Fair trade is widely regarded as a universal good. This fascinating anthropological study takes a closer look at a coffee-growing community and cooperatives in Costa Rica - and subjects the fair trade movement to critical scrutiny.As with conventional coffee, Western demand for organic fair trade produce is largely met by more affluent individuals with larger landholdings. As a result, it is caught up in the conflicts of interest and resentments that are part of the coffee industry...

Increasingly, consumers in North America and Europe see their purchasing as a way to express to the commercial world their concerns about trade justice, the environment and similar issues. This ethical consumption has attracted growing attention in the press and among academics. Extending beyond the growing body of scholarly work on the topic in several ways, this volume focuses primarily on consumers rather than producers and commodity chains. It presents cases from a variety of European ...

Prices permeate contemporary life. From the cost of basic foodstuffs in developing countries to the pay of CEOs in rich ones, the question of the politics and ethics of pricing everything through the market dominates public life. At the same time, we know that dilemmas about how to value fairly, but also efficiently, goods and services have been with us for more than two thousand years, since the times of Aristotle in Ancient Greece. Through the course of the centuries, important thinkers ...

Concern about our food system is growing, from the costs of industrial farming to the dominant role of supermarkets and recurring scandals about the origins and content of what we eat.Food for Change documents the way alternative food movements respond to these concerns by trying to create more closed economic circuits within which people know where, how, and by whom their food is produced.Jeff Pratt, Peter Luetchford and other contributors explore the key political and eco...

The relentless pursuit of economic growth is the defining characteristic of contemporary societies. Yet it benefits few and demands monstrous social and ecological sacrifice. Is there a viable alternative? How can we halt the endless quest to grow global production and consumption and instead secure socio-ecological conditions that support lives worth living for all?In this compelling book, leading experts Giorgos Kallis, Susan Paulson, Giacomo D’Alisa and Federico Demaria make the...

We are in the midst of a global crisis of care. How do we get out of it?The Care Manifesto puts care at the heart of the debates of our current crisis: from intimate care--childcare, healthcare, elder care--to care for the natural world. We live in a world where carelessness reigns, but it does not have to be this way.The Care Manifesto puts forth a vision for a truly caring world. The authors want to reimagine the role of care in our ever...

A sense of urgency pervades global environmentalism, and the degrowth movement is bursting into the mainstream. As climate catastrophe looms closer, people are eager to learn what degrowth is about, and whether we can save the planet by changing how we live. This book is an introduction to the movement.As politicians and corporations obsess over growth objectives, the degrowth movement demands that we must slow down the economy by transforming our economies, our politics and our cu...

The word is nearly ubiquitous: at the grocery store we shop for "sustainable foods" that were produced from "sustainable agriculture"; groups ranging from small advocacy organizations to city and state governments to the United Nations tout "sustainable development" as a strategy for local and global stability; and woe betide the city-dweller who doesn't aim for a "sustainable lifestyle." Seeming to have come out of nowhere to dominate the discussion-from permaculture to renewable energy t...

How to harness capitalism's dynamism to create an economy that promotes well-being and rewards creationThe recent economic crisis was a dramatic reminder that capitalism can both produce and destroy. It's a system that by its very nature encourages predators and creators, locusts and bees. But, as Geoff Mulgan argues in this compelling, imaginative, and important book, the economic crisis also presents a historic opportunity to choose a radically different future fo...

An urgent and passionate plea for a new and ecologically sustainable vision of the good life.The reality of runaway climate change is inextricably linked with the mass consumerist, capitalist society in which we live. And the cult of endless growth, and endless consumption of cheap disposable commodities isn't only destroying the world, it is damaging ourselves and our way of being. How do we stop the impending catastrophe, and how can we create a movement capable ...

Degrowth is a rejection of the illusion of growth and a call to repoliticize the public debate colonized by the idiom of economism. It is a project advocating the democratically-led shrinking of production and consumption with the aim of achieving social justice and ecological sustainability.This overview of degrowth offers a comprehensive coverage of the main topics and major challenges of degrowth in a succinct, simple and accessible manner. In addition, it offers a set of keywor...

Business schools are institutions which, a decade after the financial crash, continue to act as loudspeakers for neoliberal capitalism with all its injustices and planetary consequences. In this lively and incendiary call to action, Martin Parker offers a simple message: shut down the business school.Parker argues that business schools are 'cash cows' for the contemporary university that have produced a generation of unreflective managers, primarily interested in their own personal...