Justice at a Price: Regulation and Alienation in the Global Economy

Abstract

This article examines the normative principles that underlie efforts to regulate the global coffee market at different points in the global division of labor. I focus on three forms of regulation: local violence against coffee farmers in Honduras, fair trade consumerism, and international regulatory treaties. By comparing the local politics of Honduran coffee production to global forms of consumer activism, I bring contemporary debates about economic justice under a single analytic lens. I suggest that systematic changes in the relationship between states and nations have led alienated citizens to develop new forms of regulation outside the boundaries of the state, and that coffee frequently serves as a metaphor through which people come to terms with their place in the global economy. This metaphor ultimately rests on an alienated representation of the global system that limits the political potential of these regulatory strategies.

Anti-politics movement

“…According to Lyon, ''Consumers can purchase fair trade coffee to combat their feelings of political fatalism and chronic insecurity that many argue result from the sheer scale of contemporary social and economic change and the inability of national governments to control or resist it' ' (2006: 456). Rather than political fatalism, the explanations for involvement that I found among MayaWorks women fell more in line with Daniel Reichman's (2008) hypothesis about fair trade coffee consumers not having a systematic framework through which to comprehend their role as citizens in the global economy. Members of the MayaWorks network identify global economic inequality-often through travel experience-and participation in the fair trade system offers a way for them to ''do something about it.''…”

Re-centering labour in local food: local washing and the growing reliance on permanently temporary migrant farmworkers in Nova Scotia

“…The governmental oversight of food, labour, and the environment, in many cases, has either been co-opted by large corporations or made moot by global supply chains that are beyond the scope of any public regulatory agency (Guthman, J. 2007b , p. 263; Guthman, 2007 ; Reichman 2008 , 2014 ). Guthman J.…”

In search of dignified work: Gender and the work ethic in the crucible of fair trade production

“…As redistribution, fair trade struggles to provide a limited number of producers a leg up in the marketplace vis‐à‐vis conventional approaches (Bacon ; Fridell ). As a community development, fair trade often falls short of its goals and even damages communities by fracturing historic solidarities, exacerbating existing inequalities, or even sparking new divisions along the lines of gender, ethnicity, class, and religion (Lyon , ; Reichman ). As neoliberal governance, too, decision‐making and expertise are monopolized by actors in the Global North, and rules are applied across the Global South in invasive and inappropriate ways (Lyon ; Mutersbaugh and Lyon ; B. Wilson ).…”