Buying into Fair Trade
Keith R. Brown
Stamped on products
from coffee to handicrafts, the term “fair trade” has quickly become one of
today’s most seductive consumer buzzwords. Purportedly created through fair
labor practices, or in ways that are environmentally sustainable, fair-trade
products give buyers peace of mind in knowing that, in theory, how they shop
can help make the world a better place. Buying
into Fair Trade turns the spotlight onto this growing trend, exploring how fair-trade
shoppers think about their own altruism within an increasingly global economy.
Using over 100 interviews with
fair-trade consumers, national leaders of the movement, coffee farmers, and
artisans, author Keith Brown describes both the strategies that consumers use
to confront the moral contradictions involved in trying to shop ethically and the
ways shopkeepers and suppliers reconcile their need to do good with the
ever-present need to turn a profit. In addition to his in-depth analysis of the
fair-trade market, Brown also provides a how-to chapter that outlines
strategies readers can use to appear altruistic.This chapter highlights the ways that
socially responsible markets have been detached from issues of morality. A
fascinating account of how consumers
first learn about, understand, and sometimes ignore the ethical implications of
shopping, Buying into Fair Trade sheds
new light on the potential for the fair trade market to reshape the world into
a more socially-just place.
Product Details
About Keith R. Brown
Reviews for Buying into Fair Trade
Political and Legal Anthropology Review Online
"Buying into Fair Trade provides readers with insights into how consumption trends shape food cultures... [The author] examines the potential of fair trade to create a more socially just world, drawing on interviews, reality tour experiences, interactions with fair-trade advocates, and volunteering at Ten Thousand Villages, a company dedicated to promoting the fair trade of products made by artisans in developing countries."
Contexts
"Brown's sociologically sophisticated treatment of the symbolic, moral and practical aspects of fair trade is a significant advance over much of the literature. Highly recommended"
Juliet Schor,author of True Wealth "In Buying into Fair Trade, Keith Brown explores how global consumers and entrepreneurs invest products from organic coffee beans to handmade jewelry with morality and meaning. Along the way we meet Third World reality tourists, sustainable coffee bar owners, social-justice activists, and conscientious consumers, all of whom negotiate the confusing contradictions between charity and commerce, altruism and authenticity."
David Grazian,author of Blue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs "Keith Brown turns a sympathetic yet critical eye on the new generation of consumers who want to buy morally rather than contribute to exploitation of indigenous producers and ruining the ecology. The ethical turn in markets is part social movement, part social construction of belief, part frontstage performance. Brown takes us inside the altruism and the contentions of this supply chain where emotions shape markets."
Randall Collins,author of Interaction Ritual Chains and Violence: A Micro-Sociological Theory "The first book-length social science work to focus exclusively on the consumption side of fair trade, and as such it represents a much-needed contribution."
Daniel Jaffe
American Journal of Sociology