Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond Experiments in Globalizing Justice

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.

Kate Macdonald studied Economics, Politics and Development Studies at the University of Melbourne, and International Development at Oxford University. She worked as a Research Fellow at the Centre for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics at the Australian National University in 2006, and joined the LSE as a Tutorial Fellow in January 2007. Her research interests are in the areas of Global Political Economy; Global Governance (particularly Labour and Social Governance); Global Poverty and Social Exclusion; Fair Trade; Corporate Accountability; Globalisation and the Developing World; Non-State Actors in World Politics. Shelley Marshall is Lecturer, Business Law and Texation, Monash University, Australia