Fair trade slippages and Vietnam gaps: the ideological fantasies of fair trade coffee

Fair trade coffee sales have boomed since the late 1980s, making it one of the most recognised forms of ‘ethical consumerism’ in the world. Around the same time exports of lower quality coffee beans from Vietnam also boomed, launching Vietnam from an insignificant coffee exporter to the world’s second largest with historically unprecedented speed. These disparate projects have had significant impacts on thousands of farmers – with Vietnam’s new class of coffee producers representing three and a half times the number of coffee families certified by fair trade. Northern actors, however, have given far more public and positive attention to fair trade. This article will argue that this difference does not stem from a strictly objective appraisal of the relative merits and shortcomings of each project, but from the compatibility of fair trade with ‘free trade’ and its emotionally charged ideological fantasies. This includes unconscious beliefs and desires around individualism, voluntarism, democracy and the affirmation of the exaggerated power of Northern consumers – as opposed to the Southern agency and complicated collective action implied by Vietnamese coffee statecraft.     

Pathway to resilience: hands and hearts for peasant livelihoods and fair relations between humans and nature

Abstract

Peasants and rural communities are on the front lines of most climate catastrophes taking place nowadays worldwide; at the same time, we have been the ones taking care of our common planet over generations. This article begins with a brief overview of the current situation of land use in the world today and links it to climate issues. It then describes some of the solutions to climate threats being negotiated between national governments and the private sector. It then highlights solutions that communities are already implementing and concludes with the reasons why systemic change is needed in order to achieve agrarian and climate justice.     

Federal sector union liability for breach of duty of fair representation under title vii of the civil rights act: The problem of legal uncertainty

The duty of fair representation (DFR) was initially formulated by the U.S. Supreme Court in the 1940s to protect racial minorities working in the private sector from discrimination by their unions. More recently, the courts have extended the protections afforded by the DFR to state and local government workers. However, the ability of federal employees to invoke this doctrine, specifically under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act as amended, has not yet been resolved. This article examines the case law addressing this issue and argues that federal employee unions, just as unions operating in the private sector and at the state and local levels of government, should be subject to DFR obligations.