ABSTRACT
One of the key components of the practice of fair trade is the set of visual and textual imaginaries it creates and circulates throughout its networks. Acting as a set of semiotic intermediaries situated between consumers, fair trade organizations, and companies and producers, these imaginaries have gone through substantial shifts over time as fair trade has moved into the mainstream and worked to extend its market. As these imaginaries have changed in parallel with its bid to become a high quality set of goods, the cultural politics of fair trade has undergone changes: most notably the historical commitment to transparency as one of the cornerstones of fair trade has started to slip and/or been transferred to other outlets in interesting and potentially compromising ways. Put another way, the imaginaries that create the “spatial dynamics of concern” embedded in fair trade's moral economy have ebbed and flowed as its positioning as a quality item “good” enough for supermarket shelves has taken hold, but also as one marketing campaign has given way to another over the repositioning of the brand.
