Buying into Fair Trade: Culture, Morality, and Consumption
"Keith Brown turns a sympathetic yet critical eye on the new generation of consumers who want to buy morally rather than contribute to exploitation of indigenous producers and ruining the ecology. The ethical turn in markets is part social movement, part social construction of belief, part frontstage performance. Brown takes us inside the altruism and the contentions of this supply chain where emotions shape markets."-Randall Collins,author ofInteraction Ritual ChainsandViolence: A Micro-Sociological Theory"InBuying into Fair Trade, Keith Brown explores how global consumers and entrepreneurs invest products from organic coffee beans to handmade jewelry with morality and meaning. Along the way we meet Third World reality tourists, sustainable coffee bar owners, social-justice activists, and conscientious consumers, all of whom negotiate the confusing contradictions between charity and commerce, altruism and authenticity."-David Grazian,author ofBlue Chicago: The Search for Authenticity in Urban Blues Clubs"Brown's sociologically sophisticated treatment of the symbolic, moral and practical aspects of fair trade is a significant advance over much of the literature. Highly recommended." -Juliet Schor,author ofTrue Wealth