Thinking of Fair Trade

How does Fair Trade advance Justice for indigenous Bolivian women?

Answering how Fair Trade advances justice entails a long, complicated response, beginning with “it depends.”  Fair Trade takes place on multiple levels and includes many different global partners.  These exist in the form of the institutions that bears its name, consumers, producers, and governments.  These diverse elements all come together under the umbrella of Fair Trade, each having significant impacts and importance on each other.  And each is inherently different in itself.  There are different Fair Trade institutions all serving Fair Trade in different ways; different types of consumers defined by gender, age, region, motivation, beliefs; different producers from vastly different countries who are different themselves, men - women, indigenous - non-indigenous,  urban – rural; and new concepts of governance and economic policy.  Justice itself is not easily understood, and in the context of the different facets of Fair Trade it gets even more convoluted. Indigenous women, though important participants of Fair Trade, are virtually invisible in Fair Trade literature.  Giving voice to the these women through ethnographic study enables the impact of Fair Trade to be understood from their perspective.  Applying the knitter’s experiences to lessons learned through literature and research helps to clarify the experience of Fair Trade amongst Bolivia’s indigenous women illuminating the ways in which justice is served, and not, and identifying new ways in which to advance justice.