Changing Big Business
The Globalisation of the Fair Trade Movement
‘This is an important and valuable contribution both to our understanding of fair
trade and the broader context in which it operates. Dr Hutchens develops an exciting new
theory and presents extensive original empirical work to construct a rigorous and, at
times, challenging argument concerning the limits and opportunities for the fair trade
movement going forward.’
– Alex Nicholls, University of Oxford, UK
Drawing on candid accounts from practitioners, producers and industry representatives,
this informative and proactive volume investigates the challenges facing today’s fair
trade movement and provides unique insights into the workings of social and economic power
in world markets.
Using original, in-depth empirical data, Anna Hutchens develops several new
approaches to understanding power, governance and social change across the broad
interdisciplinary fields of development, economics and politics. Emphasising fair
trade’s entrepreneurs, this book investigates the creation of innovative commercial fair
trade business models that are often neglected in fair trade research but are crucial to
the fair trade movement’s survival in commercial markets. As corporate involvement in
fair trade markets grows, these models will be the key variable for the sustainability of
fair trade into the future.
This book will be warmly welcomed by academics in the fields of economics, political
science and sociology working on free trade and fair trade. International non-government
organisations, such as Oxfam, and international fair trade networks will find this book
invaluable. Government officials (particularly in the EU Commission and parliamentarians)
working on fair trade and/or trade-and-development policy and analysis will also find this
book of particular interest.
Anna Hutchens, Director, Fair Trade Program, Centre for Governance of
Knowledge and Development (CGKD) and a Postdoctoral Fellow, The Regulatory Institutions
Network (RegNet), The Australian National University
Contents:
Introduction
1. ‘Game-Playing’: Rethinking Power and Empowerment
2. ‘Power Over’ as Global Power in World Markets
3. The History of Fair Trade
4. Networking Networks for Scale
5. Fairtrade as Resistance
6. Fair Trade as Game-Playing
7. Governance as ‘Creative Destruction’
Conclusion: Game-Playing – The Key to Global Empowerment References Index
256 pages, Hardcover