April Linton

Partnering for sustainability: Business–NGO alliances in the coffee industry

The movement to promote coffee produced in a sustainable way is one of many efforts aimed at linking social responsibility and market capitalism. In the wake of a worldwide coffee crisis in which prices have fallen to levels that do not support small-scale production or provide living wages for plantation workers, non-profit certifying and labelling organisations are working to develop a market that is sustainable for workers and the environment. They seek to influence cultural and political values in such a way that consumers and corporations in the North will have to respond to them by incorporating the welfare of Southern workers and ecosystems into their purchasing decisions. This paper discusses and evaluates current strategies to link producers and consumers within this movement, all of which involve a great deal of education. It argues that partnerships between businesses and NGOs are essential for broadening the corporate base of the market for fairly traded coffee and promoting norm change among consumers, and discusses the challenges and opportunities that such partnerships create.

A Niche for Sustainability? Fair Labor and Environmentally Sound Practices in the Specialty Coffee Industry

Abstract Facing a worldwide coffee crisis in which prices fell to levels that do not support small-scale production or living wages for coffee workers, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and specialty coffee companies have attempted to promote transparent and sustainable exchanges between producers and buyers. The NGO-based initiatives are diverse; they may focus on improving the lot of small farmers via Fair Trade, emphasize environmental protection, provide technical and/or business assistance to producers, or offer differentiating certifications based how producers score on a long list of social and environmental indicators. Specialty coffee roasters have introduced their own comprehensive sustainability projects. This is a critical review of many sustainability projects and their outcomes to date, including two examples of smallholder farmer-NGO collaborations that have yielded positive results. A Chinese version of this articles abstract is available online at: www.informaworld.com/rglo

LANGUAGE POLITICS AND POLICY IN THE UNITED STATES: IMPLICATIONS FOR THE IMMIGRATION DEBATE*

Abstract Is there a role for language policy in immigration policy? This article examines recent attempts to legislate language in light of historical and contemporary debates about immigration and immigrant assimilation. It chronicles U.S. language politics and policy, and then appraises national language and official English bills recently introduced in Congress in view of data on language usage and preferences, suggesting ways that the current resurgence of a national debate about language could and should impact the larger debate about immigration.

Learning in two languages: Spanish-English immersion in U.S. public schools

Observes that, in some public schools in the USA, dual language instead of English only is being promoted as a plus and not the drawback it was once seen to be. Stresses there is still opposition to dual language or other languages being used in the US. Reckons that educated parents are the likeliest to seek dual‐language education for their children. Uses tables and figures to show the dual language options and variances. Concludes that there is potential for two‐way immersion to expand.

Spanish–English immersion in the wake of California Proposition 227: five cases

Two‐way bilingual immersion programs are noteworthy within the context of US public education because, in them, the children of immigrants are essential assets. Language‐minority and English‐speaking pupils are grouped together, starting in kindergarten or earlier and extending at least through grade five, with a goal of bilingual proficiency and biliteracy for all. This paper explores two‐way immersion educators’ and parents’ responses to California Proposition 227, which severely restricted bilingual education. Given this obstacle, what has motivated the maintenance and further initiation of two‐way bilingual immersion? And to what ends? Answers hinge on varied institutional climates at the school district level and parent–teacher activism towards the goal of truly multicultural education. Proposition 227 was a disastrous move, but dedicated educators, parents and communities have been proactive in creating two‐way bilingual programs to help maintain bilingual education in a way that benefits all students.

Growing Fair Trade in South Africa

Fairtrade certification is part of a larger, transnational movement aiming to preserve or create sustainability for workers and the environment. For export-food producers in the global South, it means a fair price, fair labor conditions, direct relationships with buyers, and democracy within their organizations. In democratic South Africa, Fairtrade is linked to government-incentivized Black Economic Empowerment (BEE) initiatives. The movement is, in effect, certifying and labelling transformative programmes to economically empower members of previously disadvantaged groups. This paper explores the intersection of BEE and Fairtrade in the post-apartheid wine industry. Based on interviews with relevant stakeholders and secondary sources, it shows that the South African context has necessitated some re-negotiation of fairness, and of the role of the international Fairtrade certifier. Although Fairtrade products from South Africa are primarily sold in Europe and North America, NGOs and businesses in the global North have not simply handed down the rules, asking for compliance in return for a label, as might be expected under neoliberal globalization. Rather, the Fairtrade label on South African products means that it was produced according to South African rules that aim to promote social transformation. La certificación de Comercio Justo hace parte de un mayor movimiento trasnacional que intenta preservar o crear sostenibilidad para trabajadores y el medio ambiente. Para los productores de alimentos para la exportación en el sur global, esto significa un precio justo, condiciones de trabajo justas, relaciones directas con sus compradores y una democracia dentro de sus organizaciones. En la democrática Sudáfrica, el Comercio Justo está ligado a las iniciativas incentivadas por el gobierno al Empoderamiento económico negro (BEE, por sus siglas en inglés). El movimiento es en efecto, la certificación y etiquetación de programas transformativos para empoderar económicamente a miembros de grupos previamente en desventaja. Este artículo explora la intersección del BEE y el Comercio Justo en la industria vitivinícola del post apartheid. En base a entrevistas con las partes interesadas y fuentes secundarias, se demuestra que el contexto sudafricano ha necesitado alguna renegociación justa, y en el rol de certificador internacional de Comercio Justo. Aunque los productos del Comercio Justo de Sudáfrica se venden primariamente en Europa y Norteamérica, las ONG y los negocios en el norte global no han transmitido las reglas, pidiendo cumplimiento a cambio de una etiqueta, como se podría esperar bajo la globalización neoliberal. Por lo contrario, la etiqueta del Comercio Justo en los productos sudafricanos, significa que fue producido de acuerdo a las reglas sudafricanas que intentan promover la transformación social. 公平贸易认证属于一场更大规模的跨国运动的组成部分，该运动旨在维持或创造工人和环境的可持续发展。对于南方国家的出口食品生产商而言，公平贸易认证意味着公平价格、公平劳动条件、与买家的直接联系和组织内部的民主。在民主国家南非，公平贸易与政府鼓励的南非黑人经济振兴政策（BEE）倡议相关。这项倡议实际上通过对变革方案的认证和分类，谋求改变从前处于弱势地位的群体成员的经济地位。本文探讨了在后种族隔离时代的葡萄酒行业中，南非黑人经济振兴政策和公平贸易的交集。根据与有关利益相关者的访谈和二手资料，本文证明了在南非的环境下，公平这一概念和国际公平贸易认证机构的作用有必要进行重新谈判。在新自由主义全球化的背景下，尽管南非的公平贸易产品主要销往欧洲和北美，北方国家的非政府组织和企业却出乎意料地没有简单地制定规则并要求南非遵守，以换取其对南非公平贸易产品的承认。相反，南非产品的公平贸易标签意味着它按照南非制定的规则进行生产，这些规则旨在促进南非的社会转型。 공정무역 증서부여는 노동자와 환경을 위한 지속가능성을 유지하거나 만들어 낼 목적을 지닌 거대한 초국가적인 운동이다. 남반부에서 식량을 생산하고 수출하는 사람들에게 그것은 공정 가격, 공정 노동 조건, 소비자 직거래, 그리고 조직 내 민주주의를 의미한다. 민주적인 남아공에서 공정무역은 정부가 동기부여하는 흑인 경제능력 강화(Black Economic Empowerment, BEE)와 연계되어 있다. 그 운동은 이전에 박탈된 집단들의 구성원들을 경제적으로 힘을 불어 넣는 증서를 주고 명칭을 부여하는 변혁 프로그램이다. 이해 당사자들과의 인터뷰와 2차적인 자료들에 근거하여, 이 논문은 남아공 맥락은 공정성과 국제 공정무역 증명서 부여자들의 역할에 대한 재협상을 낳게 했다는 것을 보여준다. 남아공의 공정무역 제품들이 유럽과 미국에서 판매되지만, 북반부의 NGO와 기업은 신자유주의적 세계화에서 기대되듯이 명칭에 대한 보답으로 순응을 요구하면서 단순히 규칙만을 전하지는 않았다. 그 대시 남아공의 제품에 대한 공정무역 표시는 사회 변형을 추구하는 것을 목적으로 하는 남아공 규칙에 따라서 생산되었다는 것을 의미한다.

Ethical Trade Initiatives

The authors in this section examine ethical trade initiatives. Fair Trade is the most widely known standard and all of the cases address it. Here is a short history of Fair Trade, including currently recognized Fair Trade principals and specific criteria for coffee. Fairtrade Labelling Organizations International (FLO) (www.fairtrade.net/) and FLO-CERT GmbH (www. flo-cert.net/flo-cert/index.php) are the best sources of up-to-date information about Fair Trade standards, products, producers, and traders. Many of the country-specific Fair Trade organizations maintain excellent websites, most notably TransFair USA (www.transfairusa.org). Because market conditions change, new products are being certified, and Fair Trade is growing and maturing, things can change quickly. Readers are encouraged to check these websites for the latest developments. Fair Trade certification originated in the late 1980s, when Alternative Trade Organizations (e.g., Traidcraft in the UK and 10,000 Villages and Serve International in the US) and associated retailers came to believe that a label identifying their ethical business practices would be of mutual benefit (Nicholls & Opal, 2006). Third-party certification could protect their promise of fair dealings by setting up an auditing system that held producers and traders to uniform minimum standards. The first labeling initiative was Max Havelaar Netherlands, established in 1988; other European labels soon followed. Some, including the Fairtrade Foundation in the UK, were founded with the help of antipoverty organizations such as Oxfam, World Development Movement, and Christian Aid (Fairtrade Foundation, 2005). Fair Trade systems are similar to other trade governance regimes in that they are market based and work within existing countryand commodity-specific export arrangements. But they are different in their attention to social justice and sustainability. Fair Trade aims to link social responsibility and free-market capitalism by promoting living wages, access to credit, and environmentally sound farming practices in the global South while convincing buyers in the global North to include these considerations in their purchasing decisions. Summarized, the generic Fair Trade standards are:

Continuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry FieldsContinuing La Causa: Organizing Labor in California’s Strawberry Fields, by MirelesGilbert Felipe. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2013. 191 pp.

In the crusade to organize California strawberry workers, why did an upstart committee of farmworkers prevail over the professionalized, politically connected, and wellresourced United Farmworkers of America (UFW)? And after winning workers’ support, why was ‘‘the Comité’’ (El Comité de Trabajadores de Coastal Berry [Coastal Berry Farmworkers Committee]) not able to maintain its leadership? These questions motivate Gilbert Filipe Mireles’ rich study of the UFW’s 1995 to 2003 campaign to unionize workers at Coastal Berry—a large, vertically integrated strawberry producer that had recently been purchased by union-friendly investors. Mireles’ nuanced account of the campaign and its aftermath highlights the interplay of networks, organizations, and institutions. The UFW campaign gained significant media attention and public support but did not resonate with most of Coastal Berry’s Watsonville, CA employees. An important reason for this, Mireles shows, is that the UFW failed to recognize the importance of family or family-like networks within the workforce. A successful UFW campaign would have established standardized hiring and promotion policies, thereby quashing supervisors’ ability to give preferential treatment to their kin or others from their hometowns. This would have disrupted an established system of patron-client relationships whereby supervisors paid coyote fees and secured housing and preferred jobs for workers within their networks, who in turn became monetarily and socially indebted to their patrons. The Comité coalesced to protect the power of these entrenched networks and the interests they represented. Even though most workers were ambivalent about organizing, the Comité was able to convince a majority to unite in opposition to the UFW. It was certainly in the Comité’s favor that the UFW, having only a scant presence in the fields during the 1980s and early 1990s, was unfamiliar to many workers. Further, UFW organizers did not necessarily have experience with farmworkers and lacked credibility among them. Some of Mireles’ informants reported feeling insulted by organizers who treated them as dirtyhanded inferiors. It thus came to pass that the emergent Comité prevailed over a strong, established labor union. At this juncture Mireles reminds readers that the Comité organized to fight the UFW, not to represent workers. The Comité was not a labor union and was not equipped to become one. It did not have qualified leadership, a formal division of labor, or trained professionals. In an election two years later the UFW trounced the Comité—not because of its success at organizing workers but rather because of its organizational capacity and ability to exert institutional leverage among regional and national stakeholders. For scholars of collective action, labor, and organizations, Continuing La Causa’s concluding chapters are of central importance. Mireles’ account draws attention to a paradox of farm-labor organizing: Growers most likely to be targeted by unionization campaigns are not those whose employees are most in need of unionization. Employers most vulnerable to tactics employed by the UFW, e.g., major public campaigns that feature recognizable products, are most able to treat their workers well because they have the resources to do so. Smaller farms are more likely to be underfinanced and offer correspondingly poorer wages and working conditions. But it is not cost-effective for a union to stage a campaign to organize 20 or 30 workers; and if already marginalized workers are fired for supporting a union, the union is cast in a bad light. From this perspective, it made sense for the UFW to shift the primary focus of its advocacy from the fields to Congress and the courts. In 1975, the UFW and its allies helped pass the Agricultural Labor Relations Act and establish the California Agricultural Labor Relations Board, which governs dealings between agricultural employers, employees, and unions. This triumph forced the UFW further into legal and political Reviews 217

59.95 cloth. ISBN: 9781935049647.

The original call for papers for the ‘Trading Morsels’ conference asked authors to address the social and environmental consequences of the globalization of agriculture by focusing on an important traded commodity and a major geographical link in that commodity’s trade. During the course of the conference itself, and in subsequent discussions, we learned that the globalization of agriculture is a complicated story that does not always or easily lend itself to a commodity chain approach. Perhaps this is not surprising. Social systems are almost always more complicated than our models suggest. The important question is whether the complexity matters. And in this case we believe not only that the complexity matters but that it is the defining characteristic and most policy relevant feature of the global food trade.

Conclusion: Negotiating the Dynamics of Global Complexity

For most of human history, people consumed what they produced and produced what they consumed. The current era is notable, however, in that more people than ever before are no longer directly involved in the production of their own food. Instead, they are connected, usually through extensive and opaque webs, to disparate and distant production locales (Smith, 1998, p. 208).