GLOBAL CAPITALISM ORGANIZING KNOWLEDGE OF RACE, GENDER AND CLASS: THE CASE OF SOCIALLY RESPONSIBLE COFFEE

What knowledge travels along, and is injected into, the global
commodity chain of coffee, on its path from tree to cup? In this paper I examine
the discourse and imagery employed by the socially responsible niche of the
global coffee market to determine what the final product itself tells us about its
roots, its travels, and the web of capitalist relations of production and
consumption that surrounds it. I analyze the packaging, promotional and
informational materials, and web text of coffee websites and find that the
patterns of the discourse of socially responsible coffee suggest knowledge of
coffee farmers, global capitalism, and the consumer self that pivot around axes
and intersections of race, gender, and class. I argue that the contours of this
discourse serve to rearticulate the dominant relations of global capitalist
production and consumption in everyday life in the United States. Using
racialized and culturally essentialized depictions of coffee farmers and their
locales, I argue the discourse and its imagery rearticulates the established global
division of labor between the global south and north. The discourse and
imagery functions as an extension of colonial paternalist ideology that rests on
the presumed need of coffee farmers, and is juxtaposed against benevolent
consumers, who the discourse describes as socially responsible, ethical beings
who do good by participating in the global system of capitalism.