The Politics of Fair-Trade Consumption

Abstract

The fair-trade citizen-consumer is frequently mobilised by various actors to use his/her purchasing power to alleviate poverty in the developing world. Unlike government aid and charitable donations, it is claimed that the trading partnership between the fair-trade consumer and the fair-trade producer has a unique power to reach the people who need it most and make a difference – the frequently invoked ‘Trade is better than Aid’ slogan. Indeed, recent growth in fair-trade sales in the USA have been linked to the declining prevalence of charitable giving in order to suggest that consumers are seeking alternative ways to make a difference (FTUSA, 2010). Yet almost no academic attention has been paid to how individuals evaluate the effectiveness of fair-trade consumption as an individual action relative to other individual actions, such as paying taxes, donating to charity and campaigning for change. This is quite surprising given the claims that consumers in a late-modern, risk-society are looking beyond ‘traditional’ politics in order to enact their citizenly duties.