Development communication in alternative food networks: empowering Indian farmers through global market relations

Abstract

As sustainability is becoming a bigger global concern, sustainable development operations require new partnerships and a multiplicity of communication practices among various stakeholders. Private enterprises with social, ecological and ethical concerns can be among those stakeholders, but their role in development communication has received limited attention. To address this deficit, this article explores the capacity of small private enterprises to empower farming communities, through a dialogical model of communication. Focusing on Alternative Food Networks, the article argues that market exchanges are mediated by social relations that can bring to light an alternative and ethical side of the global market. These relations are examined empirically through a qualitative case study: a community of farmers in South India and their relation with small private enterprises from Europe and North America. The findings reveal significant ways in which these partnerships can prove empowering for farmers, showing there is fertile ground for more active involvement of enterprises in development communication practices.

Ethical Trade Communication as Mediation: Shifting the Focus of “Political Consumerism”

“…In the current configuration of global trade, producers often appear as distant strangers, located beyond the realm of the personal, experienced and directly knowable (Corbridge, 1993). One of key aims of ethical trade is to bring distant producers in the "Global South" and their predicament to the awareness of consumers through mediation (see Touri, 2016). This mediation is both very material (through the provision of products), and more symbolic, through systematically educating consumers about the injustices of global trade or through telling stories about producers (Barnett, Cloke et al, 2005).…”

“…representations and narratives, and generally ignore the context in which they are produced and received. Conversely, the role of ethical trade organizations that transcends the provision and branding of products and positions them instead as mediators between producers and consumers, tends to be seen only as emerging (Touri, 2016). Accordingly, the accounts that focus on ethical trade communication are rare and rather dated (Balsiger, 2010;Dolan, 2005Dolan, , 2007McDonagh, 2002;Nicholls, 2002;Wright & Heaton, 2006).…”

“…Thus formulated, ethical trade stops being merely a set of consumptionrelated practices and becomes a communication problem: it relies on a moral disposition that must be constructed through careful mediation by ethical trade organizations, rather than being intrinsic to some people and not to others. With this in mind, the focus here is on the role of ethical trade organizations as mediators between producers and consumers (see Touri, 2016). In doing so, the intention is to make a case for ethical trade communication as mediation by arguing that the success of ethical trade is contingent on the forming among the public of the attitudes that hinge on global imagination and the readiness for collective action.…”

The Dialectics of Care: Communicating Ethical Trade in Poland

“…In fact, it seemed to Pizca del Mundo that the only way to trigger consumers' interest in fair trade and in the predicament of Southern producers was through tactical "trickery". In other words, these issues had to be interwoven into topics that consumers were likely to see as more exciting (see Touri, 2016):…”

“…Against this background, this study turns the spotlight away from both the normative assessments of ethical trade and the content of communication. Instead, it spotlights organisations as key actors in ethical trade and focuses on their role as mediators between producers and consumers, the role that Touri (2016) sees as only emerging.…”