A Fair Trade Concept of Control?

The proposed paper seeks to critically analyze the main ideological pillars behind the politics promoted by the certification-based Fair Trade movement. In order to do so, it will build on International Political Economy, making use of the most relevant concepts of the Transnational Historical Materialist perspective. In this way, it will attempt to construct Fair Trade’s “concept of control” – understood as a long-term strategy, formulated in general terms and dealing in an integrated way with areas such as labor relations, socio-economic policies, and the international socio-economic and political order – and discuss its defining features, implications for different class fractions and relations to other historical concepts of control. Such an analysis will provide the basis for the further examination of the content, strategy, potential and limitations of the "Fair Trade politics".