Fair Trade from a Post-Development Perspective

Abstract

The fundamental problems of development politics lead some authors to
call for alternatives to development instead of calling for development
alternatives. The approach, which is based on a post-structuralist,
discursive critique and refuses development as a whole, is called postdevelopment. The goal of this work is to follow Aram Ziai's research methodology and examine Fair Trade (FT) from a post-development
perspective. First I deal with the classical development paradigm and its
normative assumptions. Then I present the post-development approach. In
the las part, I examine the accordance of the FT publications and answers of
FT employees with the classical development paradigm and try to answer
the research question of whether FT, from a post-development perspective,
represents a real alternative to the approaches from the classical
development paradigm period or whether it is is just one of its followers.