Abstract
The notion of Fair Trade is a unique idea conceptualised historically in Northern countries to advance equitable and just trading processes that could provide an alternative to the mainstream trading system in the world. Northern activists working with producers, labourers and other impoverished sectors of the Global South are using market-based strategies to mobilise consumer awareness in order to bolster incomes and empower Southern producers and workers (Murray & Raynolds, 2007, p. 4). Fair Trade as a system is seen as a progressive attempt to transform the global exchange of products in a way that ensures ethical and socially just methods of production. Barrientos, Conroy and Jones (2007, p. 54) point out that in the United States Fair Trade's dramatic growth has accentuated underlying differences in the movement and tensions between the movement-based Alternative Trade Organisations (ATO)-led Fair Trade, and certified Fair Trade in mainstream outlets. The limits of the project of Fair Trade are well documented and critiqued by scholars with an appreciation of its limitations. The South African context of Fair Trade needs to align to the social conditions within which agricultural production takes place and the politics of social justice, equity and empowerment. For a South African product to be considered ‘fair’ while the social formation of the country and practices in various sectors still resemble historical inequalities – reflective of South Africa's colonial and apartheid history – should be seen as contradictory. The Fair Trade system is not as yet well entrenched in South Africa's political and social culture. For it to be embraced by a wider section of constituencies it needs to go beyond a business-driven process to one that reaches out to civil society. In this article I illustrate what the missing questions are in the South African context of Fair Trade and issues that need serious consideration for Fair Trade to have a wider impact.
Highlights
I am returning to the subject of Fair Trade after a ten-year hiatus during which I have been focusing on other research areas related to the sociology of development, political economy, education, skills development, sociology of work, inequality and social justice in South Africa
Murray and Raynolds (2007, p. 4) state that the Fair Trade movement is comprised of a set of groups which are linked through membership associations: the Fairtrade Labelling Organisations (FLO), the International Federation of Alternative Trade (IFAT), the Network of European Worldshops (NEWS) and the European Fair Trade Association
A study by Keahey and Murray (2017) points to the ‘promise and perils of market-based sustainability’ by concentrating on the South African Rooibos Tea industry’s initiatives. Their findings point to three key issues that illustrate the need to connect market-based sustainability to transformation and redress in a South African context: 1) Small-scale farmers experienced severe land shortages
Summary
Siphelo Ngcwangu is a Senior Lecturer at the Sociology Department at the University of Johannesburg. His research focuses on skills development, education and the economy, youth unemployment and the restructuring of work. He teaches Sociology across the undergraduate level and supervises at postgraduate level. He is a non-resident fellow at the Centre for Fair and Alternative Trade Studies (CFATS) at Colorado State University in the USA
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