Joe Turner

fairtrade - purchasing indulgences?

(photo from the BU website - another interesting article worth looking at)

Slavoj Žižek, sometimes described as the 'most dangerous philosopher in the West' recently spoke at the RSA.  Part of his argument appears to be that market consumption is increasingly justified by the product including an element of positive feelings.  So we are paying 'rent' in order to participate in the system.  He appears to be arguing (and I admit to being close to the limit of my understanding of exactly what he is on about - his ideas come think and fast and it is hard to keep up with his stream of consciousness) that this type of ethical purchasing is a form of indulgence. 

In other worlds, we feel that the benefits accrued from the product justify the costs of those product.  Indeed, further than that, the perceived benefits entirely wash away the guilt associated with that product.

So how does this thought affect our purchases of ethical, fairtrade and environmental products?  When we purchase a fairtrade-marked product from a multinational, are we actually temporarily ignoring the problems associated with any product delivered by a corporation and allowing ourselves instead  to allowing the fairtrade mark to be a sticky ethical plaster on our own ego.

Or to put it another way, the development of some of the poorest people requires us to consume products supplied by the same multinationals which in many other ways are castigated for being disgustingly self centred. 

But I wonder if there is a deeper point.  There are two strains of thought which I've noticed from some in the fairtrade movement.  First, the actual level of impact to the producer associated with a particular product is of limited importance - what matters is that there is any benefit over and beyond what was there before.  It doesn't matter that there are enormous problems associated with the production of that product.  It doesn't matter that the producers are so exploited that almost anything is better than they had before.

Second, it appears to be part of the mindset that the increase in fairtrade products available in western markets is of overwhelming importance, even where there are other significant problems associated with the supply.  So, the settling of the Banana Wars is a threat to fairtrade because it adversely affects fairtrade banana producers in the Windward Islands.  But this pitches producers in one part of the world against another - there are fairtrade banana producers in South America who (presumably) could be assisted by the changes in global trading terms.

The truth is, I think, that the consumer-led system is broken.  In a system which resolves around choice, any money-making enterprise will use anything to gain an edge, and playing to the ethics of consumers is just another edge.  Producers remain poor (albeit slightly less poor) whilst the multinationals get rich.  Further, exposing further producers to the system when the only potential benefits are associated with very nebulous notions of ethics is actually unethical.

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