As the global community confronts increasing economic, social, and environmental challenges, the corporate social responsibility (CSR) movement has demonstrated a powerful capacity to offer itself up as a solution, circulating new ethical regimes of accountability and sustainability in business....

The bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) approach is championed as a way to deliver both corporate profits and poverty reduction. This article explores how “the poor“ are repurposed as the instruments of ethical capitalism through the archetypal BOP model—Avon Cosmetics. A harbinger of...

This paper seeks to understand how small-scale entrepreneurs in Nairobi, Kenya understand the relationship between religion and commerce through an analysis of shop advertising signs. While the sacred and profane are often theorized as mutually exclusive categories, the paper describes how these...

Increasing numbers of corporations are vying to capture one of the largest untapped consumer markets – the world's poor – in ways that are not only economically profitable but socially responsible. One type of initiative that has gained increased traction is trading partnerships between...

Increasing numbers of consumers see themselves as ‘partners’ in poverty reduction, purchasing Fairtrade products to offset inequalities in the global economy and to ensure that producers in developing countries enjoy the same basic rights and freedoms as their Western counterparts. Yet the...

This chapter examines the Kenyan Fairtrade flower as a site of value making, one that provides a constructive lens into how moral obligation and ethical accountability are shaped by risk perceptions and become visible through the process of transnational commodity exchange. Specifically, it...

This paper explores commodity exchange as a morally inflected practice, one that mediates competing tensions of greed and generosity, the sacred and profane, and affection and estrangement through the fairtrade flower. Using the UK–Kenya fairtrade flower commodity chain to examine the cultural...

It was not so long ago that mangoes, papaya and snow peas evoked images of tropical climes and exotic peoples. Recently, however, the consumption of so-called luxury fruits and vegetables has elicited a different sort of imagery. Far from the lure of seductive landscapes, today’s consumer is...

This article examines the trajectory of development policy and practice through the case of the Kenyan export trade of fresh produce. It traces how African labor, particularly women's labor, has been harnessed and restructured by three models of development: (1) the neoliberal prescriptions for...