Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on moral and political ideas in rural Costa Rican households to interrogate the relation between production and consumption, and its repercussions for the fair trade movement.

Paper long abstract:

The marketing of ethical consumption under fair trade operates through and reinforces the categories of 'consumer' and 'producer'. Typically, the consumer is asked to help the producer who is disadvantaged under current trade relations. One consequence of this is that it removes agency from producers and allows them to be constructed as objects of consumer largesse. The emphasis on consumer power follows a trend in the social sciences towards the study of consumers and consumption and away from producers and production.

This paper uses ethnography of Costa Rican households engaged in coffee production to show how these 'producers' are also 'consumers', and have a strong ethic in their consumption activities. The premise of the paper is that the symbolic importance of self-provisioning through production for consumption in these rural households is based upon shortening the distance between production and consumption, and a politics of avoiding intermediaries. These two ideas are then mirrored in the mission statements of the fair trade movement.

The paper engages with two sets of questions with respect to the relation between production and consumption. The first concerns the distinction between producers and consumers as categories of people and the repercussions of separating out their activities. The second interrogates contradictions in a fair trade movement that seeks to bring consumers and producers closer together, while emphasising the distinction between them.