Fair Trade and distant production: the normalisation of the North in book publishing

Audrey Small

doi:10.13169/jfairtrade.2.1.0013

Abstract

This article seeks to articulate some of the major theoretical difficulties raised by associating book publishing with Fair Trade, building on the concept of the ‘distant producer’ as critiqued by both Frank Trentmann and Matthias Zick Varul. Where these scholars examine the framing of the Fair Trade producer as always being based in the global South, this article explores an instance of a ‘distant Northern producer’ of sorts, with particular reference to the publishing of ‘francophone African literature’. The dominance of Northern publishers in this field creates a complex series of ‘normalisations of the North’, in which Paris is normalised as the centre of cultural production; the French language is normalised as the dominant language of culture; and non-print literatures are marginalised in global cultural production. Specific issues concerning intellectual production and property then may be seen as sitting uneasily alongside traditional models and perceptions of Fair Trade.

Highlights

Where historical overviews of the contemporary concept of Fair Trade refer to individual types of product, they quite accurately cite ‘handicrafts’ and textiles as the first major group of products to emerge on the market in the 1960s, followed by commodity foodstuffs such as chocolate and coffee in the 1980s,1 and efforts to develop fair trade in fashion, music and tourism emerging later
This article seeks to articulate some of the major theoretical difficulties raised by associating book publishing with Fair Trade, building on the concept of the ‘distant producer’ as critiqued by both Frank Trentmann and Matthias Zick Varul
Where these scholars examine the framing of the Fair Trade producer as always being based in the global South, this article explores an instance of a ‘distant Northern producer’ of sorts, with particular reference to the publishing of ‘francophone African literature’

Summary

Introduction

Where historical overviews of the contemporary concept of Fair Trade refer to individual types of product, they quite accurately cite ‘handicrafts’ and textiles as the first major group of products to emerge on the market in the 1960s, followed by commodity foodstuffs such as chocolate and coffee in the 1980s,1 and efforts to develop fair trade in fashion, music and tourism emerging later. Seen from the South, the book publishing industry may be viewed as an instance of distant production This de-centring of the North chimes with Trentmann’s call for attention to ‘a longer and more troubled genealogy of consumption and power’[5] in discussions of fair trade but, as we shall see, does not resolve the multiple problems involved in circumscribing what would constitute fair trade in the trade in print. Varul’s contemporary focus, on the other hand, allows him to go further in a striking critique of what he calls a ‘romantic commodification’[8] in which a self-defeating type of patronising ‘fair trade imagination’[9] ends up undermining efforts to establish truly ethical modes of consumption Such criticism of fair trade is a familiar one, though many working in the field might respond that the picture is not so bleak, and Varul himself is at pains to emphasise that he does see fair trade as a worthy goal and that his specific examples do not condemn the entire enterprise

Objectives

Findings

Conclusion