Assembling Fair Trade: Power and Performativity in the Global Economy

This article situates fair trade within the broader landscape of diverse economies theory. It explores how assemblages of objects and practices, including scholarship and teaching, boThenact economy and contain the performative potential to constitute economy as other than itself. I demonstrate how this occurs through three overlapping political realms: ethico-political practices; the politics of performativity; and ontological politics through which the practices of "being in common" hold the performative potential to constitute the economy other than itself. Ultimately, I argue that we should embrace rather than occlude the inevitable tensions that emerge from the suturing of realist analyses and performative politics.