How Fair is Fair Enough? Negotiating Alterity and Compromise within the German Fair Trade Movement

The booming Fair Trade market represents a multi-national, multi-level alternative economic space. Based on interview data with various stakeholders, the research traces German Fair Trade organizations’ negotiation of the potential contradictions between maximizing turnover and remaining clear in their political message. Concepts such as individualization, Fernmoral (Beck) and patchwork-identities (Keupp) help in understanding changed consumer attitudes. Campaign-focused alternative trade organizations (ATOs) trade only through world shops, while more mainstream Fair Trade companies trade through supermarket chains and even discounters such as Lidl have introduced Fair Trade product lines. The chapter analyses the positions of the different
organizations, including their online presence. It asks whether ethical business practices are being mainstreamed or co-opted and draws some conclusions from attempts to regulate alterity.