Doctoral Dissertation Research: Negotiating the Spaces of Fairtrade in South Africa

University Of Florida, Gainesville FL

Investigators

Abstract

University of Florida doctoral candidate, Alison M. Ketter, supervised by Dr. Brenda H. Chalfin, will examine the impacts of fairtrade, a trade-not-aid approach to sustainable development that aims to empower marginalized producers in the global south through branding associated with the promotion of specific kinds of production, distribution, and consumption practices. Fairtrade is part of the new moral economies, which present themselves as alternatives to conventional capitalist markets. The researcher will investigate how different groups are able to negotiate their relative power and interests within this system; the effects of fairtrade on agrarian policy, labor, and property relations; and whether these local effects in turn affect the fairtrade movement. The research will be focused on the Fairtrade South Africa (FTSA) consortium. Specifically, the researcher will investigate FTSA's recently implemented south-south trade strategy, where fairtrade certified goods produced in South Africa will also be sold in South Africa. This program is a radical departure from the Fairtrade founding strategy of sourcing from the global south for marketing and consumption in the global north. The researcher will utilize a mixed methodological approach. Data will be obtained via participant observation, semi-structured interviews, structured interviews, surveys, and archival research. The researcher will analyze these data to determine 1) how FTSA policy and practice affect agrarian transformation and rural livelihoods in South Africa; and 2) how FTSA affects the global fairtrade model and cooperative policies and practices among states and between producers and consumers in the global south. The collection of qualitative and quantitative data will allow the researcher to address agrarian labor and production relations, within the context of post-apartheid national policy transformations and evolving geopolitical alignments. This research will contribute to science and anthropological thought by investigating the broad impact of moral economy movements in the context of contemporary market-focused globalization and the proliferation of economic relations that are not easily contained with traditional notions of the nation state. The research also supports the education of a graduate student.