Selling Coffee to Raise Awareness for Development Policy. The Emerging Fair Trade Market in Western Germany in the 1970s

This article analyzes the emerging Fair Trade market in the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG) in the 1970s. Economic sociology research has proposed that every market actor is generally confronted with central coordination problems. Uncertainties about the values of a product, about its potential success in a competitive market, and about the social risks of an actor with regard to the market exchange create insecurities which generally would seem to make the market exchange unlikely. Nevertheless markets exist and they work. From a sociological point of view, this can be explained by the market being embedded in social networks, institutions and cognitive frames. This article will show that Fair Trade was confronted with these coordination problems in a particular way. It will first focus on the establishment of Fair Trade and the aims associated with it. Its concrete realization will then be explored based on the special example of the first Fair Trade Coffee. Here, the investigation shows that the embeddedness of Fair Trade not only reduced existing uncertainties, but also created new ones. Church networks enabled the establishment of Fair Trade, but the different actors had partially contrasting aims which they all tried to assert. The emphasis of morality and solidarity helped Fair Trade products to carve a niche in the market, but also caused certain difficulties which conventional trade would not have had to deal with. Thus, it has become evident that for a complete understanding the exploration of the development of Fair Trade requires the analysis of its social embeddedness.