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Will the fair trade revolution bemarketised? Commodification,decommodification and the politicalintensity of consumer politicsEleftheria J. Lekakis aa Department of Media and Communications , GoldsmithsCollege , London , UKPublished online: 10 Dec 2012.

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Will the fair trade revolution be marketised? Commodification,decommodification and the political intensity of consumer politics

Eleftheria J. Lekakis∗

Department of Media and Communications, Goldsmiths College, London, UK

(Received 2 June 2011; final version received 22 July 2011)

This paper brings to the fore a scrutiny of the politicisation of commodities in anexploration of the political promises and potential of ethical or politicalconsumerism and specifically the case of fair trade. The analysis is informed byinterviews with ethically consuming citizens which illuminate their concerns,certainties and confusions. I discuss consumer agency in relation todecommodification and branding as detrimental to the political qualities of themovement where the selling of fair trade is viewed through the prism of brandtrust and the symbolised political quality of the commodity. Similarly, there is acorporate ‘veiling’ of consumer politics where the commercial sense whichmainstream fair trade commodities enjoy is being manipulated through strategiesof co-branding, thus signalling further distance from the older radical characterof fair trade political consumerism. Thus, the decommodification of fair tradeproducts is perhaps at the expense of the commodification of fair trade consumerpolitics.

Keywords: fair trade; commodification; decommodification; ethical consumption;political consumerism; branding

When commodities mediate politics: the political intensity of consumer politics

A revolution in and through the market has been foretold. In the marketplace, concernshave gradually been structurally and dynamically extending on ethical grounds.Through the marketplace, consumer power has been discussed as a potentially politicalvariable (Nava 1991; Glickman 2009). This has been especially the case since, beyondboycotting a certain brand or company; consumers are increasingly being offered theoption of ‘buycotting’ – that is, the demonstration of preference based on certainethical and political considerations. Boycotts and ‘buycotts’ are acts of what hasbeen, respectively, discussed as negative and positive political consumerism (Miche-letti, Follesdal, and Stolle 2004). These market-based actions are typically politicalacts in the market arena. As an appropriately assigned term, political consumerism con-cerns ‘the use of market purchases by individuals, groups and institutions, who want totake responsibility for political, economic, and societal developments’ (Micheletti, Fol-lesdal, and Stolle 2004, xxv). Bauman (2007, 247) discusses consumer activism as ‘asymptom of the growing disenchantment with politics’. In accordance with argumentson the decline of traditional forms of participation, the literature on political

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∗Email: e.lekakis@gold.ac.uk

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consumerism recognises the shift towards a private arena for the realisation of a form ofpolitical participation. This paper argues that there are reasons to allow for a consider-ation of the impact of market-based action on political life, but also at the same timehighly restrictive factors in the ‘marketisation’ – the process of mediation throughthe marketplace – of consumer politics. By examining parameters that highlight ordownplay the political intensity of ‘coffee activism’, the current piece argues that thearbitration of civic engagement in the ethical marketplace has significant consequencesfor an understanding of consumer politics.

This paper explores the political promises and potential of political consumerism inthe case of coffee activism. Coffee activism signifies the plethora of ethical or politicalefforts involved in what is more readily known as the fair trade movement inclusive ofofficial fair trade initiatives as well as unofficial efforts concerned with justice in thechain of global coffee trade. Drawing from the ethics surrounding the consumptionof the coffee commodity, I reflect on the connotations of the practice of politics inthe marketplace. The evidence presented here is based on the case study of coffee acti-vism in a historical context and interviews with 30 ethically consuming citizens. Themounting significance of consumer culture has been callously calculated in theexamination of social life (Lury 1996; Cohen 2003; Sassatelli 2007; Mukherjee andBanet-Weiser 2012). The concept of political consumerism is gaining significance inan understanding of contemporary politics; part and parcel of the political potentialthe phenomenon has been evident in the case of boycotting. Negative politicalconsumerism, in Micheletti et al.’s terms, has long been heralded in relation to theway in which consumers assume political agency by opting out of selective purchases(cf. Friedman 1999, 2004; Simon 2011). The examination of positive political consu-merism’s intensity presents the focus of this paper.

The examination of the politics of fair trade coffee consumption is part of a largerquestion on the political intensity of political consumerism. Political intensity is definedas the amount of awareness, involvement and impact of a cause in the political arena.Arguably, there exists a tendency to demonise the infiltration of consumer culture inpolitical culture, as Bauman (2005) diagnoses a potential illness in liquid life causedby what he calls the ‘consumerism syndrome’. This echoes Lasch’s (1979) concernsabout the false cure of consumption offered to the isolated, self-involved citizens incapitalist societies and is also projected in Barber’s (2007) work on the infiltration ofconsumer rationality at the expense of civic life. According to another camp of argu-mentation, this demonisation is too crude as it disengages with the historical traditionthat allowed for the entity of the ‘consumer’ to materialise. For Trentmann (2006, 4),this disengagement ‘suffers from an in-built temporal ring-fencing of the problem’.In other words, there is another tendency to demonise the instant associationbetween consumers and citizens in the fields where they merge. This is examinedhere through the case of fair trade consumption as positive political consumerism.The analysis of the relationship between fair trade and decommodification as well asthat between branding and the commodification of consumer politics which followsaspires to frame the question of political intensity.

Towards political intensity? A brief history of consumer activism

Fair trade represents one of the most successful types of political consumerism; it boastsof an informed active citizenry which causes the movement to be successful which inturn changes the rules of the trade game towards more fair directions (Nicholls and

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Opal 2005; Stiglitz and Charlton 2005; Fairtrade Foundation 2012). Coffee activismpresents two instances which afford an argument towards the importance of the market-isation of action. First, a prismatic analysis of the history of coffee activism exposes theincreasing relevance of consumers in being active agents who impact political pro-cesses. Second, the cause of fair trade itself reverses the processes of mystification ofproduction, or commodification in Marxist terms. A specific historical context hasallowed for the emergence of fair trade. Through this study, the political consumercan be grounded within the national, cultural and consumer tradition that gave themrise. These chronological and contextual conversions admit an argument on the market-isation of the fair trade revolution, as it has facilitated a growth of opportunities for pol-itical expression through the politicisation of consumption, as well as posing analternative to neoliberal models of trade which hearten commodification.

Historically, consumer activism dates back to the nineteenth century and the estab-lishment of the co-operative movement in the UK in 1844. There is, largely, consensusabout the classification of consumer awareness and action into four periods (Lang andHines 1993; Lang and Gabriel 2005; Nicholls and Opal 2005). The first period ischaracterised by the organisation around co-operatives and initial attempts to exerciseconsumer power over the stages of production. The second concerned value-for-moneyactivism, basic product information and reliability in labelling. The third period wasprompted by Naderism and was exemplified by concerns on consumer safety, manufac-turer accountability and threats posed by the growing monopoly of corporations. Theterm is derived from Nader, lawyer, public interest activist, corporate critic and theGreen Party presidential candidate in the 2000 US elections, whose book Unsafe atany speed (1965) functioned as an expose of the car industry. A primary position ofNaderism is that the consumer is overpowered by corporations, helpless to thequality of their products; at the same time, the consumer’s role is to act as an activecitizen in increasing demand, but also standing up for their rights. The last historicalwave is arguably the one we are riding now and has been framed as green or ethicalconsumerism.

Ethical consumerism, according to Nicholls and Opal (2005, 181), concernsenvironmental and ethical issues pertaining to corporate practices and ‘is characterizedby consumer awareness of animal welfare, environmental degradation and humanworking conditions and trade justice’. Here, consumer concerns have apparentlyextended from reliable labelling to responsible labelling. The most distinctive attributeof the latest wave of consumer activism is that it ‘does not regard poor consumer qualityof goods as cause for political action, but considers the poor political quality of goods ascause for consumer action’ (Follesdal 2004, 19). There is a definitive differentiationbetween the current and the previous historical periods of consumer activism. In con-temporary consumer activism, concerns extend beyond the rights of consumers andtowards their responsibilities as political beings. Consumer activism is presentlyclosely linked to green or ethical consumerism, which is a more popular term for posi-tive political consumerism.

Political consumerism has known particular growth in the UK (Wild 2004; Krier2005), while the fair trade movement has solidified in the mainstream. The fair trademovement and market have been mediated and communicated to the UK public in away that has placed it in the mainstream of public life. The contemporary success ofthe fair trade movement in the UK mainstream is undeniable. Awareness of the Fair-trade Mark consumer label is arguably evident in the majority of the adult population;according to a report by the Fairtrade Foundation published in May 2008, 70% of

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consumers in the UK were aware of the label (Fairtrade Foundation 2008a). Since thebeginning of the late 1990s the perception of fair trade as a niche market has beenthoroughly contested by its growth. Fair trade has been moving into the mainstream,with supermarkets promoting their own labels of ethical products and the concept ofa green/ethical lifestyle gaining significant promotion and reach. The sales of fairtrade products such as coffee and bananas are now booming in the mainstreammarket. Fair trade has notably come into the market and the public mainstream.

The mainstreaming of fair trade allows for an argument to emerge which under-scores the rising importance of consumer politics. At the backdrop of the aforemen-tioned historic moves, the re-examination of the theses of the fall of the public man(Sennett 1974) and the waning of the public domain (Marquand 2004) is allowed.New articulations of politics contend that there is more to explore in a picture of declin-ing parliamentary political participation (cf. Dahlgren 2009). A revitalised perceptionof space, agencies and acts of political character and significance appears to be emer-ging. Moving beyond a banal perception of ‘authority’ as definitive membership (Keat,Whiteley, and Abercrombie 1994), post-industrial theorisations of politics (cf. Giddens1991; Beck 1997; Bennett 1998) have undoubtedly widened the focus of the study ofcivic life. Giddens (1991, 214) defines ‘life politics’ as ‘a politics of choice’, ‘a politicsof lifestyle’ and ‘a politics of self-actualisation’, where globalising influences and theproject of the self interact. Beck (1997, 98) views ‘subpolitics’ as an eruptionbeyond the formal picture of politics, because ‘if the clocks of politics stop there,then it seems that politics as a whole has stopped ticking’. Bennett (1998, 755), inturn, argues for a ‘lifestyle politics’, where ‘personal identity is replacing collectiveidentity as the basis for contemporary political engagement’, thus changing ‘the char-acter of politics itself’. While these alternative perceptions place the individual in thelimelight of political life, they open up the ground for debate on the political intensityof consumer politics. Largely, scholarship on political consumerism tends to assumethat it has a political intensity. In particular, as Follesdal (2004, 3) notes, ‘traditionally,political participation has involved the relationship between citizens and their govern-ment, which in turn regulates the market. Political consumerism adds to this conceptionin that citizens turn directly to the market in a variety of political concerns’. Such anargument presupposes the idea of ‘active consumerism’ (Lang and Gabriel 2005,39), in the sense that there is a purpose and a series of conscious and judicious pro-cedures preceding the actual act of consumption.

An opposing argument claims that acts of political consumerism are often simplythe effect of successful marketing under the business-as-usual model (Fridell,Hudson, and Hudson 2008). Voting in the space of the market does not have thesame connotations or implications as it has in the realm of politics. Boycotts and ‘buy-cotts’ present good examples of citizens being able to criticise or appraise market actorssuch as multinational corporations, which elude government regulation (cf. Follesdal2004; Simon 2011). However, the inexorable grounding of consumer politics in theneoliberal market poses certain constraints. Schmookler (1993, 46) argues that ‘themarket is often likened to a democracy, in which we all vote with our money. Eachtime we spend, it is as though we have put our vote into the ballot box of this economicdemocracy’. The resolve to substitute political for economic democracy does not comewithout consequences. Although political consumerism is paralleled to a form of pol-itical engagement, this cannot be equated to democratic participation, as this is instantlyovertaken by ‘market populism’ (Frank 2000; Leys 2001) within the sphere of themarket. Political consumerism creates a market mode of dealing with ethical concerns.

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However, the diffusion of political with market spaces cannot override the normativeoperation of politics. The substitution of politics by sub-, life, or lifestyle politics inthe mirage of market democracy can, as Simon (2011, 162) also points out, ‘makedissent fade away’ (cf. Lekakis forthcoming). While political consumerism might bepolitical under certain conditions, it cannot be viewed as democratic under anyconditions.

Consumer empowerment, decommodification and active readings of corporateinvolvement

Consumers have been regarded as active political agents. The politicisation of con-sumption has gained broad recognition since Scammell’s (2000, 351) argument that‘citizenship is not dead, or dying, but found in new places, in life-politics . . . and inconsumption’. As a matter of fact, ethically consuming citizens appear to be activelyconsidering the gradations of corporate adoption of fair trade. There are more contro-versial companies such as Nestle, which adhere to the fair trade cause to a minimumdegree. Then, there are businesses like supermarkets which make several degrees ofcommitment on their shelves, such as Sainsbury’s and Marks & Spencer’s, whostock several basic goods explicitly as ethically certified. Finally, there are companiessuch as Starbucks and Tate and Lyle, which within the national boundaries of the UKhave made that maximum commitment to fair trade. Half of the interviewees (16 out of30) expressed a variety of concerns with regards to their ethical consumption and theethical business landscape:

Big money is involved when the supermarkets come on board. All they can see is pounds.They don’t care about anything else as long as they make profit and, if that’s for thebenefit of people that we’re trying to benefit through fair trade, then good! (Patricia)

There is a primary sense of the deployment of the fair trade movement by ‘big money’,which is read cynically, but accepted as beneficiary to the producers of commodities.

Predominantly, however, the gradations of corporate commitment present sourcesof uncertainty. Citizens declared feeling unable to answer a question on whetherthey would ‘boycott’ or ‘buycott’ certain companies. This suggests a mild confusionof citizens towards the role of businesses in fair trade. Specifically, there is a certainuncertainty around positioning oneself with regards to the partial adoption of fairtrade; Nestle is the notorious case in question. For almost all of the interviewees (28out of 30), there is at least minor hesitation in celebrating Nestle’s Partner’s Blend:

I tend to not buy many Nestle products if I can avoid it. Sceptical or not, it seems a verycynical way to say ‘well we’ll target those consumers, so that we get the ethical consumerson board’, but I think a lot of people if they know anything, even just the tiniest thingabout fair trade, I don’t think they’d be buying the Nestle brand. I think, for someonethat buys fair trade, I certainly look for a fair trade brand, Cafedirect or something likethat. I won’t get a big global brand that has a fair trade version. . . . I’m sure that somecompanies think ‘there is a whole generation of people or generation that we can makemoney from’. (Sophie)

Sophie is an ethical consumer who can distinguish between ‘a fair trade brand’ likeCafedirect and ‘a big global brand that has a fair trade version’ like Nestle. Therefore,

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the minimum adoption of fair trade standards is met with scepticism from ethical con-sumers. A similar distinction is also made by another interviewee:

Starbucks don’t get everything fair trade, but my view is that as long as they are making astart . . . Obviously it would be wonderful if they did get everything fair trade, but untilthey make the decision to switch everything, I don’t have a problem with them havingsome of it and I know some people are saying ‘well they don’t have everything’, butthey are trying. I don’t know a massive amount about the Starbucks brand, but I’m notas adverse to them as I am adverse to Nestle with the whole ethos of . . .. Their business’sjust rubbish really. (Katherine)

It is apparent that citizens are often able to make a clear-cut distinction between thecompanies that make a minimum and those who make a maximum commitment tofair trade standards. Consumers’ authority can, thus, translate to consumer-basedaction, as they have ‘first-person knowledge claims’ (Keat 1994, 29) on the globalwelfare society; as such, consumers are participate creatively (Micheletti and McFar-land 2010) in a global politics defined as ‘allocations of common values and resourcesin society’ (Micheletti and Stolle 2010, 140). Consumers, thus, in coffee activism canact as advocators of ethical norms and values in the sense that they are able to determinewhat might be considered as fair cost of faraway producers’ labour.

Additionally, the success of the fair trade movement has been celebrated in terms ofits posing a challenge to the commodification of commodities (cf. Luttinger and Dicum2006; Lyon 2006). Fridell (2006) discusses the decommodification process through fairtrade as a significant strand of its relationship with neoliberal consumer capitalism. Thecommodification of goods under capitalism is a Marxist interpretation of the relation-ship between production and consumption; in this light, the exchange value of productsoverpowers the use-value of commodities and renders them to their commercial extern-alities. The decommodification perspective, then, claims that, by altering the way com-modities are traded, the fair trade movement illuminates the specific processes ofproduction behind the products. Thereby, coffee activism appears to be freeing consu-mers from ‘mental colonialism’ (Waridel 2002, 23) or ‘thought traps’ (Lappe and Lappe2002, 27–31) which conceal these processes in capitalism as normal. This is a validobservation. Traditionally, commodification has signified the reduction of economictransactions to material concerns. The power of commodification is even evident inthe history of consumer action, as until recently consumer concerns were based onproduct quality and reliability. The sophistication of material transactions has arguablyextended beyond the qualities of products to the inequalities of their origin. There is,thus, evidence to substantiate the allowances of the market space in empowering con-sumers and lifting the ‘veil’ from the production process and exposing social andenvironmental justice issues to a global public (Hudson and Hudson 2003).

The banality of branding

Despite the widening of our understanding of consumers as potentially active agents,there still exists a rather uneasy relationship between consumption and politics. Theevolution of consumer activism demonstrates that since at least the late 1970s consu-mers in the UK have been showing that they are concerned about something morethan price. The dominant argument on the nature of the movement in relation totrade practices is that fair trade defetishises commodities by uncovering the processes

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of production and minimising intermediaries between producers and consumers (cf.Waridel 2002; Hudson and Hudson 2003; Nicholls and Opal 2005; Lyon 2006).However, this contention only directly interrogates the impact of consumer cultureon a previously niche market which becomes mainstream. The existence of all thecentral and peripheral conditions of capitalism in the contemporary ethical marketplace,however, signifies that such an argument is relevant to the fair trade market, but notnecessarily the fair trade movement. It could be argued that neoliberal capitalism is,in fact, mystifying the politics of fair trade. There are insisting questions about the pol-itical intensity of political consumerism.

The argument has been made that, broadly, politics has been driven ‘into the soft-focus of kitsch’ (Root 2007, 70). As a synonym for banality, kitsch denotes the dera-dicalisation of politics. For its proponents, the mainstreaming of fair trade has notimpacted the movement in any compromising way (cf. Lamb 2009). However, asmall number of critical studies have been devoted to the interrogation of the conse-quences of mainstreaming fair trade (Low and Davenport 2005, 2006; Moore,Gibbon, and Slack 2006; Raynolds 2009). The involvement of corporations andprivate businesses has been a key element in the practice and discussion of the main-streaming of fair trade. According to Low and Davenport (2005, 143), ‘these forcesare reshaping the boundaries of the movement’. Pertinently, literature underlines thestrategic direction of marketing towards the total commodification of all forms ofhuman activity (cf. Lury 2004; Arvidsson 2006; Zwick and Ozalp 2008). The market-ing of coffee activism presents no exception. Inescapably, branding expands ‘from itsprior role in the promotion of commercial goods and services to its ability to representand financialize social qualities’ (Aronczyk and Powers 2010, 8).

In September 2008, the design and the use of the Mark changed in order ‘to scale upboth the impact and size of the Fair trade market in the UK and create a stronger, har-monised Fair trade movement internationally’ (Fairtrade Foundation 2008b). Before, itused to be a consumer label which was strictly used on products that have been certifiedas fairly traded according to the standards set by the Fairtrade Labelling Organisation.Afterwards, the design was made simpler and lighter, and not only graced certified pro-ducts, but also all materials produced by the Fairtrade Foundation, so as to promote ahomogenous understanding of fair trade as directed by the Foundation. This strategicmarketing of the Mark impacted its positive reception by all the different types ofethical consumers, from the converted to the unconverted. The majority of intervieweesconsumed ethically by the guidance of the Fairtrade Mark, while only a few werewilling to overlook the absence of the Mark in cases where they were confident thatthe product they were buying was in fact fairly traded. While there are other fairtrade consumer labels, people are not so positively engaged in other ethical brands dis-course. Dorothy asserts characteristically that ‘just because it has the Rainforest Alli-ance [label] that doesn’t mean that I’ll buy it’. The Rainforest Alliance has differentcharacteristics than the Fairtrade Mark and its moral aspects, as it concerns the relation-ship between consumption and the environmental impacts of production, rather thanthat between consumption and the social or humanitarian impacts of production. Brand-ing the fair trade market has been crucial in soliciting solid public support to themovement.

The Fairtrade Mark enhances ease of choice and availability, aiding the widening ofaccess, thus directly influencing the mainstreaming of coffee activism. Fair tradebelongs to a branded lifestyle (Bennett 2004). The main difference between brandingcommodities in general and branding ethical commodities is that, in the first case,

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the symbolic value is typically exhausted at the psychological level, the fleeting thoughtthat the commodity has been acquired. On the other hand, in the case of ethicallybranded commodities, the symbolic value has positive psychological side-effects forthe consumer, but also practical implications for the producers. Therefore, the fairtrade coffee drinker is aware of the meta-actions of their ethical consumption. Thereception of the Fairtrade Mark has been more than welcoming, as discovered in theall of the interviews with citizens:

I think [the Fairtrade Mark] has become a very recognisable brand now. . . . I think it’svery important and it’s a clear labelling design. People understand what it means forthe most part, and it’s easy to see in a shelf in a supermarket or a shop. If you’ve gotfour different products of the same type, you can pick out immediately which is thefair trade one. It’s an easy decision. (Rachel)

[Branding] is really important, because I think it just makes it easier for people. Every-body knows that you can make a difference, but it usually takes an effort to make a differ-ence. [The Fairtrade Mark] is a recognised brand and something which can be marketed. Itjust makes commercial sense really. (Claire)

The success of a brand lies in its acceptance as trustworthy and the simplification of theshopping process. There is a link between the success of the branding fair trade throughthe label and the success of the fair trade movement. The Fairtrade Mark is a new typeof brand and one which promotes a moral option.

In the branding of fair trade, the Fairtrade Mark operates as both certification label,which clearly signifies the beneficial potentiality of the product carrying it, as well asbrand, which people recognise, trust and support. Promoting fair trade productsbecomes analogous to advertising any other commodity. The proliferation of the pres-ence of the Fairtrade Mark represents an advertisement in the sense that ‘its text lines upwith an attributed consumer-ego (the ‘you’ to which the ad speaks) with a symbolizedcommodity’ (Wernick 1991, 31 [italics in original text]). Wernick (1991) attaches athird step in the process of placing ideology into advertisement which includes thecoupling of the use-value with the symbolic value of the commodity. Similarly, inthe case of fair trade, the product has value as a commodity, say a coffee we buyand drink, but also becomes infused with psychological value (Littler 2009). The ban-ality of branding lies in its inescapability; in order for the movement to streamline itscommunication to the wider public, it needs to employ a recognisable and reliablebrand.

The corporate ‘veiling’ of the political intensity of consumption

Branding, accordingly, potentially poses risks to the agonistic politics of coffee acti-vism. It might make ‘commercial sense’, as one respondent enunciated, but whetherit makes political sense is doubtful. Branding strategies belong to the toolkit of capit-alism. Holt (2006, 300) argues that ‘branding is a core activity of capitalism, so must beincluded in any serious attempt to understand contemporary society and politics’. On afirst level, this could be the case particularly because the commercial elements of fairtrade can anaesthetise its political elements. The commercial success of coffee activismlies in the repackaging of its narratives from more to less contentious ones. By adoptingand adapting ethical narratives, businesses can claim legitimacy from the authenticity ofa cause (Boyle 2003). Moreover, branding is a strategic tool of capitalism. Its implicit

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role is to mediate the connection between consumers and commodities (Holt 2006).Brands are devices which attempt to encapsulate the symbolic and material attributesof a product and the process of its consumption. Anti-consumerist accounts of the con-niving tactics of consumer culture have scrutinised its manipulation of branding to elicitthe illusion of value, quality, origin, choice, satisfaction and emotion (Lasn 1999; Frank2000a; Barber 2007; Boorman 2008; Lawson 2009). In this fashion, branding is able toproduce a powerful and convincing hold over consumers. In the case of coffee activism,the commercial power of branding can be regarded as troubling to the political power ofthe movement.

An example of businesses appropriating the rhetoric of ethics infusing coffee acti-vism relates to the third process of its mainstreaming, which includes the involvementof key economic players. In his discussion of branding potent strategies, Danesi (2006)brings the example of co-branding employed by Starbucks. The technique of co-brand-ing concerns associating a company with something else, in order to draw from its auth-enticity. He points out that Starbucks has employed co-branding with various bookstorechains to combine ‘the connotations of intellectualism (symbolised by books) withcoffee consumption’ (Danesi 2006, 95). Similarly, Starbucks has been co-brandedwith airlines (i.e. EasyJet) and train companies (i.e. Virgin Trains) perhaps in anattempt to combine the leisurely connotations of travel with its coffee culture. The Fair-trade Mark is perceived as an indicator of awareness, trust and consumer happiness,thus making it the best label to attract all these attributes to the company. Forbusinesses, ethical branding appears to afford a shortcut to achieving consumer accep-tance. Because the Fairtrade Mark has been so widely accepted by the general public,there appears to be no meaningful reason to contest its acceptance or present a newways of branding and packaging its ethical connotations. By gaining a hold over con-sumer desire for ethical trading, the label operates as a commanding brand in ascertain-ing that the product that carries it also carries its ethics.

Branding can function as a guarantee for consumers and businesses satisfactionalike. The extensive embracing of the Fairtrade Mark can reproduce a feeling of the‘good life’ (Soper 2004) and in this way potentially absolve the desire for civic engage-ment beyond ethical consumption. Before the adoption of the establishment of a con-sumer label and the macroscopic promotion of coffee activism across the UK, the term‘campaign coffee’ had been used to market ethically produced coffee during the 1980s.Equal Exchange dates ‘campaign coffee’ back to the late 1970s:

The origins of Equal Exchange stretch back to 1979 when three voluntary workers returnedto Edinburgh after working on aid projects in various parts of Africa. Along with a sisterorganisation in London, Campaign Co-op, they started buying instant coffee fromBukoba on Lake Victoria in Tanzania. As a result, Campaign Coffee was born.1

A minority of interviewees (5 out of 30) were familiar with that first blend of ethicallytraded coffee. They particularly remembered it being off-putting even to those whowere in accordance with the cause:

Campaign coffee; that was the first fair trade coffee that came out, wasn’t it? It was dis-gusting. It was like instant mud! It tasted like mud! Don’t ask me how I know! (Brian)

The choice to replace the term ‘campaign coffee’ with its branded as ‘fair trade’ coffeehas been criticised as constituting a symbolic compromise in a narrative which

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underlined the initial ‘radical side of the movement’ (Moore, Gibbon, and Slack 2006,330). This is a symbolic compromise nonetheless and one which played a role in neu-tralising the distinct political vernacular of the picture of the movement in the 1980s.Low and Davenport (2005, 143) argue that ‘going mainstream carries with it thedanger of appropriation of the more convenient elements of fair trade by the commer-cial sector . . . and loss of the more radical edges of fair trade’. It can thus be argued thatthe change in the promotional label of a product which was originally traded directly byan Alternative Trade Organisation (i.e. Equal Exchange) and then traded through amore official organisation (i.e. Fairtrade Foundation) have been altered to correspondto the goals and strategies of each structure.

Moreover, the brand allows companies to utilise an established label in order tocapitalise on its consumer legitimacy. An extension of this perspective on co-brandingcould produce an argument according to which Starbucks is being co-branded with fairtrade in order to draw authenticity from its appraised humanitarian and cosmopolitansensitivities. In such a case, Starbucks could be cleansed from its contested tradehistory. As Wild (2005, 281) notes:

Starbucks is the company that many people love to hate: its employment practices (anti-union, pro part-time), its predatory property acquisition, and its heavy-handed defence ofits feel-good trade mark have all exposed the iron corporate fist beneath the Peruvian yak-wool glove. Perhaps, more than anything, it is the company whose lead product lays barethe ever-widening gap between the First and the Third World.

Investing in a moral cause can potentially purify previous corporate controversies.However, despite the motives of companies becoming involved in fair trade, theentry of traditional dominant economic actors in the fair trade market has undoubtedlyimpacted on its size and scope (Low and Davenport 2005). If branding creates arelationship of trust between companies and consumers (cf. Nicholls and Opal2005), then the fact that companies are embracing fair trade is making consumersmore likely to shop ethically. There exists a complicated relationship between the com-mercial intensity of fair trade and the political intensity of fair trade consumer politics.The political intensity, thus, of political consumerism appears to be exhausted in abusiness to customer relationship.

Conclusion

The fair trade movement has grown its roots in contemporary British society through avariety of organisations and means. More importantly, as underlined, the majority ofconsumers across this country can now readily identify the Fairtrade Mark and itsbasic connotations. For coffee activism in the UK, the battle for the hearts and pocketsof the public appears to have drawn to a successful close. At the same time, there hasbeen a reconfiguration of the politics of fair trade activism particularly in relation tothe impact of processes of marketing and branding. The market entry of the dominanteconomic players has resulted in a boom in ethical sales and awareness. Through anexploration of the relationship between branding and coffee activism, I discuss the con-ceptual and practical peripheries of market-based action through, among other par-ameters, the relationship of tension between fair trade and businesses.

The question which entitles this paper is rhetorical. There are two readings of itwhich can lead us towards a potentially meaningful answer; can the fair trade

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movement progress merely through the marketplace and can political change occurthrough the marketplace? The first question addresses consumer power directly, asthe capacity to and practice of acting politically in the marketplace. This is enabledby the core aim of the cause which for the consumer is the decommodification oftrade relations. Essentially, while there appears to be a removal of the ‘veil’ from com-modity production, there is a concurrent placing of a ‘veil’ over commodity activism.The processes of marketing, branding and capitalising fair trade have impacted on themainstreaming of coffee activism. There are variations to the adoption of fair trade stan-dards and commitments by big businesses ranging from minimum (i.e. Nestle) tomaximum adoption (i.e. Starbucks in the UK). However, the promotional tactics of cor-porations which lead to commodification are met by an active interpretation of therelationship between ‘big businesses’ and the fair trade cause. Ethically consuming citi-zens expressed opinions which suggest that they are severely sentient of the various ten-dencies and tensions between businesses and coffee activism.

This leads to the second question which addresses the possibility of whetherpolitical consumerism demonstrates an agreeable level of political intensity. This is amore vexing question. In light of the diminishing trust towards traditional institutionsand prescribed behaviours, alternative conceptualisations of politics allow for the con-sideration of consumption, markets and consumers as new acts, spaces and agents ofaction. There are new and potentially invigorating characteristics in political consumer-ism. These include the use of the market, a traditionally commercial arena, for politicalpurposes, the focus on participation in international politics, rather than in national poli-tics, and the perception of the citizen as an empowered economic voter. However, thereare also variances in its political intensity. The commercial sense of fair trade is at theexpense of its political intensity. As branding creates an additional dimension to theprocess of consumption, it provides a shortcut to the mental processes of consumerscoveting fair trade products. Additionally, it provides a shortcut for companies to beclad in ethical terms. The legitimacy of branding for both consumers and companiessimply does not proffer any structural opportunities for political action beyond themarket. While the fair trade movement might have become marketised, fair trade con-sumer politics become depoliticised.

Note1. Equal Exchange. http://www.equalexchange.co.uk/about/index.asp [accessed March 14,

2012].

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