ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines the political economy of the Fair Trade citizen branding of textile products. Fair Trade is a revolutionary geopolitical challenge to the exploitative relations of global capitalist accumulation. The Fair Trade movement supports sustainable and ethical relations of exchange and production, in countenance to the socially and economically destructive relations characteristic of global capitalist accumulation. There are strongly integrated global branding issues mobilized by Fair Trades commitment to the creation of alternative trading channels between producers, in developing countries, and the set of industrialized countries that constitute the Global North. This is because the Fair Trade movement in the industrialized world, has been conducted primarily through storefront operations that offer products from the developing world at subsidized prices. The introduction of national Fairtrade certification trademarks and labelling schemes was initiated in 1988, by the Max Havelaar Foundation under the enterprise of the Dutch development agency Solidaridad.
