Fair Trade Coffee, Sustainability and Survival, Berkeley by Daniel Jaffee, Brewing Justice, ( Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 2009). Fair Trade Coffee. The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice by Gavin Fridell ( Toronto, Buffalo, London: University of Toronto Press, 2007)

✍ Scribed by Anne Tallontire

• Book ID: 102347758
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2009
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 42 KB
• Volume: 21
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1523

✦ Synopsis

Fair trade attracts an academic and critical spotlight that other 'sustainability' standards do not share. These two books seek to be critical yet constructive with respect to fair trade and present well-developed theoretical frameworks on which to base their analysis. Both offer fresh perspectives and demonstrate practical engagement with the movement. Drawing on historical materialism, Fridell refers to Underdevelopment and Dependency theorists (from Prebisch to Wallerstein) whilst Jaffee relies on an extension of Polanyi's concept of the embeddness of markets, particularly through reference to Block's 'marketness'. Both authors separate themselves from the recent 'cultural turn' in analysis of agri-food chains, focussing more on material conditions and exchanges rather than symbolism. Jaffee's analysis is wrapped around well-designed and comprehensive fieldwork amongst Mexican coffee producers and interviews in North America and Europe whilst Fridell's research approach has been largely based on study of secondary sources and key informant interviews, mostly in North and Central America, but with a brief excursion to the Netherlands.

Jaffee provides sorely needed comparative analysis-with and without fair trade-by focussing on two communities in Mexico and examining the livelihoods of people who sell to co-operatives linked up to fair trade buyers and those who sell to conventional traders. He provides credible statistics to demonstrate that there is a fair trade difference according to a variety of dimensions, based on in-depth and reflective fieldwork. The fair trade difference he finds is not necessarily in terms of greater household disposable income but rather in providing resilience to economic or environmental crises, providing education and in influencing how people respond to opportunities such as migrating for better paid jobs.

Jaffee touches on the question of whether it is the wealthier members of the communities who participate in the Michiza co-operative and thereby in fair trade, but quickly discusses organisational and cultural issues relating to whether or not people are 'joiners' rather than having access to the material requirements for fair trade participation. In contrast, Fridell argues that too much of fair trade practice has focussed on relations of exchange to the detriment of analysis of the social relations of production. He argues that this helps to explain why the limited number of fair trade impact assessments that have been carried out have noted reinforcement of social inequalities in communities apparently benefiting from fair trade, albeit within very poor communities.

The detail from the community level survey is effectively brought to life by Jaffee. However, given the importance of Michiza, the fair trade registered co-operative to which the more successful farmers in the locality belong, I would have expected more discussion of the organisation at the export level; organisations such as Michiza are the critical link in translating what fair trade can mean for producers. This seems particularly important given the workload and financial implications for members of the organisation's decision to be both organic and fair trade. Jaffee does not critically explore the problems inherent in the organic movement-his study is presented as a critique of fair trade when in reality one