Les travaux de Tim Bartley portent sur la régulation de l'économie mondiale au regard, notamment, des enjeux de durabilité. Il s'est en particulier intéressé aux formes de régulation du secteur textile et du secteur forestier en analysant conjointement le rôle des mouvements sociaux, des normes privées, et des entreprises transnationales. Il a publié dans l'American Journal of Sociology, l'American Sociological Review, Social Forces, Social Problems ou encore la Socio-Economic Review. Il a co-dirigé un ouvrage intitulé Looking Behind the Label: Global Industries and The Conscientious Consumer (avec Sebastian Koos, Hiram Samel, Gustavo Setrini et Nik Summers -- Indiana University Press, 2015) et en prépare un nouveau intitulé The Hope of Trancendence: Land, Labor, and Private Rules for the Global Factory.

Résumé de la communication de Tim Bartley

"Beyond Empty Spaces:  Structure and Substance in the Implementation of Global Norms")

Neoliberal globalization has often appeared unruly, with rapidly changing flows of money, products, and people producing new challenges for governments, citizens, and companies. Yet the rise of global production architectures has also been accompanied by rule-making projects of various sorts, including those concerned with fairness, sustainability, and justice for marginalized residents. More than empty symbolism but less than a transformation of capitalism, these rules are shaping the practices of companies, NGOs, and governments in subtle and contradictory ways. Drawing on multi-method research on fair labor and sustainable forestry standards in Indonesia and China, this presentation will reveal the “on the ground” consequences of rules for corporate responsibility and sustainability. In spite of research on transnational advocacy networks and world society, theories that can explain whether and how these rules are implemented remain rare. Some theories remain distant or formalistic, and others crudely portray global norms as filling essentially “empty spaces” in poor and middle-income countries. In contrast, the substantive theory of transnational governance developed here makes claims about the modal consequences of transnational rules, their intersections with existing forms of domestic governance, and some ways in which the content of rules matters.