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. Governments are harnessing social and market forces to advance corporate accountability, while private bodies are employing techniques drawn from command and control regulation to shape the behaviour of business. This collection brings together the research and reflections of a diverse international mix of academics, activists and practitioners in the fields of fair trade and corporate accountability, representing perspectives from both the industrialized and developing worlds. Contributors provide detailed case studies of a range of social justice governance initiatives, documenting the evolution of established strategies of advocacy and social mobilization, and evaluating the strengths and limitations of voluntary initiatives compared with legally enforceable instruments.

The Politics of Fair Trade argues that fair trade is more than just labels on specialty coffee products. Nor is fair trade just protectionism in disguise. Rather, fair trade is opposition to unrestricted trade based on sincere concerns about environmental and labor conditions abroad. Fair traders are not trying to protect jobs or the economy at home, but do not want to see workers exploited and the environment degraded in their trading partners. Academics and policymakers are ill equipped to deal with fair trade concerns because they wrongly assume trade preferences run along a single dimension from free trade to protection. This book introduces a multidimensional theory of trade policy preferences, arguing that people can oppose trade for different and unrelated reasons. The book then demonstrates, using public opinion data in the U.S. and EU and Congressional voting data in the U.S., that fair traders are sincere and not simply protectionists. The book demonstrates why fair trade poses a threat to free trade and argues that free traders should include stronger and enforceable labor and environmental standards in trade agreements in order to win the support of fair traders. Doing so will enable free trade to continue while also helping to improve conditions in developing countries, satisfying the concerns of both free traders and fair traders.

Fair trade and Development : Seventh report of session 2006-07, Vol. 2: Oral and written Evidence

The Fair Trade Fraud by author James Bovard is a direct attack on US trade policies and on the principle of political control of trade. James Bovard exposed the political and moral core of protectionism, demonstrating that politicians cannot make trade more fair by making it less free. "A disturbing work on a timely topic." --Library Journal

Naila Kabeer examines the lives of women workers in different urban centers to shed light on the question of what constitutes 'fair' competition in international trade.

This updated guidebook, with a focus on responsible tourism, offers greater coverage than any other to the Chittagong Hill Tracts where 13 different ethnic groups live, and to the world's largest mangrove forest at the Sundarbans. Personal insights and anecdotes guide trailblazing travellers to those aspects of the country that are almost unknown to visitors - dolphin and whale watching, winter bird-watching in the northern wetlands and golden Bengal's silk and archaeological highlights.