Buying into Fair Trade: Culture, Morality, and Consumption

Appendix: Research Methods

>> 141 Appendix Research Methods I was never a coffee drinker. I entered a coffee shop only two or three times before starting graduate school in 2000. They made me uncomfortable . I didn’t like the taste of coffee, and I didn’t even know what to call many of the pastries on display. I also knew almost nothing about handicrafts before starting this project. The French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu would probably say that I did not possess the requisite “cultural capital” to feel comfortable in these environments. If nothing else, graduate school provides students with cultural capital. Besides learning how to fix copy machines, graduate students learn how to interact in diverse environments, eat a wider array of foods, and consume a wider array of arts and culture. And this is exactly what happened to me. While conducting research for this book, I transitioned from an outsider to an insider within the fair-trade community. I started drinking coffee. I learned how to brew it properly, how to distinguish between high- and low-quality coffee, and how to talk about the benefits of fair trade for artisans. I provide this information because I think it is important to explain where I fit into the fair-trade world. All research, but ethnographic research in particular, is interpretive. The stories in this book are told from my perspective. I tried to think about my interactions with fair traders from an array of different vantage points. I wanted to understand the motives behind consumer discourse and action, but I also wanted to be critical of the viewpoints expressed by many of the people I observed and interviewed. I wanted to try to understand when interviewees were being honest and when they were trying to present themselves in a positive light. In essence, I was trying to capture individuals’ “lived” or subjective experiences within the fair-trade world and, at the same time, map those perspectives into a broader, objective space.1 I was attempting to 142 > 143 cared more about finding handicrafts that would make a good gift or match the furniture. I told the local store manager about my research and also spoke with upper-level managers who also gave me permission to collect data. I was surprised at the level of access that I was given. I was allowed to attend the annual training workshop for store managers, where I collected rich data and great insight into the goals of Ten Thousand Villages . I was also given marketing information about “Gwen” that I used as the introduction to chapter 4. One of the goals to which many organizations within fair trade claim to strive is transparency. Ten Thousand Villages was remarkably open and honest with me throughout this project. To its staff, I am incredibly grateful. In addition to volunteering at Ten Thousand Villages, I spent three to four days per week between 2005 and 2008 hanging out at the four original Independents coffee houses: the Greenline (West Philadelphia ), Infusion Coffee and Tea (Mount Airy), Joe Coffee Bar (Center City), and Mugshots Coffee House and Café (Fairmount). The neighborhoods in which these shops were located greatly impacted their economic success and struggles. Stores that tended to be more successful were in neighborhoods that had few other coffee shops nearby, attracted highly educated consumers, and were in residential neighborhoods . Informally, all of the coffee-shop owners said that location was one of the most important determinants of a café’s success. I examined how these stores were laid out, how the coffee was promoted in advertisements, and how retail staff talked about fair trade with their customers. In the coffee shops, most owners chose to emphasize that they were not like Starbucks and were independently owned, rather than talking a lot about fair-trade coffee. Very few customers talked about fair trade while at these coffee shops. Understanding how people were acting within these coffee shops influenced the types of questions I asked while interviewing consumers, store owners, and fairtrade advocates. Seven store owners of four coffee shops founded the Independents Coffee Cooperative, which was designed to help independently owned shops purchase products in bulk and to jointly promote the stores that participated in the cooperative. Independents also provided technical assistance and training to new members of the cooperative on how to 144 > 145 Nevertheless, the initiative has also sparked an increase in development in West Philadelphia; a local paper compared the change to the resurgence of Center City Philadelphia that occurred...