Exploitation and Fairtrade in Costa Rica's Banana industry

当号角响起时，地球上的一切都准备好了，耶和华把世界交给了可口可乐公司、水蟒、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。Pablo Neruda La United Fruit Co.出自Canto General(1950)，在拉丁美洲，没有其他商品像香蕉一样象征着剥削。当巴勃罗·聂鲁达在他1950年的著名诗歌中写下上面的话时，他是在表达他对中美洲创造的“香蕉共和国”的抗议。最近，公平贸易运动声称在该地区提供了一种替代的、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的在挑战中美洲长期由美国公司主导的所谓美元香蕉生产体系的开发。该项目通过记录该地区公平贸易农场和非公平贸易农场香蕉行业工作人员的生活，直接解决了这一差距。它将编写一本专著、两篇同行评议的文章以及一系列咨询和研讨会，所有这些都是为了应对公平贸易在美元香蕉体系中面临的挑战。这本专著对哥斯达黎加的两个农场进行了研究，一个是公平贸易认证农场，一个是常规农场。在我博士研究的基础上，这本书将证明，正如目前所实践的那样，公平贸易挑战美元香蕉行业内包含的结构性不平等的能力有限。我认为，公平贸易目前位于新自由主义贸易网络中，这意味着它无法解决复制剥削的结构性问题和不平等。专著中的分析是基于对那些在香蕉种植园工作的人的生活的详细民族志。这本书利用了一年的农场田野调查，揭示了一系列因素--性别、父权制、国家认同和宗教意识形态--如何导致不平等的再现和工人中缺乏抵抗。此外，还将进行新的研究，记录公平贸易政策制定者对这些挑战的反应。这项研究的具体主题将在两篇同行评议的文章中提出。其中一个将通过探索农场车间的性别权力动态来扩展专著中的一个章节。第二篇文章将记录作为该项目的一部分进行的咨询活动，在该活动中，公平贸易政策制定者和学者将讨论公平贸易热带商品目前面临的挑战(见下文)。除了专著和文章，该项目还着重强调公众参与。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)、公平贸易国际组织、公平贸易马克斯·哈维拉尔(荷兰)和阿格罗费尔(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。这一咨询工作将产生一份报告，确定公平贸易知识的差距在哪里，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。与促使学者与公平贸易官员对话的现有倡议(如公平贸易国际研讨会、《公平贸易杂志》)不同，该报告将专门旨在提出政策建议，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.