IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/socres/v21y2016i1p35-40.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Placing the distant other on the shelf: An analysis and comparison of (fair trade) coffee packages in relation to commodity fetishism

Author

Listed:
  • Robbe Geysmans
  • Lesley Hustinx

Abstract

Fair trade has been praised for ‘de-fetishizing’ commodities by providing consumers with information on the production of the commodity. Various empirical studies of fair trade marketing materials have generated critique of this vision. However, these focused on materials produced by engaged fair trade organizations. As the fair trade concept has entered the mainstream, fair trade products have found their way into supermarkets. In this setting, these products are confronted with competition, both internal (with other fair trade products) and external (with non-fair trade products). In this article, we argue for a broader focus when studying the relationship between fair trade and defetishization. Our argument is based on a study of whether and how defetishization is advanced on packages of ground coffee within the retail landscape of Flanders, Belgium. Several categories of packages can be distinguished, based on brand (e.g., fair trade advocate, regular brand, retailer house brand) and label (e.g. fair trade label; other social label; no label, but origin is emphasized in the product name). We demonstrate the difficulty of distinguishing these packages based on the visual and textual information they carry (beyond the label), which complicates the identification of any clearly distinct ‘fair trade message’ on these packages. Instead of serving a clear ‘defetishizing’ function, these messages are mixed, interchanged, and adapted. We argue that this could be a direct consequence of perceived or actual changes in the consumer publics inherent to the mainstreaming of fair trade.

Suggested Citation

  • Robbe Geysmans & Lesley Hustinx, 2016. "Placing the distant other on the shelf: An analysis and comparison of (fair trade) coffee packages in relation to commodity fetishism," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 21(1), pages 35-40, February.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:35-40
    DOI: 10.5153/sro.3854
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.5153/sro.3854
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.5153/sro.3854?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Laura T. Raynolds & Douglas Murray & Peter Leigh Taylor, 2004. "Fair trade coffee: building producer capacity via global networks," Journal of International Development, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 16(8), pages 1109-1121.
    2. Patricia Allen & Martin Kovach, 2000. "The capitalist composition of organic: The potential of markets in fulfilling the promise of organic agriculture," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 17(3), pages 221-232, September.
    3. Bob Doherty & Iain A. Davies & Sophi Tranchell, 2013. "Where now for fair trade?," Business History, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 55(2), pages 161-189, March.
    4. Nadine Arnold & Raimund Hasse, 2015. "Escalation of Governance: Effects of Voluntary Standardization on Organizations, Markets and Standards in Swiss Fair Trade[1]," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 20(3), pages 94-109, August.
    5. Florence de Ferran & Klaus Grunert, 2007. "French fair trade coffee buyers’ purchasing motives: An exploratory study using means-end chains analysis," Post-Print hal-02539044, HAL.
    6. Darryl Reed, 2009. "What do Corporations have to do with Fair Trade? Positive and Normative Analysis from a Value Chain Perspective," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 86(1), pages 3-26, April.
    7. Raynolds, Laura T., 2009. "Mainstreaming Fair Trade Coffee: From Partnership to Traceability," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 37(6), pages 1083-1093, June.
    8. Jon Dean, 2015. "Drawing What Homelessness Looks Like: Using Creative Visual Methods as a Tool of Critical Pedagogy," Sociological Research Online, , vol. 20(1), pages 1-16, February.
    9. Laura Raynolds & Douglas Murray & Andrew Heller, 2007. "Regulating sustainability in the coffee sector: A comparative analysis of third-party environmental and social certification initiatives," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 24(2), pages 147-163, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Daniel Jaffee, 2010. "Fair Trade Standards, Corporate Participation, and Social Movement Responses in the United States," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 267-285, April.
    2. Daniel Jaffee & Philip H. Howard, 2016. "Who’s the fairest of them all? The fractured landscape of U.S. fair trade certification," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 33(4), pages 813-826, December.
    3. Philip H. Howard & Daniel Jaffee, 2013. "Tensions Between Firm Size and Sustainability Goals: Fair Trade Coffee in the United States," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 5(1), pages 1-18, January.
    4. Elder, Sara D. & Zerriffi, Hisham & Le Billon, Philippe, 2012. "Effects of Fair Trade Certification on Social Capital: The Case of Rwandan Coffee Producers," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 40(11), pages 2355-2367.
    5. Curtis Child, 2015. "Mainstreaming and its Discontents: Fair Trade, Socially Responsible Investing, and Industry Trajectories," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(3), pages 601-618, September.
    6. Lindsay Naylor, 2014. "“Some are more fair than others”: fair trade certification, development, and North–South subjects," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(2), pages 273-284, June.
    7. Sarah Bowen & Tad Mutersbaugh, 2014. "Local or localized? Exploring the contributions of Franco-Mediterranean agrifood theory to alternative food research," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 31(2), pages 201-213, June.
    8. Janina Grabs & Graeme Auld & Benjamin Cashore, 2021. "Private regulation, public policy, and the perils of adverse ontological selection," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 15(4), pages 1183-1208, October.
    9. Vellema, W. & Buritica Casanova, A. & Gonzalez, C. & D’Haese, M., 2015. "The effect of specialty coffee certification on household livelihood strategies and specialisation," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 13-25.
    10. Alex Nicholls & Benjamin Huybrechts, 2016. "Sustaining Inter-organizational Relationships Across Institutional Logics and Power Asymmetries: The Case of Fair Trade," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 135(4), pages 699-714, June.
    11. Raluca Dragusanu & Daniele Giovannucci & Nathan Nunn, 2014. "The Economics of Fair Trade," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 28(3), pages 217-236, Summer.
    12. Joni Valkila & Anja Nygren, 2010. "Impacts of Fair Trade certification on coffee farmers, cooperatives, and laborers in Nicaragua," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 27(3), pages 321-333, September.
    13. Peter Griffiths, 2015. "Marketing by Controlling Social Discourse: The Fairtrade Case," Economic Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 35(2), pages 256-271, June.
    14. Snider, Anna & Gutiérrez, Isabel & Sibelet, Nicole & Faure, Guy, 2017. "Small farmer cooperatives and voluntary coffee certifications: Rewarding progressive farmers of engendering widespread change in Costa Rica?," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 231-242.
    15. Robin Roff, 2009. "No alternative? The politics and history of non-GMO certification," Agriculture and Human Values, Springer;The Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society (AFHVS), vol. 26(4), pages 351-363, December.
    16. Rommel Salvador & Altaf Merchant & Elizabeth Alexander, 2014. "Faith and Fair Trade: The Moderating Role of Contextual Religious Salience," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 121(3), pages 353-371, May.
    17. Beuchelt, Tina D. & Zeller, Manfred, 2011. "Profits and poverty: Certification's troubled link for Nicaragua's organic and fairtrade coffee producers," Ecological Economics, Elsevier, vol. 70(7), pages 1316-1324, May.
    18. Victoria A. Maguire-Rajpaul & Vinesh M. Rajpaul & Constance L. McDermott & Luís Fernando Guedes Pinto, 2020. "Coffee certification in Brazil: compliance with social standards and its implications for social equity," Environment, Development and Sustainability: A Multidisciplinary Approach to the Theory and Practice of Sustainable Development, Springer, vol. 22(3), pages 2015-2044, March.
    19. Darryl Reed & Bob Thomson & Ian Hussey & Jean-Frédéric LeMay, 2010. "Developing a Normatively Grounded Research Agenda for Fair Trade: Examining the Case of Canada," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 92(2), pages 151-179, April.
    20. Janina Grabs, 2020. "Assessing the institutionalization of private sustainability governance in a changing coffee sector," Regulation & Governance, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 14(2), pages 362-387, April.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:socres:v:21:y:2016:i:1:p:35-40. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.