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"Fridell, Gavin"
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Age of Icons
pThis volume assesses the growing role of popular icons in the construction of a culture that appears to incorporate a critical attitude towards the capitalist experience while, in fact, legitimizing the neoliberal character of the modern world./p
eBook
Fair trade slippages and Vietnam gaps: the ideological fantasies of fair trade coffee
Fair trade coffee sales have boomed since the late 1980s, making it one of the most recognised forms of 'ethical consumerism' in the world. Around the same time exports of lower quality coffee beans from Vietnam also boomed, launching Vietnam from an insignificant coffee exporter to the world's second largest with historically unprecedented speed. These disparate projects have had significant impacts on thousands of farmers - with Vietnam's new class of coffee producers representing three and a half times the number of coffee families certified by fair trade. Northern actors, however, have given far more public and positive attention to fair trade. This article will argue that this difference does not stem from a strictly objective appraisal of the relative merits and shortcomings of each project, but from the compatibility of fair trade with 'free trade' and its emotionally charged ideological fantasies. This includes unconscious beliefs and desires around individualism, voluntarism, democracy and the affirmation of the exaggerated power of Northern consumers - as opposed to the Southern agency and complicated collective action implied by Vietnamese coffee statecraft.
Journal Article
The Co-Operative and the Corporation: Competing Visions of the Future of Fair Trade
This paper provides an analysis of the fair trade network in the North through a comparative assessment of two distinctly different fair trade certified roasters: Planet Bean, a worker-owned co-operative in Guelph, Ontario; and Starbucks Coffee Company, the world's largest specialty roaster. The two organizations are assessed on the basis of their distinct visions of the fair trade mission and their understandings of \"consumer sovereignty\". It is concluded that the objectives of Planet Bean are more compatible with the moral mission of fair trade, even while the network has become increasingly dependent on the market-reach of corporations like Starbucks, raising difficult prospects for the future of fair trade.
Journal Article
Introduction-Politicising Debt and Development: activist voices on social justice in the new millennium
In contrast to mainstream development economists' and policy makers' insistence that relatively straightforward, technical and apolitical solutions exist to the problems of debt and development, debt is inscribed in powerful, unequal and contested structures and relations. This is vividly depicted in the articles in this special section, written by activists and researchers with years of experience mobilising and supporting grassroots struggles, which reveal the often obscure or unspoken relations of power that underpin the highly unequal dynamics of debt on a global scale, while promoting and offering fresh insights from a diverse array of new initiatives and subversive tactics that confront the dominant debt and development paradigm. They offer sober reflection on what organisations need to do to get things done in continuing and future battles for debt justice.
Journal Article
Debt Politics and the Free Trade 'Package': the case of the Caribbean
While much has been written on how powerful institutions have used debt crises to foist free trade agreements on poorer states, this paper explores how the foisting of free trade agreements on poorer states has resulted in debt crises. Part one critiques the common-sense understanding of 'free trade' as a mere technical or policy issue, arguing that it is an intricate political, economic and ideological 'package' rooted in complex social, historical and cultural forces. Part two explores the role of debt in the free trade package by examining the impact of free trade agreements on the Caribbean over the past decade, during which time the region has experienced growing public and personal debt crises, further fuelled by an aid packages that included millions of dollars of concessional loans. It is argued that the contradictions of 'free trade' are mitigated through a 'debt for trade' paradigm, which Caribbean states are beginning to subvert through new preferential South-South partnerships.
Journal Article
Politicising Debt and Development: activist voices on social justice in the new millennium
In contrast to mainstream development economists' and policy makers' insistence that relatively straightforward technical and apolitical solutions exist to the problems of debt and development, debt is inscribed in powerful, unequal and contested structures and relations This is vividly depicted in this special section of activist vignettes written by representatives of hey international NGOs worláng on debt justice—Jubilee Debt Campaign, the Center for Economic and Policy Research, the Halifax Initiative and Inter Pares. Written with the passion and determination that come from years of mobilising and supporting grassroots struggles, these vignettes reveal the often obscure or unspoken relations of power that underpin the highly unequal dynamics of debt on a global scale, while promoting and offering fresh insights from a diverse array of new initiatives and subversive tactics that confront the dominant debt and development paradigm. They offer sober reflection on what on-the-ground organisations need to do to get things done in continuing and future battles for debt justice.
Journal Article
Fair Trade and Neoliberalism: Assessing Emerging Perspectives
Emerging perspectives on the fair-trade network can be grouped into three broad categories on the basis of their overarching assumptions. The \"shaped-advantage\" perspective depicts fair trade as a project that assists local groups in developing capacities to help offset the negative impact of globalization. The \"alternative\" perspective depicts fair trade as an alternative model of globalization that, in contrast to the neoliberal paradigm, seeks to \"include\" the poorest sectors in the purported benefits of international trade. The \"decommodification\" perspective portrays fair trade as a challenge to the commodification of goods under global capitalism. The grouping that least reflects the full aims of the network, the shaped-advantage perspective, most accurately reflects fair trade's overall impact. This raises concerns about the ability of fair traders to achieve their objectives within the market-based model they have developed.
Journal Article