Hidden Hands in Fair Trade

This paper locates the effectiveness of this strategy in populist support for an economy based upon independent family producers trying to secure livelihoods in impersonal and exploitative global commodity markets. Unfortunately, the attempt by fair trade to personalise economic relationships between coffee producers and consumers diverts attention away from the political economy of coffee production.

Documenting the role of landless labourers, women, and migrant harvesters from Nicaragua, reveals differentiation and tensions in a rural Costa Rican 'smallholder' coffee economy that has supplied fair trade markets since the 1980s. The paper concludes that to retain credibility a politicised fair trade movement must take account of production processes and power relations at a local and regional level.