Does fair trade operate as economic development for farmers and artisans of the Global South, or is it a social movement that
speaks to neo-liberal political subjectivities of the Global North? Fisher’s (Cult Agric 29(2):78–88, 2007)
framework of “articulating modes of social transformation” allows both
interpretations to be relevant. I use interviews,
participant observation at a Chicago fair trade
organization, and discourse analysis of fair trade materials to “study
up”
(Nader in Reinventing anthropology, Vintage Books, London,
284–311, 1969) the side of fair trade partnerships that
exercise more economic power. I argue that participation in fair trade
offers Northerners
a way to reconcile their recognition of possessing
disproportionate wealth in the global economic system with their
uncertainty
of how to create structural change in that system. Because
fair trade calls on Northern consumers to make change at the individual
level, the identities of Southern producers at the
“underdeveloped” end of trade relationships are constructed in
depoliticized,
acontextual ways, thus limiting the possibilities for
conceptualizing more radical transformation of poverty in the Global
South.
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