Fair Trade, Corporate Accountability and Beyond: Experiments in Globalizing Justice

Labor organizers and scholar, economists and business leaders, political scientists, and others gathered during December 2007, apparently in Melbourne, Australia, to consider fair trade from the perspectives of individual and civic action, responsible consumers and corporations, mobilized workers, and a strengthened and transformed role for the state. Among the topics are fair trade brands and the problem of ownership, voluntarism, corporate responsibility and stakeholder governance in the Australian garment sector, the threat to trade union rights posed by supposed corporate social responsibility, linking workers and campaigning to improve working conditions across the supply chain, the regulatory impact of using public procurement to promote better labor standards in corporate supply chains, and the renewed domestic response to labor abuses in China. Annotation c2010 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

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