Fair Trade: Humanitarianism in the Age of Postcolonial Globalization

By: Peter van Dam

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Synopsis: The fair trade movement has been one of the most enduring and successful civic initiatives to come out of the 1960s. In the first transnational history of the movement, Peter van Dam charts its ascendance and highlights how activists attempted to transform the global market in the aftermath of decolonization. Through original archival research into the trade of handicrafts, sugar, paper, coffee and clothes, van Dam demonstrates how the everyday, material aspects of fair trade activism connected the international politics of decolonization with the daily realities of people across the globe. He explores the different scales at which activists operated and the instruments they employed in the pursuit of more equitable economic relations between the global South and North. Through careful analysis of a now ubiquitous global movement, van Dam provides a vital new lens through which to view the history of humanitarianism in the age of postcolonial globalization.