Accounting for Faith: “Fair Trade” Labelling and Marketing the Secular

Focusing on religious identification and interfaith work, what stories become obfuscated by a “fair trade” label? I base my discussion on ethnographic research with Ten Thousand Villages and one of their supplying artisan group, Bunyaad, in Lahore, Pakistan. I explore some of the overlapping but divergent meanings that fair trade may carry for customers and suppliers, with an eye to the challenges of articulating the religious aspects of projects through the standardized label. While supplier groups like Bunyaad do much more than simply prevent coercion in their production chains, their additional projects become difficult to see under “fair trade,” which emphasizes a libertarian perspective on labor economics. From consumer perspective, the label promises ethically neutral transactions, free from exploitation, rather than the ethically good transactions promoted within more insider fair trade communities. Moreover, while more expansive notions of additional good are constrained, religion is entirely excluded by the framing.