Exploitation and Fairtrade in Costa Rica's Banana industry

当号角吹响时，地上的一切都准备好了，耶和华把世界交给了可口可乐公司，蟒蛇，福特汽车，和其他公司。联合水果公司为自己保留了最多汁的一块，我的土地的中央海岸，美国的精致腰部。巴勃罗聂鲁达拉联合水果公司从坎托一般（1950年）没有其他商品象征剥削在拉丁美洲像香蕉。当巴勃罗聂鲁达在他1950年的名诗中写下上述文字时，他是在表达他对中美洲“香蕉共和国”的抗议。最近，公平贸易运动声称在该地区提供另一种“更公平”的香蕉生产方式。但我们仍然不知道这种新模式是否真正挑战了中美洲香蕉生产的所谓美元体系，该体系长期以来一直由美国公司主导。该项目通过记录在该地区香蕉产业工作的人们的生活，直接解决了这一差距，包括公平贸易和非公平贸易农场。它将出版一本专著、两篇同行评议的文章以及一系列磋商和研讨会，所有这些都是为了解决公平贸易在美元香蕉体系中面临的挑战。该专著提供了对哥斯达黎加两个农场的研究，一个是公平贸易认证的，一个是传统的。在我的博士研究的基础上，这本书将证明，公平贸易，目前的做法，只有有限的能力来挑战美元香蕉产业内的结构性不平等。我认为，公平贸易目前在新自由主义贸易网络中的定位，意味着它无法解决重现剥削的结构性问题和不平等。这本专著中的分析是基于对香蕉种植园工人生活的详细民族志。这本书以一年的农场实地调查为基础，揭示了一系列因素-性别、父权制、民族认同和宗教意识形态-如何导致不平等的再现和工人缺乏抵抗。这将是补充新的研究，记录公平贸易政策制定者对这些挑战的反应。在这项研究中的具体主题将在两个同行评议的文章。其中一项研究将对专著中的一章进行扩展，探讨农场车间的性别权力动态。第二篇文章将记录作为项目一部分举行的咨询活动，其中公平贸易政策制定者和学者将讨论公平贸易热带商品当前的挑战（见下文）。除了专题论文和文章，该项目非常强调公众参与。我将建立一个新的网络，使公平贸易基金会（伦敦）、世界公平贸易组织（荷兰）、公平贸易国际、公平贸易马克斯·哈夫拉尔（荷兰）和农业公平（荷兰）的公平贸易政策制定者与专门研究公平贸易的学者进行对话。这次咨询活动将产生一份报告，确定公平贸易知识的差距，学术界如何有效地填补这些差距，以及公平贸易如何实施更有效的干预措施。与现有的将学术界与公平贸易官员对话的倡议（例如公平贸易国际研讨会，公平贸易杂志）不同，该报告将专门针对提出政策建议，从而在与公平贸易有关的生产者和工人的生活中产生积极影响。

'When the trumpet sounded everything was prepared on earth, and Jehovah gave the world to Coca-Cola Inc., Anaconda, Ford Motors, and other corporations. The United Fruit Company reserved for itself the juiciest piece, the central coast of my land, the delicate waist of America'. Pablo Neruda La United Fruit Co. from Canto General (1950)No other commodity symbolizes exploitation in Latin America like the banana. When Pablo Neruda penned the words above in his famous poem of 1950, he was voicing his protest at the creation of 'Banana Republics' of Central America. In more recent times, the Fair Trade movement has claimed to offer an alternative, 'fairer' type of banana production in the region. But we still don't know whether this new model is genuinely challenging the exploitation of the so-called Dollar system of banana production in Central America that has long been dominated by U.S. corporations. This project directly addresses this gap by documenting the lives of people working in the region's banana industry, both on Fair Trade and non-Fair Trade farms. It will produce a monograph, two peer-reviewed articles and a series of consultations and workshops, all designed to address the challenges Fair Trade faces in the Dollar banana system. The monograph provides a study of two farms in Costa Rica, one Fair Trade certified and one conventional. Building on my doctoral research, the book will demonstrate that Fair Trade, as currently practiced, has only a limited ability to challenge the structural inequalities contained within the Dollar banana industry. I argue that Fair Trade's current locatedness within neoliberal trade networks, means it is unable to address the structural problems and inequalities that reproduce exploitation. The analysis in the monograph is based on a detailed ethnography of the lives of those who work on the banana plantations. Drawing upon a year of fieldwork on the farms, the book exposes how a series of factors - gender, patriarchy, national identity and religious ideology - contribute to the reproduction of inequality and the lack of resistance among workers. This will be supplemented by new research documenting the responses of Fair Trade policy makers to these challenges.Specific themes within this research will be developed in the two peer-reviewed articles. One of these will expand on a chapter in the monograph by exploring gender power dynamics on the shop floor of the farms. The second article will document the consultative exercise held as part of the project, in which Fair Trade policymakers and scholars will discuss current challenges of Fair Trade tropical commodities (see below).Alongside the monograph and articles, this project has a strong emphasis on public engagement. I will establish a new network that brings Fair Trade policy-makers from the Fairtrade Foundation (London), World Fair Trade Organization (the Netherlands), Fair Trade International, Fair Trade Max Havelaar (the Netherlands) and Agrofair (the Netherlands) into dialogue with scholars who specialize in Fair Trade. This consultative exercise will produce a report that identifies where the gaps in knowledge on Fair Trade lay, how academics might usefully fill these gaps, and how Fair Trade can implement more effective interventions. Unlike the existing initiatives that bring academics into dialogue with Fair Trade officials (e.g. The Fair Trade International Symposium, The Journal of Fair Trade), the report will be specifically aimed at making policy recommendations and therefore creating a positive impact among the lives of producers and workers connected to Fair Trade.