IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/eme/reanzz/s0190-1281(08)28008-x.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Making or marketing a difference? An anthropological examination of the marketing of fair trade cocoa from Ghana

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

Author

Listed:
  • Amanda Berlan

Abstract

This chapter contrasts the representation of Third World farmers in Fair Trade marketing campaigns with data drawn from long-term fieldwork involving cocoa producers in Ghana and evidence provided by older anthropological monographs on these communities. In doing so, it practically illustrates the disparity between global assumptions and local perspectives on production and consumption. The key contention underlying this chapter is that the representation of producers as needy, helpless, and disgruntled with multinational corporations is deeply problematic. Such a representation reveals a significant and somewhat concerning discrepancy between the lives of farmers and the narratives displayed in Western campaigns for trade justice. By using fieldwork data and earlier anthropological literature showing the determination, ingenuity, and far-sighted strategies of cocoa farmers in Ghana, this chapter demonstrates that producers in the Third World are not the passive and helpless individuals they are sometimes portrayed as.

Suggested Citation

  • Amanda Berlan, 2008. "Making or marketing a difference? An anthropological examination of the marketing of fair trade cocoa from Ghana," Research in Economic Anthropology, in: Hidden Hands in the Market: Ethnographies of Fair Trade, Ethical Consumption, and Corporate Social Responsibility, pages 171-194, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    • Handle: RePEc:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(08)28008-x
    DOI: 10.1016/S0190-1281(08)28008-X
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S0190-1281(08)28008-X/full/html?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S0190-1281(08)28008-X/full/pdf?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1016/S0190-1281(08)28008-X/full/epub?utm_source=repec&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=repec&title=10.1016/S0190-1281(08)28008-X
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/S0190-1281(08)28008-X?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
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:eme:reanzz:s0190-1281(08)28008-x. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Emerald Support (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.