Sustainability transformation through voluntary standards? Morality and politics in the Global Production Network of Fairtrade tea

Abstract

Against the backdrop of continuing global inequality and the detrimental effects of the capitalist principles of accumulation, growth, and profit maximisation on labour and the environment, especially in countries of the so-called Global South, a number of “ethical” trading initiatives has emerged. Guided by normative visions of sustainable development, justice, and fairness, these initiatives form alternative business networks that attempt to establish relations between producers and consumers based on trust, transparency and shared responsibility. Organisations like Fairtrade translate this vision through the instrument of voluntary sustainability standards. These not only make requirements on minimum prices or the distribution of value along the chain but also formulate requirements on social and ecological production conditions. However, as research has shown, Fairtrade’s attempt to govern production at a distance meets with challenges. These challenges include the adaptability and suitability of standards – often based on a concept of universal morality – to place specific understandings, ways of social organization and production conditions. Standards do not function in a regulatory vacuum but (together with existing laws, rules, relations, demands of the market, etc.) construct complex webs of regulation.

I contend that the transformation of international food networks and their effects on labour and environment can only be understood by taking these complex webs of regulation into account. This includes highlighting the contested moral values and different actors’ objectives that together shape the ways in which these networks function. To illustrate this argument I draw on an ongoing research project that studies the effects of sustainability standards on local labour regimes on Indian tea plantations. I outline how assemblage theory can help accounting for the inherent dynamics, shifting constellations between objects, agencies, and diverse regulatory frameworks and their place-specific effects. The analysis detects the politics around the interpretations of justice and fairness by highlighting the interest-based contestations by actors who mobilize these ideas to improve their position in the Global Production Network of certified tea. Eventually, the effects of this work of assembling can contradict the original visions of Fairtrade and thereby hinder a socio-ecological transformation.