Fair Trade and justice: a comment on Walton and Deneulin

In this article we first point out that the different conceptualisations of Fair Trade, which are sometimes analytically contradictory, actually form a coordinated set. Understanding the Fair Trade project is impossible without taking these interlinked conceptualisations into consideration. Second, this set basically forms a mechanism of structural, institutional and moral reforms that guide actions. In this way Fair Trade sets out to produce less injustice than is usually the case with the structures and institutions that govern conventional trade. Nevertheless, it does not try to define what a just society is or even to perfectly define ‘fair trade’. This implies the adoption of a comparative justice angle. It is precisely by linking comparative individual situations with the structures that produce these situations that relative justice can find its strength and purpose.     

Elite-led development and Mexico’s independent coffee organisations in the wake of the rust epidemic

Abstract

Between 2012 and 2016 a virulent strain of coffee rust reduced Mexican yields by more than 50%, and it is still devastating production. The government has responded by replacing traditional arabica plants vulnerable to the pathogen with resistant, high-yielding varieties to recover the sector and encourage long-term adaptation to a disease that cannot be eradicated. However, this contribution will attempt to show that the intractable nature of the epidemic and the biological characteristics of resistant varieties threaten the survival of independent coffee organisations and their agroecological shade coffee systems. With little or no possibility of recovering production without the use of resistant plants, the alternative production and marketing models that these organisations have constructed over the past three decades face unprecedented challenges.     

Developing human resource in research and development: international experiences and implications for Vietnam

ABSTRACT

Human resource is the key driving force of research and development of a nation. Japan and Korea are two examples of how appropriate strategies in developing human resources have been transferred into remarkable achievements in R&D. In recent years, Vietnam has observed significant shift in investment for R&D. Thus, the lessons of Japan and Korea could provide Vietnam with valuable strategies for further development in human resources in R&D, particularly in vision of R&D development, policy flexibility, increased investment on R&D development and human resources, key R&D organization formation and increased international cooperation in S&T.     

Decent work and indecent trade agendas: the European Union and ACP countries

The European Commission has promised to promote decent work in the African, Caribbean, and Pacific (ACP) countries through pro-poor direct investment and livelihood-creating trade deals. Aligning with the discourse of the International Labour Organisation, the European Commission seeks to achieve ‘fair globalisation’ in which economic growth is translated into decent jobs. Applying a moral economy perspective, however, the article argues that there is a disjuncture between the norms espoused under the Decent Work Agenda and the tangible implications of European interventions in ACP economies. Specifically, Economic Partnership Agreements will have deleterious consequences for the lives of many poorer producers and workers in ACP countries. The provision of Aid for Trade for decent work, moreover, may not deliver meaningful decent work opportunities in ACP countries. In this analysis, the article explores the emergent normativity-outcomes gap in this sphere of European Union external relations.     

EU trade and development policy beyond the ACP: subordinating developmental to commercial imperatives in the reform of GSP

Following the stagnation of negotiations with the African, Caribbean and Pacific states, the centrepiece of the European Union's (EU's) trade and development strategy has been a reform of the Generalised System of Preferences. Although policy-makers in the Commission's Directorate General for Trade have argued they are ‘refocusing’ these preferences on the ‘neediest’, by rendering a significant proportion of emerging economies' exports ineligible for the scheme, this article argues that the reform is actually part of a broader ‘reciprocity’ agenda being pursued in the context of the current economic crisis. This is about ensuring the EU possesses sufficient offensive leverage in ongoing free trade agreement negotiations, rather than representing any mercantilist move towards greater domestic protection. In arguing that the EU's developmental trade agenda is increasingly subordinated to commercial imperatives, this article adds to a literature that has situated the study of EU trade and development policy within the field of political economy.     

Automotive global value chains in Mexico: a mirage of development?

ABSTRACT

International monetary organisations argue the ‘developing countries’ should foster linkages to the world economy as a means to overcome backwardness. In this article we refute the narrative that Mexico has experienced industrial upgrading. Rather, industrial growth in Mexico over the last 40 years has been shaped by neoliberal economic policies which have turned the Mexican economy into an export-led manufacturing platform designed to supply the North American market, sustained by a precarious labour market. As a result, Mexico occupies the most labour-intensive and low value-added segments of regional production chains. To make this argument, we perform an in-depth analysis of the Mexican automotive industry, demonstrating that instead of being an engine for domestic industrial development, the auto industry has become a dominant economic sector through productive hyper-specialisation concentrated in the northern Mexican border states, a reliance on transnational capital, particularly from the United States, a disconnect with domestic markets, and the super-exploitation of labour.     

Negotiating sustainable trade: explaining the difference in social standards in US and EU preferential trade agreements

Since the early 2000s, both US and EU Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) include social standards that aim to protect workers and the environment. However, the US and the EU have chosen fundamental different approaches for the enforcement of these clauses. While the US pursues a sanction-based approach, the EU solely relies on dialogue and cooperation mechanisms. Hence, to the surprise of many, social standards in U.S PTAs appear to be stricter than the ones in EU PTAs. Why do the two biggest trade powers of the world handle social clauses in PTAs so differently? In this paper, I argue that disparities in domestic politics account for their different strategies towards social standards. Drawing on the principal-agent literature, the paper analyses the PTA negotiations of the US and the EU with Peru and Colombia.     

Fairtrade labour certification: the contested incorporation of plantations and workers

Fair trade seeks to promote the well-being and empowerment of farmers and workers in the Global South. This article traces the contested growth and configuration of Fairtrade International labour certification, providing a multifaceted and dynamic view of private regulation. I explain why Fairtrade International began certifying large enterprises and how its hired labour strategy has developed over time, illuminating fair trade’s move from peasant to plantation sectors, stakeholder involvement in shaping the growth of Fairtrade labour certification, the internal and external balancing of farmer and worker concerns, and major innovations in Fairtrade’s ‘New Workers Rights Strategy’. My findings challenge the claim that recent market mainstreaming explains the rise of labour certification within fair trade and the more general argument that private regulatory programmes founded to foster empowerment evolve over time to prioritise a logic of control. As I document, Fairtrade International has recently moved to bolster producer power within its organisation and labour rights within its certification programme. My analysis reveals the dynamic nature of private regulatory programmes and the potentially influential role of diverse stakeholders in shaping the priorities of Fairtrade and other labour-standards systems.     

Social Capital,Civic Engagement,and Economics in a Transitioning Economy: The Case of Vietnam Provinces

Social capitalist assert that civic engagement and participation yield significant economic gains for a county but, generally focus on democratic governed societies. The objective of this research is to determine if social capital transitions to Vietnam, a single-party governed country. This analysis first identifies factors that impact civic engagement and participation. Then it analyzes the relationship between civic engagement, participation, and economics. Using the 2012 Provincial Governance and Public Administration Performance Index, we find human capital is a stronger predictor of economics in Vietnam. We conclude by offering policy implications for understanding social capital in single-party, transitioning economy countries.     

Past as global trade governance prelude: reconfiguring debate about reform of the multilateral trading system

This paper peers backwards into the history of the multilateral trading system and its development over the past half century as a means of considering what may lie beyond the horizon for the future of global trade governance. Its purpose is to underscore the necessity and urgency for root-and-branch reform of the multilateral trading system. It achieves this by comparing and contrasting the global trading system of 50 years ago with its modern-day equivalent and its likely future counterpart half-a-century hence. In so doing, the paper throws into sharp relief not only the inadequacies of global trade governance today but also the damaging consequences of not fundamentally reforming the system in the near future, with a particular emphasis on the past, present and future development of the world’s poorest and most marginalised countries.     

Understanding the nature of change: how institutional perspectives can inform contemporary studies of development cooperation

This article argues that core lines of sociological institutionalist thought provide a set of valuable conceptual and theoretical vocabularies for exploring and explaining contemporary concerns of development cooperation. It identifies four broad categories of issues of central attention in the current study of development cooperation, and couples these with four avenues of sociological institutional research that may provide us with theoretical and conceptual frameworks for further empirically exploring and theoretically extrapolating these. Increasing attention to these theoretical concerns not only helps us progress the study of development cooperation, it may also allow us to inform contemporary institutional thinking.     

Unstable Antistatism: The Left, the Right, and The Outlaw Josey Wales

This essay is an examination of the diverse origins of modern conservative antistatism in the United States through an analysis of the 1976 film The Outlaw Josey Wales, and the book on which it was based. The consolidation of a conservative politics in the 1970s was achieved in part by the Right's appropriation of New Left antistatism via older forms of racial discourse. This emphasis on New Left influence helps explain the rise of the New Right in a way that is missed in conventional accounts, while demonstrating more generally that political discourse is always contingent and unstable, and open to unintended articulations.     

The wto in Bali: what mc9 means for the Doha Development Agenda and why it matters

The conclusion of the World Trade Organization’s (wto) ninth ministerial meeting – held in Bali 3–7 December 2013 – is at one and the same time momentous, marginal and business-as-usual. It is momentous because it marks the first multilateral agreement reached in the wto since the organisation began operations on 1 January 1995; it is marginal because the deal reached will have only a limited impact on the global trading system; and it is business as usual because the Bali package will be of disproportionally greater value to the industrial states than to their developing and least developed counterparts. We examine what happened in Bali, covering the principal issues at stake and the content of the outcome, what this means for the wto and for the Doha Development Agenda (dda), and why it all matters. We argue that, while the Bali ministerial is significant and the agreements reached important, the conclusion of the meeting and the package agreed represent only a limited movement forward in addressing the fundamental problems and inequities of the wto system.     

Religion and the State: The Singularity of the Jordanian Religious Experience

The history of the Islamic movement in Jordan displays glaring contrasts with its counterparts in other Islamic countries such as Egypt, pre-Revolutionary Iran, and Syria. In a marked departure from a history of violence that characterized the relationship between the state and the Islamic opposition in these countries, the Jordanian Muslim Brothers was not only a peaceful movement but also often defended the state against the challenges of radical ideologies. Following the democratization process launched by the late King Hussein, the Muslim Brothers participated in electoral politics. To adapt itself to the new pluralistic environment, the movement displayed a move toward secularization. This process was reflected in an organizational differentiation and the rationalization of religious discourse. This paper attempts to explain this remarkable phenomenon by first considering the effects of the structure, ideology, and cultural policies of the state and of the development of social classes on the Islamic movement. It then considers the way in which the legal framework and political pluralism in the 1990s contributed to the secularization of the movement.     

Comparing political futures: the rise and use of scenarios in future-oriented area studies

The predictive ability of scholars of politics has long been a subject of theoretical debate and methodological development. In theoretical debate, prediction represents a central issue regarding the extent to which the study of politics is scientific. In methodological development, much effort and resource have been devoted to a diverse range of predictive approaches, with varying degrees of success. Expectations that scholars forecast accurately come as much from the policy and media worlds as from the academy. Since the end of the Cold War, scenario development has become prevalent in future-oriented research by area studies scholars. This approach is long due critical re-assessment. For all its strengths as a policy tool, scenario development tends towards a bounded methodology, driving the process of anticipating futures along predetermined paths into a standardised range of options, and paying insufficient attention to theoretical and contextual understandings available within the relevant scholarly disciplines.     

The ghost of essentialism and the trap of binarism: six theses on the Soviet empire

This article endeavors to open a new critical space for Soviet studies and for nationalities studies more generally. Through analyses of recent trends in Soviet studies, the article dismantles the frequently used opposition between subjective and objective approaches to Soviet empire and suggests instead that truths and categories, whether considered “subjective” or “objective,” are constructed discursively, through legitimizing certain interpretive models over the others. The article also argues against disciplinary avoidance of “what is” questions (e.g. “what is a nation?”) and claims that an excessive concern for (re)producing essentialism should not hinder scholarly inquiry. Several new lines of inquiry for the study of the Soviet empire are suggested and also applicable in nationalities studies more generally: research on the role of symbolic violence in manufacturing consent and research concerning the role of affect in producing linkages between the performative life of a singular human being and the pedagogical discourse of a nation or empire. The article also offers an analysis of the Soviet Union as an empire in becoming and it advocates for postcolonial approaches within Soviet studies. The practical dimensions of Soviet rule are exemplified with data from the Baltic borderlands in the postwar years.     

People,personal projects and the challenging of social structures: a contribution to the reflection on the challenges of teaching development studies

Abstract

This article makes a critique of using Post-Development as a tool in teaching an introductory course in development studies. Such a debate was initiated by Harcourt in a previous issue of Third World Quarterly as she reflected on her teaching experience in a European Institution. Harcourt concludes that the lack of engagement of some of the students in the course reflects the unwillingness of privileged middle-class pupils to challenge western lifestyles. I draw on a critical realist meta-theory about the process of learning in higher education to challenge the ontological support of that conclusion and invite her to reconsider her teaching strategy.     

Indigenous voices and the making of the post-2015 development agenda: the recurring tyranny of participation

This paper explores recent efforts to ensure the participation of indigenous peoples in the making of the post-2015 development agenda. It is based on an examination of the UN’s global consultation process, conducted between July 2012 and July 2013. Using discursive analysis of consultation findings and reports, we argue that the UN’s approach to participatory development represents a pretence rather than an actual shift in power from development experts to the intended beneficiaries of development. Therefore the post-2015 consultation process aptly illustrates the recurring tyranny of participation, this time at a global level, as the UN maintains control over global development goals. Recognising that it would be unjust to ignore the ability of marginalised groups to challenge the UN’s dominant narratives of development, we suggest that there is still time for indigenous voices to be heard in the build-up to the post-mdg era through ‘invited’ and ‘uninvited’ forms of participation.     

Manufacturing corporate landscapes: the case of agrarian displacement and food (in)security in Haiti

This paper explores the historical and contemporary sources of food insecurity in Haiti. It begins by detailing the impact of colonial legacies on the Caribbean region as a whole and on Haiti in particular. The adverse consequences associated with this period include deforestation, soil infertility and food-import dependence. The paper then turns to more contemporary trends, namely the influence of 30 years of neoliberal ideology. It argues that the belief that Haiti can best achieve food security through the pursuit of comparative advantage, a notion advanced and supported by powerful international and domestic actors, has served to reinforce harmful historic trends. We support this argument with recent fieldwork findings that highlight how the construction of a new export processing zone (EPZ), following the 2010 earthquake, has generated troubling environmental and food security concerns.     

The sounds of silence: American history textbook representations of non-violence and the Abolition Movement

In this paper we examine how the Abolition Movement’s approach to non-violent resistance has been silenced in four American history textbooks. Despite extensive research that reveals an extensive network of groups dedicated to the peaceful abolishment of slavery little of this historical record is included in the textbooks. Instead, a skewed representation of the movement is conveyed to the reader, one that conveys an image of a movement that contributes to a climate of social violence. Through a critical discourse analytical approach to the data we carefully deconstruct how this process of misrepresentation occurs. By employing the discursive tools of narrative framing, positioning, and stance we lift up what is often hidden from the reader and demonstrate how language use communicates powerful social messaging to the reader. We argue that student readers are left with an impoverished sense of how non-violent democratic change has occurred when presented with a limited portrayal of the Abolition Movement. We therefore emphasize the importance of equipping students with the skills needed to critically interrogate both historical and contemporary sources that purports to convey the inevitability of war to resolve complex social problems; we maintain this is both an educational imperative and a civic obligation.