Solidarity Interrupted: Coffee, Cooperatives, and Certification Conflicts in Mexico and Nicaragua. Issue 3 (2nd July 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Wilson, Bradley R.; Mutersbaugh, Tad
• Is Part Of: Rethinking Marxism. Volume 32:Issue 3(2020)
• Page Start: 348
• Page End: 367
• Publication Date: 2020-07-02
• Subjects: Cooperatives -- Ethical Commodity Networks -- Fair Trade -- Mesoamerica -- Solidarity; Communism -- Periodicals; Periodicals; 335.4305
• DOI: 10.1080/08935696.2020.1780670
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0893-5696

Abstract

Abstract : Ethical commodity networks have been advanced as a means to promote cooperative development, engender more democratic forms of governance, promote environmental conservation, and redistribute a greater share of returns to farmers and workers. This essay draws upon long-term ethnographic research on the role of solidarity within two Mesoamerican coffee-producing cooperatives to understand the effects of certification regimes that undergird many ethical commodity networks today. The essay uses a labor-centric conception of solidarity to demonstrate that the pressures and demands created by certifications intended to generate more just outcomes can also strain existing solidarities that bind cooperatives together.