Certification and Neoliberal Governance: Moral Economies of Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean

Many consumers and food‐justice activists regard Fair Trade as a moral alternative to markets dominated by corporate agribusiness. Fair Trade frames producer–consumer relationships in the language of reciprocity and justice rather than the impersonal logic of the market. Despite its moral economy discourse, the movement embodies neoliberal assumptions that regulation and development should occur through the realm of consumer choice rather than state intervention. To receive the higher prices that Fair Trade promises, farmers are subject to certification processes that heavily regulate their planting practices and development priorities. Here I explore the contrasting views of economic morality held by Fair Trade organizations and Caribbean banana farmers. Farmers do not view Fair Trade in terms of the lofty values of social justice and reciprocity animating the movement's discourse. Rather, they operate with a working definition of economic morality similar to those elucidated by E. P. Thompson, James Scott, Marc Edelman, and others who have examined peasant and worker responses to injustice. From farmers’ points of view, compliance with Fair Trade certification should at least enable them to persist in agriculture. As Fair Trade prices have fallen while surveillance of their working lives has increased, many regard this notion of economic morality as increasingly violated.