Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond: Experiments in Globalizing Justice

As trade and production have increasingly crossed international boundaries, private bodies and governments alike have sought new ways to regulate labour standards and advance goals of fairness and social justice. This collection brings together the research and reflections of academics, activists and practitioners in the fields of fair trade and corporate accountability, providing detailed case studies of social justice governance initiatives which document the evolution of established strategies of advocacy and social mobilization, and the emergence of new patterns of regionally focussed organizing adopted by labour and social movements that seek to intervene in changing formations of global capital. Engaging with a range of debates surrounding the regulation of transnational business in a globalizing economy and the strengths and limitations of voluntary initiatives compared with legally enforceable instruments, this volume analyzes a broad range of empirical and theoretical perspectives, exploring deeper questions regarding the potential of such initiatives to function as transformative strategies capable of entrenching principles of fairness and justice within the institutional structures governing global production and trade.