scars are visible.

The World Bank

The World Bank, by its own definition, focuses on ending poverty. A lot of money goes to projects in developing countries, but a lot of money comes back as repayments and interest.

The World Bank could add anti-slavery requirements to the list of requirements that governments have to meet to get funding for specific projects. They have already announced that the Bank won’t approve any loan that undermines human rights, but they have to go further and be more specific.

And that’s it for now. The next (and last!) post will cover chapters “Ending the (product) chain”, “Ending poverty to end slavery to end poverty to end slavery”, the coda and the appendix.

Governments

Japan

This chapter bashes Japan big time. I’m not sure how much of it I should buy, but I can’t think of a reason why the author should be so biased against the country either.

It is surprising that there are so many slaves in modern, hightly educated, economically prosperous Japan. That there have been so many women imported for years with the support of the government is even more surprising until you have a look at Japanese culture.

The sex business is changing from old-fashioned brothels, strip clubs and others (with high overhead, meaning customers have to pay $300-$500 for sex) to “fashion massage shops”, staffed by heavily exploited foreign workers ($50-$90 for sex). Down the ladder, sex with foreign women on the street is $8-$10. All this is known as the “entertainment industry” in Japan. And prostitution is actually not legal in Japan, but its definition is only intravaginal heterosexual acts: anything else is legal and not regulated. Also, the law punishes solicitation (prostitutes are arrested and punished).

The Japanese government does a lot about illegal sex trade. To support it. For 20 years there has been a special kind of visa: the “entertainer visa”. Presumably it’s for singers/dancers, but then Japan has more than any country in the world (see graph on p. 109). What other country loves music so much that they need 133,103 singers/dancers in a single year? For a country that donates relatively large sums of money to combat poverty and disease around the world, being exposed like this was humiliating. The response was a lot of talk and an “action plan” with very little action, resulting in an increase from 6 to 25 victims found and protected. If there are tens of thousands of slaves in Japan, the government has only managed to find less than 1%. This could be expected in poor and rural countries, but Japan may be the best policed democracy in the world.

They use the kōban system, a one-room mini-police station with a territory of 1/5 of a square mile, an area most people would consider their neighbourhood. The police basically knows everyone and their business, very little happens without the police knowing. Comment: If I’m to believe Wikipedia, there are around 6,000 kōban and 127 million people in Japan. That’d mean more than 20,000 people per kōban?? Can they really know everything that is happening?. This police returns women, that came to seek help, to the traffickers. For women who are working in remote areas of Japan, it’s almost impossible to escape. Something is wrong if victims fear the police, crime is pervasive and officially ignored, and the flow of victims is increasing.

To fully understand slavery in Japan, one has to study racism in the country. No law prohibits racial discrimination. Comment: I found anecdotal evidence that Japan might have racism issues, but it might also be just cultural differences misinterpreted. Outside of many public places you can find signs which deny admittance to non-Japanese. There is a general view that women are inferior. Question: American prejudice? I found anecdotal evidence that it might be the case, that differences between men and women are not bigger than in the US. Domestic violence is an unmeasured ugly current. there was no clear law against it until 2002, and police routinely ignores assaults by husbands. Question: no references of this? that’s quite a bold statement without references! When meeting the NGO workers in Japan, the author was told they felt fighting not just criminals but the entire structure of government and culture.

Brazil

Within four months of entering office, Lula set up a National Commission for the Eradication of Slave Labour as a permanent part of the government. Perhaps for the first time in history, a government proceeded in the right way, making sure everything was in place before taking action. The plan had some excellent ideas: the law against slavery would be tightened and the penalties increased. One of the strongest new proposals was very radical: expropriation without compensation of land belonging to slaveholders. It was suggested to distribute the land to poor, land-less workers to avoid re-enslavement (up to 40% of people freed had been freed more than once, pointing to a cycle of poverty, economic crisis and enslavement). The plan also established a “dirty list” of companies and people that used slave labour. Those on the list would be excluded from receiving funds, grants or credits from the government. Since much of the process of opening or developing land relies on government tax credits or supports, they would be driven out of business.

The plan achieved immediate and dramatic results. In 2003 the number of freed slave more than doubled, to 4,879. There was  some fight back, and in 2004 three officials from the labour ministry and their driver were murdered while investigating farms.

There may be no country in the world doing a better job, but it wasn’t perfect. More than 600 rural landlords were caught with slaves, but none went to prison, no property confiscated, and many continued their activities. The government needs to make the number of prosecutions, convictions and punishments public: transparency would help the public understand the tremendous task and potential for historic achievement. The UN has been critical with this lack of transparency and has pointed out the discrepancy between the number of freed slaves and the convictions.

Farms, mines and companies on the dirty list feed a supply chain that flows to US importers and customers. We need to face that we’re part of the process and we as consumers must ask companies to examine their supply chains. Cutting the demand for slave-made products is important, but there are a lot of steps in the supply chain. It’s much more effective to make sure that the Brazilian Special Mobile Inspection Groups, anti-slavery squads, etc. have the money they need to get their job done. The debt that Brazil services every year accounts for millions and it could be better spent on important programs like education and anti-slavery work that would stimulate the economy. Given that the US economy benefits from slavery in Brazil, it seems fair to give some back in the form of debt forgiveness.

What governments can do to end slavery

Nearly every country in the world needs its unique set of responses to slavery. There are many common elements, but the mix varies per country. In rich countries it’s just a matter of priorities and resources. For all other countries, there are key foundation blocks:

1. Stop looking for the quick fix. Slavery is obviously a legal problem, but it’s also economic development, migration, gender discrimination, ethnic prejudice, corruption and political will. No quick fix, like busting up brothels, buying people out of slavery or passing laws (without making sure they’re enforced) will eliminate slavery.
2. Focus on outcomes.
3. Build a robust legal response. Once a clear picture of trafficking and enslavement is available, a country can build a legal response that deals with the crime. Some countries/languages have a special name for ex-slaves and an informal apartheid system that keeps them powerless. The law that decriminalises victims has to be explicit in that the consent of the victim is irrelevant. International law is clear that people can’t legally hand themselves over to slavery.
4. Build a dedicated law enforcement team.
5. Protect and support freed slaves. This help/support should be given no matter where the freed slave has come from.
6. Raise awareness and promote prevention. Governments can increase public awareness of slavery and trafficking like public health: with advertising and education campaigns. These should also be public awareness campaigns aimed at potential victims of enslavement. Many ex-slaves say they didn’t know their enslavement was illegal until their liberators told them.
7. Use diplomacy, trade and foreign aid to end slavery.
8. Call out the army (and navy and air force).

And that’s it for now. The next post will cover chapter “Global problem, global reach”.

Rescuing slaves today

In one of the rescue stories, children have been told by their holders that they need to hide when the police comes, because they’ll hurt or kill them, and they have come to believe it. When trying to free them, children freeze when grabbed by the strangers that storm in. Others hide and others scream and fight their rescuers. Police is unhelpful, and when told to arrest the slaveholders, they turn their heads away: they’re not going to get into trouble with the rich men that run the village.

Once the 12-minute raid is over, the slaveholders send messages to the police so they stall or obstruct the rescue plan. As soon as the report is filed, it can be freely accessed, including the slaveholder or his lawyer. Names of the person filing, the ex-slave, his parents, their location or villages they come from are all here. While the police drag their feet, the slaveholders intimidate or bribe witnesses, manufacture evidence, etc. Every report filed can lead to a case lasting 3 years on average, sometimes much longer. Only the person filing is allowed to bring it forward. If anything happens to that person, the case dies.

Money alone won’t solve the problem. Have to change laws, minds, customs and ways of making business. There are six things that will help liberators:

1. Protect the liberators, e.g. making them “public figures”. That way it’s harder to attack them.
2. Give them tools to do their job. Cell phones and jeeps could help a lot. In some cases they go to remote rural areas by bike. Schools can keep children out of slavery, and you can keep one for less than $5000/year. The end of slavery partly depends on these small expenditures.
3. Write and enforce effective antislavery laws. They typically have small penalties (considering it’s usually kidnapping, torture, theft, assault and often rape all combined in one).
4. Train, motivate and mobilize law enforcement. There are around the same number of murders in the US than people trafficked, but while more than 12/17 thousand murders will be cleared, only over 100 trafficking cases are brought to court.
5. “Clone” the liberators. More will come as people learn about slavery in their own countries.
6. Help freed slaves heal so the liberators have time and energy to free other slaves.

Apart from this, there are other things. When liberators are asked, they often reply with big picture factors apart from local conditions. However, there are now hundreds of thousands waiting to be freed, and they must be freed. They are dying now.

Home-grown freedom

There are areas where only slaves live. The Kols (near India’s bottom of the caste ladder) in an area called Sonebarsa, are all slaves in hereditary bondage. Most of them don’t know what freedom means: they require permission to sit, move around, eat or drink. For these people, the breakthrough came in 1998, with the question “why don’t we get our own mining lease?”. After months waiting for the lease, the slaveholders discovered what they were doing and they were thrown out. They didn’t have a place to stay or anything to eat, and they had to survive by eating weeds and roots, not knowing if they would get the lease. When they got it after all, their productivity shot up, they put their kids in school, and local tax officials were shocked because they started getting money.

People in rich countries may feel they don’t have much to learn from poor countries, and that might be one of our greatest failings. Ex-slaves have a remarkable dignity and lack of bitterness: they seem too busy with their new freedoms to hate anybody. It’s easy to see slaves as victims, helpless and dependent, but that misses their resilience, strength, endurance, intelligence and compassion.

When fighting to end slavery, it doesn’t make sense that a rich foreigner tells a family that the children can’t work on the farm anymore if that means that the family income will drop to the point that the children will start to go hungry. Real change has to come from the community. As this is a global problem, using the power of governments sounds like the way to go, but the most efficient engine for freeing up slaves and keep them free is when a community makes the concious decision to do just that. More slaves are freed by community organisation than in any other way. They’re also freed more efficiently and their freedom is more permanent.

To help these communities, there are six points (compare to the above for liberators):

1. Thinking and being free. When they make the concious decision, their freedom is more durable. To stay free, people need mental tools to endure the change and money to survive while they get a new source of income.
2. One size does not fit all. The things that stop people from leaving slavery can be surprising. For example, there was an elderly couple afraid for their hut. When shown a new place where they could safely build a new one, their intense desire for freedom took over. There are obstacles that might be invisible to our eyes. Another way to get insight into their lives is creating useful services, so slaves gain trust in the antislavery workers by showing they’re really interested in their well-being.
3. “Clone” the liberators (again). To get to know and gain trust of communities in slavery, people leaving in remote, dangerous areas are needed. Finding those people is challenging. Make it easy for people who want, to actually move.
4. Prepare for the backslash. Decide the risk together with communities, and if it’s worth it. Slaveholders will react, the question is how to mitigate. Everyone involved has to understand the dangers and prepare for them.
5. Plan for the worst. When houses start burning, what to do? When people are homeless, where are they going to live? Forging connections with powerful people that will protect slaves. The presence of foreign observers has saves lives many times.
6. We all go together. Slaves are not free from prejudices themselves. The first step to freedom is getting women to come together and resist violence in their own homes. Experience the power of resisting violence and learning the right to feel safe. Give confidence to protect themselves and children from trafficking.

A community of ex-slaves will need this to stay free:

1. Immediate access to paid work. The sooner they work, the sooner stability arrives.
2. A chance to build up savings. Slavery is often the result of not having a fall-back for a crisis.
3. Access to basic services, like schools and clinics. Having clean water can save women and children hours a day, improving productivity. Planning for freedom implies asking men and women which services there are and what they need.
4. Working with the earth. Slaves often work destroying environment. This destruction impacts poor people the most, and leads them to slavery. Sustained freedom means sustainable environment as well. Seeds and a hoe can make a big difference.

What funders and anti-slavery groups need to work well together:

1. Reliable funding. Normally no large sums are needed, just a steady flow. For many, liberation takes time. People in slavery has a lot of insecurity, so antislavery groups must be reliable. They can’t run out of money in the middle of a liberation. More important than size of gift is regularity.
2. Flexibility. Need to listen to slave communities, and be responsive to those needs. If that means changing from health care to micro-credits, so be it. The goal is freedom, not a “successful” project that doesn’t get freedom.
3. Assembling the toolkit. Antislavery groups need a good understanding of and ability to use any antislavery tools and laws at their disposal. Building that expertise needs support.
4. Critical thinking and funding. Local antislavery groups need to think critically to get the job done. Need to identify what blocks freedom and go for it. It’s harder than it sounds when they’re stuck in a village and the funder has rules about what they support and how they fund it. If there’s not a category for what they really need, it’s tempting to go for something else they know they can get. The challenge is increasing understanding and trust between the workers on the ground and the funders.

People in slavery know best what they need to reach freedom. Outsiders can share ideas, protection and resources, but the solution has to convince and be owned by the people fighting to leave slavery.

No matter what laws are passed or what UN resolutions promulgated, slavery ends when the community decides to and takes action. Slavery is woven into the fabric of life at our neighbourhoods, and has to be cut out of that fabric by those who understand where the threads are hidden and how they’re knotted with corruption, indifference, racism of greet.

And that’s all for now. The next post will cover the “Governments” chapter.

This first post will cover the introduction, and the chapters “The Challenge” and “Building the Plan”. Other posts will cover “Rescuing slaves today”, “Home-grown freedom”, “Governments”, “Global problem, global reach”, “Ending the product chain”, “Ending poverty to end slavery to end poverty to end slavery” and the coda and appendix.

EDIT: see the second, third, fourth and fifth parts.

Introduction

5000 years of slavery can end forever, as well as 200 years of pretending we don’t have slavery. We just need a plan, and this book helps in laying it out. Freedom is not just possible, it’s inevitable, for the seed of freedom grows and grows. Our job is to nourish those seeds.

The Challenge

It used to be clear for everyone what slavery was. It was defined and protected by law. When it became illegal, many people thought it was over, and it became less clear what slavery is. In essence, slavery it controlling people through violence and using them to earn money. It doesn’t depend on the duration.

In modern times, slaves are cheap and disposable. Three factors after World War II led to resurgence of slavery:

1. World population explosion: from 2 to over 6 billion people in about 50 years, most in the developing world.
2. Dramatic social and economic changes. As colonies gained independence, they opened to western businesses. In that process, the poor were left behind and they had even less opportunities and resources. If we compare poverty and slavery levels, the pattern is obvious.
3. Police corruption, In rich countries there’s slavery in spite of the police. In many other countries it flourishes because of it. If the policeman salary is $10/$20 a month, getting $100 extra a month is the difference between being able to feed your children and have electricity or not. Question: how was “corruption” measured?

Looking at everything supporting slavery, it’s discouraging: world poverty, corruption, greed, population explosion, environmental destruction, armed conflicts that impoverishes countries, international debt, governments not applying laws. But not everything has to be done at once, and not everything has to be solved to end slavery. People in extreme poverty has fallen from 1.5 to 1.1 billion people (from 1981 to 2001) even with the world population increasing. Many changes are already taking place, just need a plan to support them.

Building the plan

When releasing slaves, freedom is the beginning, not the end (as in most of the challenges start then). The obvious thing when a slave is freed would be to consult the body of knowledge by doctors and psychologists, except it doesn’t exist. It’s being compiled now.

When freeing a slave making rugs, some questions point at us: who buys them? do the wholesale vendors know they’re profiting from slavery? how do we differentiate slave rugs from others? If we stopped buying rugs, would that help slaves? Ending slavery is solving a lot of puzzles. Did rich countries end slavery, or did they move it to other countries while keeping the benefits without the moral discomfort?

Key ingredients to end slavery:

1. Public awareness. We have three advantages over abolitionists in the past: (a) the moral argument is already won, (b) the monetary value of slavery is very small, it doesn’t threaten any country’s livelyhood, and (c) for the most part, laws are already in place. The missing link is governments enforcing laws: until it reaches the public agenda there will be slaves.
2. Education. Many slaves are tricked into it, violence only comes when it’s too late to escape. It’s an ancient method. Education is key to fight slavery, but we’re hardly taking advantage of it. There are large sums for teen pregnancy and drugs, but how much for slavery? Question: it that a good argument? Training is needed in law enforcement too. The US spends more than any other country in law enforcement, but it was only in 1998 that a human trafficking task force was created. It has started training police, but has been criticized for being low-priority and haphazard. Question: by whom?
3. Honest law enforcement. In poor countries, police not only needs training, but overhauls to remove corruption. If the pay is poor, they’ll find ways to make more cash. Corruption levels there now are similar to those in the US in the 19th century.
4. Government action.
5. Economic support for anti-slavery workers.
6. Rehabilitation. Essential to sustained freedom. Some return to slavery by choice, because they only find insecurity. Without help to create a new life, people often can’t by themselves. When equipped with skills and education, ex-slaves are empowered and committed to end slavery, become village leaders, and are not afraid of confronting police. A single ex-slave can change a whole village.

The UN millennium development goal for 2015: provide every child in the world with basic education. That’d be around $28 billion, and while it sounds like a lot that’s what Michigan charities spend a year, the personal wealth of IKEA’s owner, or what Philip-Morris had to pay a single person who sued them.

There are other costs: anticorruption campaigns, debt reduction, police training, rehabilitation, training/paying anti-slavers workers. But in the end, there’s profit in ending slavery.

And that’s it for now. The next post will cover ”Rescuing slaves today” and “Home-grown freedom”.

How to create a story

Stories have four elements: audience, ingredients, structure and medium.

Audience

There are two important relationships in stories: story-audience and you-audience. About the first, you want to include details that fill the gap, and also stories are a good way to make the audience see a different perspective by feeling it. Finally, endings are important. They should be memorable and settled (“take them home”).

Ingredients

See checklist on p. 209.

• Perspective. there isn’t a neutral POV in stories. Types of perspectives are realist (3rd person, “absent” author), confessional (focused on author experience) and impressionist (mixes descriptions of events with a strong structure). The last intends to spark ideas/actions and while they can have an ending, they might end with implicit question. An easy way to add perspective is letting the main character do the talking.
• Characters. One of the reasons why UX stories are useful is because they add specificity and texture to the usually one-dimensional view of users. Also useful to highlight needs outside the mainstream. Tips to build characters: (1) choose (only) details that add meaning; (2) show, don’t tell (show in action instead of describing traits); (3) set up “hooks” that you can use later in the story; (4) leave room for imagination.
• Context. Five types: physical (time, date, location, location scale), emotional (how characters feel), sensory (5 senses), historical (“when phones had dials”), memory (storyteller’s memory, flashbacks).
• Imagery. Things that make us picture the story (example in p. 205). Don’t use too much!
• Language. Tips: (a) speak in the language of the characters, (b) make the story active, (c) focus on telling the story, not describing, (d) don’t judge characters, context or events.

Structure/plot

Structure is the framework/skeleton of the story. Plot is the arrangement of the events. Strong structures help the audience, the author and the story (p. 215). See types of stories on p. 216. “Checklist” for good structure and plot on p. 235.

Medium

Four big media: oral (mind the gap to written, p. 243), written (make the point explicit, keep it short, make use of cultural cues as in p. 253), visual (comics and storyboards work, see p. 258-260), multimedia/video.

See tips on how to integrate stories in reports on p. 265 and p. 266. See strong sides of different media on p. 272.

Mini-review and conclusions

I quite liked the book, although I admit that the last part (the one summarised in this post) was a bit disappointing. I guess it’s hard to give tips about something as complex as creating a story, in a book. The book has a very clear structure and it’s easy to follow and read, which helps in figuring out what to read, what to skim and what to leave for later.

Another thing that really struck me while reading the book (the second book I read following the tips from “How to Read a Book“) is how little I used to understand of the books I read. I now go through the book three times: one to get an idea of the structure and the most interesting parts, one to read the content, and one to review and make a summary. So even while I was reading it for the last time, I made sense of things that I hadn’t realised while reading the book (and that was after knowing the structure, knowing what to expect from each chapter, and having made some preliminary notes!). Not only that, but I also feel that I’m much more critical with what I read and I compare it much more with what I think myself.

If you aren’t doing it already, I strongly recommend that you give those tips a try…