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The hands that pick fair trade coffee: beyond the charms of the family farm

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posted on 2023-06-07, 16:25 authored by Peter Luetchford
Fair trade commonly focuses on the figure of the smallholding peasant producer. The effectiveness of this as a strategy lies in the widespread appeal of an economy based upon independent family producers trying to secure livelihoods in impersonal and exploitative global commodity markets. But the attempt by fair trade to personalise economic relationships between coffee producers and consumers diverts attention away from aspects of the political economy of production for the market. This chapter examines a rural Costa Rican coffee economy that has supplied fair trade markets since the 1980s. Documenting differences in landholdings, the range of activities farmers engage in, and the relationship between landowners and landless labourers, women, and migrant harvesters from Nicaragua reveals differentiation and tensions that are obscured in the smallholder model invoked by fair trade.

History

Publication status

  • Published

Publisher

JAI Press

Issue

28

Page range

143-169

Pages

27.0

Book title

Hidden Hands in the Market: Ethnographies of Fair Trade, Ethical Consumption, and Corporate Social Responsibility

Place of publication

Bingley

ISBN

978-1-84855-058-2

Series

Research in Economic Anthropology

Department affiliated with

  • Anthropology Publications

Notes

In Research in Economic Anthropology Series

Full text available

  • No

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Editors

Peter Luetchford, Jeffrey Pratt, Geert De Neve, Donald C Wood

Legacy Posted Date

2012-02-06

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