Fair Trade Coffee

by Fridell, Gavin

• ISBN13: 9780802095909
• ISBN10: 0802095909
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2007-12-12
• Publisher: Univ of Toronto Pr

Summary

Over the past two decades, sales of fair trade coffee have grown significantly and the fair trade network has emerged as an important international development project. Activists and commentators have been quick to celebrate this sales growth, which has allowed socially just trade, labour, and environmental standards to be extended to hundreds of thousands of small farmers and poor rural workers throughout the Global South. While recent assessments of the fair trade network have focused on its impact on local poverty alleviation, however, the broader political-economic and historically-rooted structures that frame it have been left largely unexamined.Addressing this omission, Gavin Fridell argues that while local level analysis is important, examining the impacts of broader structures on fair trade coffee networks, and vice versa, are of equal if not greater significance in determining its long-term developmental potential. Using fair trade groups in Mexico and Canada as case studies, Fridell examines fair trade coffee at both the global and local level, assessing it as a development project and locating it within political and development theory. In addition, Fridell provides in-depth historical analysis of fair trade coffee in the context of global trade, and compares it to a variety of post-war development projects within the coffee industry.Timely, meticulously researched, and engaging, this study challenges many commonly held assumptions about the long-term prospects and pitfalls of the fair trade network's market-driven strategy in the era of globalization.

Author Biography

Gavin Fridell is an assistant professor in the Department of Politics at Trent University.

Table of Contents

List of Tables and Figures	p. ix
Acknowledgments	p. xi
Abbreviations	p. xv
Introduction: Fair Trade and Global Capitalism	p. 3
The Fair Trade Network and Development Theory	p. 7
The Global and Local Dimensions of Fair Trade Coffee	p. 17
Historical and Theoretical Origins of the Fair Trade Network	p. 22
Embedded Liberalism and the Rise of the Fair Trade Movement	p. 24
Neoliberalism and the Decline of the Fair Trade Movement	p. 34
The Fair Trade Network, Phase 1: Promoting Alternative Markets (1940s-1980s)	p. 39
Conclusion: The Theoretical Foundations of the Fair Trade Network	p. 46
Neoliberal Globalization and the Fair Trade Network	p. 52
The Fair Trade Network, Phase 2: Reforming Conventional Markets (1988 to the present)	p. 53
Expanding the Fair Trade Market	p. 63
Contemporary Perspectives on the Fair Trade Network	p. 83
Conclusion: The Fair Trade Network and Neoliberalism	p. 99
Coffee and the Capitalist Market	p. 101
A Short History of Coffee and Capitalism	p. 103
The Tendency Towards Monopoly in the North	p. 113
The Extended Cycles of Boom and Bust in the Coffee Market	p. 117
Class, Race, and Gender Exploitation in the Coffee Industry	p. 124
Conclusion: The Historical and Structural Roots of Exploitation	p. 132
Coffee and the 'Double Movement'	p. 135
The International Coffee Agreement (ICA), 1963-1989	p. 139
Instant Coffee and 'Forward Integration'	p. 148
The Colombian 'Price Premium'	p. 151
Costa Rica: Regulated Coffee Industry and Social Welfare State	p. 158
Fair Trade Coffee in Historical Perspective	p. 167
Fair Trade in Mexico: The Case of UCIRI	p. 173
Historical Background	p. 174
Assessing UCIRI's Development Project	p. 191
Conclusion: Assessing UCIRI's Capabilities and Concessions	p. 220
Fair Trade Coffee in Canada	p. 225
The History of Fair Trade Coffee in Canada	p. 228
Comparing the Impact of Fair Trade Partners in the North	p. 243
The Ethical Consumer and Commodity Fetishism	p. 263
Conclusion: The Future of Fair Trade in Canada	p. 271
Conclusion: Fair Trade as Moral Economy	p. 276
Fair Trade as Shaped Advantage	p. 277
Fair Trade as Alternative Globalization	p. 279
Fair Trade as Decommodification	p. 280
Fair Trade as Moral Economy	p. 283
Notes	p. 293
References	p. 307
Index	p. 333
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