ABSTRACT
Scholars and activists have sought to identify avenues for addressing rising global disparities, focusing largely on reconfiguring production. This chapter shifts our focus to the realm of consumption, exploring the challenges and opportunities for consumers and consumption activities to help bridge global North/South divides. It proposes that a theoretical synthesis of these approaches is essential for understanding the possibilities for bridging North/South divides, since a political economy approach best explains the historically rooted structures that undergird global inequalities while a social movement perspective identifies most clearly the power of social actors to challenge those inequalities. This chapter explains how fair trade, and Fairtrade International in particular, work to bridge global North/South divides through consumer/producer networks, identifying the successes, but also the limitations in escaping colonial-based trade relations, top-down regulation, corporate dominance, and the privileging of consumer purchasing power.
