Anti-politics movement

Abstract

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.