Translating Fairtrade. Contact zones and discursive power in the global production network of certified Darjeeling tea

Abstract

The mechanisms through which voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) become effective as means of private governance and how they influence power relations in global production networks (GPNs) of certified goods are not well understood. Focussing on the last mile of VSS’ travel, we scrutinize the discursive dimension of power as it operates through the translation of Fairtrade in a local contact zone, namely Fairtrade trainings with workers at Indian tea plantations. Drawing on insights from postcolonial translation studies and actor-network-theory we show that the ways in which VSS are translated by cultural brokers are critical to processes of (dis)empowerment of workers. By showing how translation informs discursive power, our research offers a novel framework to unpack the power structures associated with private regulation as set within the context of multi-polar governance structures and the postcolonial legacies of places.

1. Introduction

This article explores governance in Global Production Networks (GPNs) by focussing on the discursive dimension of power as it operates through the translation of Voluntary Sustainability Standards (VSS) in GPNs of certified goods. VSS have become an established instrument of private governance in GPNs (Ponte and Gibbon 2005; Coe, Dicken and Hess 2008; Hughes, Wrigley and Buttle 2008). By defining social, ecological, or quality requirements pertaining to production, VSS are an important means for mediating the participation of producers in global trade. Through this, VSS potentially affect power relations in GPNs at different nodes, for instance by empowering workers to argue for higher wages, or by compensating producers’ lower bargaining power by fostering more reliable and equitable trading relations. Yet, VSS’s ability to ‘govern at a distance’ (Rose 1993, 292) faces challenges. This is not only due to complex and multi-polar governance structures in GPNs (Alexander 2022) but also because standards do not work the same way at different places (Luetchford 2011; Dannenberg 2012: 19). Against this backdrop, Hughes, McEwan and Bek (2015) propose a postcolonial perspective on GPNs that is sensitive to place-specific histories of colonial encounter, existing socioeconomic realities and values, and the ways in which these are interconnected with other places (Hughes, McEwan and Bek 2015). Similarly, Bartley (2022) called for research into how transnational private regulation becomes ‘grounded’ in particular contexts and how compliance is constructed through situated practices (Bartley 2022; Graz 2022).

Following these proposals, the aim of this article is to advance understanding of the mechanisms through which VSS become effective through examining how and by whom they are made relevant and imbued with meaning in local contexts, or in other words, how they are translated. Since many VSS focus on work conditions, we inquire especially on the ways in which the translation of VSS informs and influences workers’ positions and subjectivities. Focussing on the last mile of standards’ travel, we aim to unpack the power structures and tensions associated with private regulation as set within the context of multi-polar governance structures and the postcolonial legacies of places.

To analyse this, we focus on one of the most popular VSS: the Fairtrade standard. Fairtrade standards set rules regarding payment of wages, terms of leave, and occupational health and safety (Ponte, Gibbon and Vestergaard 2011). We ask: How is Fairtrade translated at places of commodity production, and how does the way of this translation (re-)define positions and power relations of GPN actors, particularly of workers and companies?

To address this question, we complement GPN research with the concepts of discursive power, translation, and contact-zones. The role of discourses for stabilising GPNs has been highlighted as part of a relational approach to power (Levy 2008; Arnold and Hess 2017). Generally, discursive power describes the ways in which power is reflected in communicative practices that frame and constitute policies, actors, norms and ideas. Discursive power helps actors, to promote or ‘prevent certain demands from becoming political issues’ and to ‘socialize…the public into accepting “truths” about desirable policies and political developments’ (Clapp and Fuchs 2009: 10). Discursive power is central for standardization by shaping the ways in which ‘problems are perceived and talked about’ (Bartley 2022: 189). We contend that translation is a useful concept to understand the workings of discursive power in GPNs. Originally stemming from linguistics, the concept has been broadened in postcolonial studies, geography, or Actor-Network-Theory (ANT) (see Section 3). We understand translation

‘not merely [as] an exercise that consists in finding the equivalent of a given word in another person’s natural language, it also involves bringing two different semantic fields, two different ways of dissecting or of perceiving reality …into relationship with one another.’ (Olivier de Sardan, 2005: 171)

Translation also helps to account for intermediaries who make universal concepts encapsulated in VSS ‘fit’ to local-specific conditions and needs, and for how their practices inform discursive power in GPNs (see also Graz 2022). While the actual application of standards has elsewhere been described through the concepts of adaptation, hybridization, or appropriation (Merry 2006; Monstadt and Schramm 2017; Arnold and Loconto 2020), we here highlight the ways in which concepts are imbued with meaning. To highlight the spatio-temporal situatedness of translation and translators, we describe the site of the encounter between Fairtrade ideas and their target ‘places’ as a ‘contact zone’. These are ‘social spaces, where disparate cultures [or ideas] meet, clash, and grapple with each other, often in highly asymmetrical relations’ (Pratt 1992: 4).

Certainly, there are various transmission mechanisms and contact zones through which ideas associated with Fairtrade are translated from standard setters to producers and consumers (including standards catalogues, audits, conferences). While the interaction of Fairtrade with consumers has been scrutinized (e.g. Varul 2011; Ramamurthy 2012), the translation to producers and especially to workers has so far received scant attention. To address this empirical gap and to illustrate the value of the translation concept in advancing the understanding of power relations in GPNs, we examine one specific contact zone where Fairtrade ideas and workers encounter each other, namely the annual trainings of Fairtrade Premium Committees (FPCs) on certified tea plantations in Darjeeling, India. FPCs are comprised of (s)elected worker representatives that take decisions on the utilization of the Fairtrade premium.

Drawing on qualitative data generated during these trainings, we argue that translation is an important means to establish meaningful relations between distinct elements in the GPN, through specific imaginaries and framings of responsibility. Contrary to Fairtrade’s mission of creating a more just economy, we find that the ways in which Fairtrade is translated here implies an assignment of roles and responsibilities that ultimately contributes to the stabilization of the colonial-era plantation system embedded in an uneven global economy. This example illustrates that translation at contact zones is critical to the process of (dis)empowerment of workers and companies via Fairtrade.

Conceptually, we contribute to understanding power and governance in GPNs by highlighting the importance of translation as a way to mobilize discursive power and to establish relations within and between nodes of the GPN. While we do not aim to examine power dynamics of the entire GPN for Fairtrade certified tea, we propose that highlighting the dynamics at a particular node (the FPC training) helps uncover dynamics of GPN construction pertaining to the interface between local contexts and attempts at global governance through standards.

This article proceeds as follows: In Section 2, we contextualize our research with a view on governance and power in GVC/GPN literature. In Section 3, we introduce the framework of ‘power as translation’ that combines Actor Network Theory (ANT) and postcolonial translation studies. Section 4 introduces Fairtrade, Section 5 presents the methods for the empirical case study before Section 6 analyses the ways in which Fairtrade ideas are translated in FPC trainings in Darjeeling. Section 7 discusses how discursive power informs power relations in GPNs and contextualize this with a view on postcolonial processes. We conclude with an evaluation of the conceptual framework and outlook on future research.

2. Power and governance in GPNs and GVCs

Our research links to debates on relational power and governance in GPNs (Arnold and Hess 2017; Raj-Reichert 2020) that we connect to considerations of multi-polar governance and power in GVCs (Ponte and Sturgeon 2014; Dallas, Ponte and Sturgeon 2019; Grabs and Ponte 2019). We prioritize a GPN framework since it helps us highlighting the roles of non-firm actors (like certifiers), the embeddedness of relations, and the activities shaping relations between distinct elements of the network (Henderson et al. 2002; Coe, Dicken and Hess 2008). We consider the GPN for certified Darjeeling orthodox tea to be comprised of the various actors and elements involved in the production, trade, marketing, and regulation of Fairtrade orthodox tea from Darjeeling (including companies, workers, traders, VSS, Fairtrade representatives, and others). While keeping differences in mind, GVC’s widened interest in non-coercive forms of power beyond the lead-firm, and the transition from dyadic towards multi-polar understandings as detailed below makes it useful to bring both GPN and GVC approaches into dialogue. We define GPN governance as ‘the rules, institutions, and norms that channel and constrain economic activity and its impacts’ (Levy 2008: 944), including regulation and coordination of supply chains. We now explain how a relational approach to power aids understanding of other forms of power, and then propose translation as a mechanism that links micro- and meso-levels of the network.

Instead of seeing power as something that a person or company possesses (for instance, the power of a lead-firm to direct chain governance), relational approaches emphasize how power emerges ‘as an effect and outcome of social interactions or relationships’ (Raj-Reichert 2020: 654). Seen this way, power is dynamic, it flows and connects geographically distinct sites. Similarly,—going beyond former conceptualizations of power in GPNs as corporate, institutional or collective power (see Coe, Dicken and Hess 2008: 289)—Arnold and Hess (2017: 2190) see power as an ‘effect of social interactions, discourses and material relations holding a network … together’. So understood, power needs to be re-produced, and can ‘vanish’ when connections are severed. Raj-Reichert (2020) distinguishes different modes of relational power (authority, domination and persuasion) that are mobilized through different power resources (knowledge, information, ideas, people, money) that flow between nodes of the network. Drawing on this, we regard discursive power as a relational form of power that works through communication, the framing of issues, and of subjectivities.

The concept of relational discursive power provides a useful lens to understand how other forms of power including subtle, hidden or even unintentional forms of power beyond the coercive power of lead-firms (Dallas, Ponte and Sturgeon 2019) are informed by communicative practices. Following Dallas, Ponte and Sturgeon (2019), we see VSS as an institutional form of power embodied through standard setters and audits. A relational-discursive understanding of power highlights how such institutional power emerges as a network effect. We consider translation as a central practice through which institutional frameworks such as those embodied in VSS are enacted and made effective in networks (see also López 2021).

Besides helping decipher the working of power at specific nodes of a network, the focus on translation can also deepen our understanding of the mechanisms that link different nodes of a network and how the establishment of relations allows standards to travel. Ponte and Sturgeon (2014) draw attention to the ways in which the macro-level of overall governance is influenced by the meso-level of linkage mechanisms between nodes and the micro level of conventions at different nodes. Our research illustrates how scrutinizing translation processes at one node (tea plantation) helps understanding relations to other nodes (to Fairtrade, to companies, buyers).

By highlighting the centrality of translation our approach advances understandings of power in GPNs. We show how discursive power as relational power emerges through translation as ideas and knowledge are transformed and communicated across different contexts and actors, to forge relations at and between nodes of the GPN towards certain ends.

3. Translation, intermediaries, and networks

To scrutinize the ways in which VSS inform power relations in GPNs, and to deepen our understanding of the relations between translation and discursive power we suggest a ‘power as translation’ framework which combines insights from postcolonial translation studies (e.g. Said 1983; Behrends, Park and Rottenburg 2014; Monstadt and Schramm 2017) and ANT.

Contrary to diffusionist arguments expressing an imagination of knowledge ‘expanding’ from Europe to other countries, postcolonial approaches see translation as a reciprocal and transformative process and social practice that affects all partners involved (Bachmann-Medick 2009: 7). Translation is never unidirectional but understood as ‘a place where cultures merge and create new spaces’ (Wolf 2002: 186), where new interpretations of reality are designed, offered, rejected, or defended. This space can be described as a ‘contact zone’ or as ‘interstitial’ (Bachmann-Medick 2009: 9), being embedded in and influenced by different ontological and epistemic orders, values and histories¹. Here, target groups can creatively and deliberately mistranslate, alienate, or undermine translated objects (Wolf 2002) and thereby initiate or hinder change (Pratt 1992; Behrends, Park and Rottenburg 2014; Monstadt and Schramm 2017). The idea of the ‘contact zone’ is central to our analysis since it presents a concrete site where translations take place and can be observed.

In these contact zones, intermediary actors take a central role. As ‘cultural brokers’ (Bachmann-Medick 2013: 188) they negotiate and mediate between different types of knowledge, systems of meanings, interests and social actors (Olivier de Sardan 2005; Merry 2006: 39). By knowing ‘both the codes’ translators can powerfully channel the flow of information and manipulate others (Merry 2006: 40) while being either ‘faithful’ to the original or favouring one side or the other (Gregory et al. 2009: 96). Since translations serve the interest of specific groups, translations are a means of power (Wolf 2002; Munday 2016: 224). Applied to VSS, this means that actors situated in the Global South do not ‘passively embrac[e] Northern values’ but rather can ‘resist and even subvert’ them (Rajão, Duque and De’ 2014: 770). Also, economic geographers have pointed at the key role of intermediary actors in adapting and transmitting standards to local contexts (Dannenberg 2012; McConway and Moore 2015; Koenig-Archibugi and Macdonald 2017) and to ‘connect multiple actors’ in GPNs (Raj-Reichert 2020: 655). Soundararajan and Brammer (2018), highlight how sub-suppliers’ responses to sustainability standards depend on the ways in which perceptions of ‘fairness’ are framed by intermediaries. Herman (2019: 51) points at the role of local intermediaries in ‘catalyzing and curtailing possibilities for Fairtrade practices’.

Yet, postcolonial theory reminds us that translators are not always free to decide how to translate; rather they are conditioned by structural constraints such as social institutions, norms, and ideologies (Wolf 2007). Translations are enshrined by uneven power-relations, coercion, and inequality (Pratt 1992: 6, 7).

But how exactly do translations and intermediary actors lead to the creation of a network, and through what communicative means can translators assign roles to persons and objects, and define their relations to each other? Insights from ANT help answering these questions. Notably, even though the GPN concept is inspired by ANT (Hess and Yeung 2006), the latter’s translation concept has—to our knowledge—so far not been applied to GPNs.

In his discussion of the emergence of an actor-network, Callon (1986) specified four moments that constitute overlapping phases of translation: problematization, interessement, enrolment, and mobilization. For our analysis of discursive power and standards’ transmission through communicative processes at the local level, the first two phases are important.² Problematization describes the process of defining a shared problem, identifying actors to get involved, and establishing their identities and links between them. Problematization convinces actors of what they need to do and whom they have to work with to solve the problem (Callon 1986: 61). During interessement, desired ties between those who shall join the network are stabilized, roles are imposed. This works through what Callon (1986: 61) termed ‘lock[ing them] into place’ and shielding them from other ‘entities’ (Callon 1986: 63) to strengthen their associations and alliances inside the desired network. So understood, translation works through a negotiation and delimitation of actors’ identities and their relations which affects their ‘margins of manoeuvre’ (Callon 1986: 59). This explains how translation is associated with power relations, since it leads to a ‘situation in which certain entities control others’ (Callon 1986: 75), be it by becoming spokespersons and/or by displacing their roles, identities, and relations. Thus, translation is not only about adjusting different interpretations of concepts but also about creating coherence between interests and interpretations of reality (Best and Walters 2013: 333).

ANT explicates how discursive power works through the interlinked processes of problematization and interessement. The postcolonial translation concept highlights how these processes are always also shaped by the present and historic context, existing power relations, expectations, and actors’ motivations. In other words, the directions and effects of discursive power on the network will vary depending on the context and the dynamics in the contact-zone in which translations take place.

To understand how actors are translated into the GPN, our analysis focuses at one node at the micro scale, namely Fairtrade Premium Committee trainings at Indian tea plantations, where Fairtrade trainer and workers meet. While this is not the only site in GPNs where translation occurs, this focus illustrates the workings and effects of translation at the last mile of standards implementation. More precisely, we highlight how the trainer through problematization and interessement promoted a specific interpretation of Fairtrade ideas that rendered Fairtrade as the indispensable route to a solution.

4. Fairtrade: meanings and principles

Fair trade is a global initiative that aims at greater equity in international trade, and at empowering producers in the Global South by fostering their sustainable livelihoods and development opportunities through a set of instruments that ensure a ‘fairer’ share of benefits and better working conditions (International Fair Trade Charter 2018). Originally, fair trade emerged from solidarity initiatives that evolved during the 1960s into a larger social movement criticizing global inequality and poverty. Guided by moral values of social and environmental justice, equity and sustainability the fair trade movement aims at a transformation of the profit-oriented economy by establishing new GPNs that function outside of the market logic. While earlier fair trade initiatives continue to exist in alternatives niches, the introduction of a product certification system in the late 1980s and the subsequent establishment of Fairtrade International (FI) in 1997 mark a transition towards the mass-market since now labelled goods could be sold in conventional supermarkets. While sharing values of fairness and justice, FI is distinct from other fair trading organizations. While other alternative trading organizations see fair trade as solely grounded in the collaboration with small-scale farmers and cooperatives, from 1993 onwards Transfair Germany, one of the later founding members of Fairtrade International, expanded its program to tea plantations in India, thereby opening Fairtrade for so-called ‘hired labour’ (HL). This has been criticized for many reasons (see Renard and Pérez-Grovas 2007; Makita 2012; Besky 2013; Raynolds 2017). Important is that this market expansion confronted Fairtrade with the challenge to maintain its values of justice and fairness while accounting for demands of the market concerning competition, prices, and quality (Kister and Wenner 2023).

Fairtrade established a range of instruments to achieve its aims mostly through guaranteed minimum prices to producers, the provision of a Fairtrade premium to support developmental projects of producers (such as trainings, scholarships, infrastructure), and most recently the promotion of living-wages/incomes for producers. These instruments are codified in a set of standards that producers, traders, and retailers are obliged to comply with in order to get certified, and be allowed to sell under the Fairtrade-label.

Also within FI, fair trade ideas and instruments are discussed. For instance, the standards and pricing committee leads the process of revising standards (and minimum prices) every five years based on discussions with various stakeholders including scientists, representatives from companies, regional Fairtrade networks, and workers (Fairtrade International 2020). Despite efforts to better include workers into these negotiations, Bennett (2015) notes that true representation still remains a major obstacle for a more inclusive governance structure. This underscores the importance of the FPC as a contact zone between Fairtrade and producers’ representatives.

For ‘hired labour’ on plantations, Fairtrade standards aim at improving the terms of employment through means such as working contracts, sick or maternity leave, and better remuneration. Certification requirements also mention worker empowerment which is understood as ‘the expansion of assets and capabilities of people to participate in, negotiate with, influence, control and hold accountable the institutions that affect their lives’ (Fairtrade International 2016: 9). At the local level, empowerment includes support for (building) organizations like trade unions, help for workers to improve their negotiation position, and to achieve economic stability (Fairtrade International 2016: 8). Contrary to small-scale farmers and cooperatives, in the HL sector companies act as gatekeepers since they decide whether to apply for certification and pay the annual fee. Lacking other representative bodies, each certified plantation must form an FPC. FPCs are considered part of workers’ empowerment since they enable them to invest the premium money according to their own, ‘democratically-agreed priorities’ (Fairtrade International 2016: 11). FPCs are the major forum where a Fairtrade representative directly interacts with workers.

5. Methods

The data of our qualitative inquiries are audio recordings and participant observation of three trainings conducted by a Fairtrade consultant (the trainer) with workers’ representatives of five different FPCs in 2017. All plantations belonged to the same tea company which had been engaged with Fairtrade/Transfair Germany ever since certification started in Darjeeling. In addition, Andri Heidler conducted informal interviews while accompanying the trainer, and was present when plantation management and the trainer met. Key informant interviews with two plantation managers, two company managers, and representatives of the Darjeeling Tea Association and the Tea Board of India helped to contextualize Fairtrade in the wider economy. To deepen these insights through workers’ views, the data is complemented by Miriam Wenner’s ethnographic observations (including twenty-six informal interviews and nine group discussions with workers and supervisors) from stays at four Darjeeling tea plantations, two of which were certified, where she lived and worked alongside labourers for several months between 2012 and 2017. In 2024, a follow-up interview with the trainer helped to clarify research findings.

Our positionality as white researchers from tea importing countries warrants consideration. To avoid being seen as international tea traders we were introduced as researchers interested in tea and Fairtrade. Despite participating in the trainings we did not have the impression that they were staged to convince us of the benefits of Fairtrade, although, of course, we cannot say how trainings without our presence may have been different.

The Nepali audio data was transcribed and translated into English by a native speaker, wherein some sections were paraphrased. Afterwards, Miriam Wenner edited, and when necessary, revised the material by filling in gaps and adding the original Nepali terms to allow a closer understanding of the expressions used for certain aspects. This way, we have tried to make sure that in terms of content our translation is ‘correct’ and does not stray too far from the original Nepali, although we acknowledge that some information is lost by working with the English text.

Our analysis is based on the discourse-theoretical assumption that language is a means to construct shared orders of knowledge by establishing connections between meanings, material practices and identities (Glasze and Mattissek 2009: 26–27). Language is both, a medium for agency and a means to perpetuate structural power (Faulconbridge 2012: 743). Following discourse analysis in the tradition of Keller’s sociology-of-knowledge (Keller, 2010), we focus on the processes of the social construction of structures of meaning and action, while emphasizing the role of actors in the production and reception of discourses.

To understand how power relations are affected by the ways in which knowledge about Fairtrade, the functioning of the plantation, the role of workers and tea more generally is generated and contextualized, we conducted a qualitative content analysis using MAXQDA software. We combined inductive and deductive coding focussed at the micro-level of the training data. The analysis was done separately for workers and the trainers’ contributions, to reveal possible differences between functional groups present in the training, and to account for both the ‘production’ and the ‘reception’ sites of translation strategies (see Faulconbridge 2012: 746). The contextual interviews allowed for the triangulation of findings from the micro analysis.

Categories which emerged from inductive coding included ‘meanings of Fairtrade’ (e.g. aims, achievements, alternative, responsibility, etc.), ‘benefits of Fairtrade’ (e.g. economic stability, premium, etc.), ‘problems of the tea economy’ (e.g. poverty, power, prices), or ‘values’ (e.g. inclusion, honesty, cooperation, etc.), besides others. In a second step, we summarized the statements category-wise, and related the emerging narratives to the first two phases of the translation processes. The narratives that established a shared understanding of the problems of tea workers and the tea economy (e.g. ‘problems of the tea economy’), and proposed solutions to these (e.g. ‘meanings’ and ‘benefits of Fairtrade’), were attributed to problematization; statements that defined the roles and responsibilities of involved actors (e.g. ‘responsibility of workers’ and ‘customers’) and their relations to each other (e.g. ‘relations workers-company’) to interessement. These aspects reflect dimensions of a critical discourse analysis which inquiries into the formation of identities; relations, connections between objects; politics and knowledge (Gee 2011: 121–2). In addition, code-frequency, and -proximity-analyses (Armborst 2017) with MAXQDA helped to identify narrative connections between topics, and to highlight which topics were dominant or marginalized.

Even though our small data set limits wider generalizability beyond the confines of Fairtrade certified tea plantations in Darjeeling, it has sufficient depth to delve into the intricacies of translation processes in one specific context. While the exact contents of translation might differ depending on different sites or nodes of GPNs, our data set illustrates that attention to translation, intermediaries and contact zones is an important component for understanding how and where discursive power emerges in GPNs.

6. Translating Fairtrade in Darjeeling

6.1 The context—Darjeeling tea

Our research draws on a case study of certified tea from Darjeeling, India. India is the second largest producer of tea globally, and the world’s fourth largest exporter by volume. Around 1.1 million persons are permanently employed in the tea economy, making it the second largest employer in the organized sector in the country. Darjeeling accounts for less than 1 per cent of tea produced in India but given its high quality, in 2022 around 50 percent of the 6.93 million kg tea produced was exported (TBI 2023; The Wire 2023). Plantation workers are Indian nationals and mostly ethnic Nepalis whose ancestors had migrated from present-day Nepal during the colonial time.

Tea plantations in India are criticized for the payment of low wages (below minimum wages), or the (partial) violation of workers’ legal entitlements; violations include the irregular payment of wages, no provision of pensions, withholding bonuses, lacking or poor housing, inadequate water access and lack of access to education (Luig 2019). In the worst cases plantations are shut-down, leaving workers without their usual means of livelihood (Banerji et al. 2022). Companies point at the relatively high cost of production, low tea prices, and low productivity to justify these violations. Non-cash elements like food rations, provident fund, or bonuses, account for about half of the ‘wages’ (Saha, Bhue and Singha 2019: 41). In Darjeeling, the sale of cheaper tea from Nepal under the Darjeeling label, political turmoil, and out-migration of workers, also pose challenges to the viability of the tea economy. These factors combine to shape a challenging context that Fairtrade, through its certification mechanism, can only address to a certain degree. Fairtrade acknowledges that the effects of its instruments are influenced by these contextual factors (Fairtrade International 2016: 12).

The Fairtrade certification of tea plantations in Darjeeling began in 1993. At the time of data generation in January 2017, forty-eight of the eighty-seven plantations in Darjeeling were certified by Fairtrade. Certification is dependent on the outcome of an annual audit that verifies compliance based on checklists and on-site inspections that include interviews with workers (FLO-CERT 2024). Evaluations doubt Fairtrade’s impact on plantation working conditions as companies that already follow the national labour laws are more likely to get certified (Luig 2019). Also, the sum of premium money is dependent on the actual sales of tea under the label but in 2017 certified plantations in India sold less than 10 per cent (2.422 MT) of their tea (24.465 MT) through Fairtrade channels (Fairtrade International 2024).³ With workers’ knowledge of Fairtrade limited (see Makita 2012; Besky 2013; Siegmann 2023), they encounter Fairtrade mostly through the premium money (see Section 6.3). This underlines the importance of the FPC training as a contact zone.

6.2 The contact zone

The concept of the contact zone demands attention to the persons meeting there, their relations to each other, and to political, historical, and economic context. We elaborate on these factors in more detail in Section 7.1, and here describe the setting of the FPC trainings. The observed trainings were led by a consultant of the Fairtrade network of Asia and Pacific producers (NAPP) who at the time was the only person facilitating trainings in North and Northeast India. It is therefore reasonable to assume other trainings resemble the ones we observed. The trainer shared that a main motivation of his engagement with Fairtrade was to get access to the communities living on tea plantations in order to improve their situation. He shared that in his previous engagement as a social worker for a Christian church he was often denied access to plantation workers by management (interview, 10 January 2017).

All trainings took place at central locations of the tea plantations, and lasted for 2–3 h. The training brought together persons from different levels of the plantation hierarchy, whose relations are shaped by dependencies and power differentials. In addition to members of the FPCs, besides ourselves, the male trainer and his trainee, there was also a male NAPP board member (representing tea producers) who used to be on the board of directors of the plantation company. Workers’ representatives seemed to know him and were aware of his position. Most of the participants were plantation workers (of all genders) who together with the manager and the assistant-managers⁴ (all men) of the plantation, formed the FPC. The NAPP/company representative did not intervene in the training, except for speaking a few words of welcome and farewell. All participants spoke Nepali and acted respectfully with each other. Both authors were invited to join small-group discussions.

All trainings proceeded along a similar agenda. With workers already waiting, the trainer entered the meeting hall together with managers and the NAPP representative. Initially they sat down at the front desk. After welcoming words, the trainer changed the setting into a circle, with the company representative remaining at the front desk alone. There was a warm-up session where FPC members introduced each other. The trainer then requested participants to form groups of around five to six persons to discuss ‘What is Fairtrade?’, and ‘Why Fairtrade?’ The results of their deliberations were presented to the audience. The discussion was concluded with a speech by the trainer on the ‘what’ and ‘why’ of Fairtrade and followed by a wrap-up session where each of the FPC members briefly shared what they had learned from the training. The end of the training was declared by the NAPP representative and all participants had lunch together.

The trainer emphasized that, in the past, plantation owners sought to dictate and censor his speech. They insisted that he sit at the front desk with managers. Pointing at the now changed set-up, he underscored the success he saw in bringing about a ‘cultural change’ on the plantations (interview, 6 January 2017).

6.3 Translations of Fairtrade

We now describe the translation of Fairtrade by summarizing the trainer’s narrative and FPC members’ statements during the training. Together, these narratives transmit meanings and aims of Fairtrade, and assign specific roles to different stakeholders, including companies and consumers, although the latter were not participating in the training. Importantly, workers’ knowledge is not only shaped by earlier trainings but also by their practical experiences with the Fairtrade premium. We did not note major differences in their statements prior and after the trainer’s speech. However, their knowledge appeared uneven, depending on whether they had attended previous FPC trainings or were new members. Our own assumptions about Fairtrade’s meanings are mainly informed by Fairtrade’s Theory of Change (Fairtrade International 2016), its Global Strategy (Fairtrade International 2021b), and information from the FI website.

6.3.1 Problematization

To explain Fairtrade’s idea and mission, the trainer established a distinction between what he called an ‘earlier business model’ and an ‘alternative’ model, namely Fairtrade. A main message was that the conventional business model was not sustainable since it was based on the exploitation of workers and nature. Due to the insufficient prices paid for tea by buyers, workers could neither achieve wages sufficient to cover their needs nor realize other entitlements. To stop outmigration, plantation labour had to be made more attractive by providing adequate wages, facilities, health care and security. The trainer assigned responsibility for these problems to international buyers and middlemen, asserting that their underpayment for the product left companies unable to adequately compensate workers. This narrative was echoed in workers’ statements. The trainer addressed the poor representation of workers by union leaders only in one training, expressing his opinion that they were not truly representing labour issues.

The possible responsibility of the plantation companies or the government for the problems was not discussed. Rather, in the trainer’s narrative, companies along with their workers were framed as victims exposed to low international prices and greedy buyers.

Against this backdrop, the trainer said Fairtrade was created as an ‘alternative’ to sustain the tea plantation. To characterize this ‘alternative’ (vaikalpika, Nepali), he used the term ‘swaccha vyapar’ (Nepali), which literally translates as ‘clean trade’.⁵ He described different facets of ‘swaccha vyapar’ that reflect Fairtrade’s principles of fair prices, sustainable development, and empowerment. ‘Swaccha vyapar’ means that workers receive adequate wages and enjoy good work conditions in terms of safety, benefits, and health. Workers should work on the plantation out of free choice and not out of fear. The trainer also placed Fairtrade in the context of sustainable development. While he emphasized sustainability in terms of environmental care and inclusive community development, a key message conveyed was that Fairtrade played a crucial role in motivating workers to stay at the plantations. The higher prices facilitated by Fairtrade allowed companies to provide essential facilities, including wages, pension, and health benefits, thereby ensuring the stability of the tea industry and the market. In sum, the trainer constructed a narrative of crisis that described the problem of the tea economy as a shared problem of workers, managers, and companies, and that established Fairtrade as the ‘saviour’ of a sick and crisis-ridden tea industry. This indicates the attempt to portray FT as indispensable to solve the crisis.

This narrative of economic continuity related to fair prices and the premium is clearly reflected in workers’ statements. They saw Fairtrade as providing ‘security’ and, as one worker put it ‘I have understood that our tea gardens cannot run without Fairtrade’ (training 2). Fairtrade was perceived as a means of keeping ‘workers motivated’ (training 1). It ‘reduces tension’ (training 3) by ensuring timely provision of benefits and salaries to workers. Fairtrade was also seen as reducing outmigration from the plantations, ultimately contributing to the sustainability of the tea plantation and the tea industry as a whole:

‘We need Fairtrade to safe our gardens. It is only when there is a garden that we can exist and same is for the owners…. Fairtrade ensures the production and the sustenance of the garden and that is why we need Fairtrade.’ (training 1)

This interpretation of sustainability as economic continuity resembles Loconto’s (2014) finding that on certified tea plantations in Tanzania sustainability standards were reconfigured ‘around the sustainability of the enterprise’ (Rajão, Duque and De’ 2014: 769). Similarly, workers in our case associated the premium money and development with Fairtrade, both, prior and after the trainer’s speech. This becomes visible by the frequent proximity of the codes ‘development’ and ‘clean’ or ‘alternative business’, and the relatively high frequency of the words ‘development’ and ‘premium’ (see Fig. 1).

For workers, the premium enabled investments for the social and economic ‘upliftment’ of families, e.g. through scholarships, tuition fees, medical facilities/camps, or infrastructure. While workers frequently mentioned premiums, development, and prices, the topic of wages was less frequently mentioned, and the word ‘union’ appeared only once (see Fig. 1). Thus, the problematization of Fairtrade is done in a way that positions workers as problem solvers alongside the companies extracting profits from them.

6.3.2 Interessement

We now analyse the process of ‘interessement’ by examining how the trainer specified the different roles that workers, companies, international buyers and customers should play in swachha vyapar, and how workers themselves described their roles. We also ask how identities were forged by shielding participants from other entities considered external to the desired network. As the trainer explained, ‘swaccha vyapar’ relies on a specific kind of relationship between producers and consumers. Like a ‘partnership’ (trainer) between husband and wife, the relation between producers and consumers should be based on trust, love, respect, and mutual support. This model assigns responsibility to both, consumers and producers. While consumers anticipate receiving good quality tea at a fair price, producers, in turn, expect consumers to pay a price that covers production costs, sustains the livelihoods of workers, and is agreed upon by all stakeholders (reflecting the concept of a 'fair price'). This way, customers ensure producers’ well-being and development. The trainer stressed that in return for this, the producers are responsible for maintaining the supply of good quality tea in a sustainable manner since otherwise the consumers would lose their trust in Fairtrade. In other words, according to this narrative workers receive a benefit in return for the continuous supply of good quality tea and not because the company complies to Fairtrade standards.

This assumption that the premium money was provided by customers in return for good quality tea, ‘so that we become happy and produce even more’ (worker, training 2), is clearly reflected in this statement of a worker:

‘Fairtrade monitors the garden in such a way that the producers get their cost of production and also the consumers receive quality product for a fair price. When the consumers are content with the product and want the supply to remain constant then they send us the premium price so that we can support ourselves further.’ (training 1)

Workers thought it was their responsibility to act as responsible producers: ‘Fairtrade is … about how sincerely we work and live by our responsibility as producers and they as consumers’ (training 1). At the same time, workers expect consumers to take care of the producers to secure them from ‘unwanted exploitation’ (training 1), expressing a relation of dependency between themselves and consumers. Only once one worker said that Fairtrade was important since it required companies to follow rules and regulations (training 1). This observation resembles workers’ statements from Siegmann’s (2023) study of Fairtrade tea plantations in Sri Lanka and India, where she found that ‘South Asia tea plantation workers widely understand certification as a reward for higher quality tea rather than as verifying decent labor conditions’ (2022: 3).

Further, the trainer stressed that ‘swaccha vyapar’ requires workers to be empowered, and a re-calibration of the relations between workers and management from one based on fear to one based on trust:

‘The workers should not be afraid of anybody! Because the kind of relationship that is there between workers and manager … is based on fear. But it needs to be based on trust. Because if we attend work out of fear then we might leave. But here we try to come close through Fairtrade.’ (trainer, training 2)

In one training, the trainer suggested that workers, management, and Fairtrade were part of the ‘same team’ aiming at sustaining the plantation; thus, everybody’s opinions and concerns should be valued. Workers, too, described their relationship with the company and management in terms of ‘harmony’ and indicated that through Fairtrade they were less afraid of the management and that Fairtrade helped to break the ‘colonial type of rule’ (training 3).

The trainer described the role of the FPC not only as instrumental for workers’ empowerment, since here workers could learn and practice to speak out in front of the management. More prominently, he underpinned the FPC’s responsibility for using the Fairtrade premium money for inclusive development and for the benefit of the entire community, drawing a vision of society where all members have equal opportunities. Accordingly, the FPCs needed to work in an honest and transparent way. Here, the normative underpinning of Fairtrade became visible, with an emphasis on values like social inclusion, honesty, and transparency.

Notably, during training, workers shared that they indeed felt empowered through their participation in the FPC, since they learned how to voice their opinions before an authority and gained confidence. Fairtrade was also mentioned as promoting the inclusion of women.

The trainer also described empowered workers as those who are able to decide on the value of their labour (i.e. their wages), and suggested that they take ‘appropriate action’ in a ‘swachha way’ by forming a workers’ organizations that can make claims towards the company:

‘If you agree to the ‘swaccha vyapar’ principle, you can make a workers’ organisation and through this organisation talk to the company so that there is a continuous discussion about what you should get … But the decision making should not lie only with the leaders, rather all the workers should have information about all that happens.’ (trainer, training 1)

In this and other quotes, the trainer suggested that it was the workers’ responsibility to inquire and ask about their legal entitlements, yet, he gave no details about further actions. While in the trainers’ narrative, Fairtrade is there to help oppressed workers not only by channelling the ‘premium’ money for developmental projects or through minimum prices but also through creating an open space for debate, he did not explain to what extent Fairtrade and its certification body FLO-CERT GmbH are responsible for securing workers’ legal benefits on the plantation via standards and audits. By contrast, the topic of unions was only raised once, when the trainer told workers to inquire about their activities. This indicates a shielding of unions and associated politics from the desired Fairtrade network. Also, wages did not figure as an important topic as indicated in the low frequency of the words ‘wage’ and ‘unions’ in the two fully transcribed trainings (see Fig. 1). We discuss possible reasons for the neglect of unions in Section 7.1.

7. Discussion

Our analysis of FPC trainings illuminates how translation works as a powerful social ordering practice that promotes specific relations between actors, objects, and ideas. We now highlight how translation is shaped by the context in which it is practiced and then discuss how it shapes power-relations in the GPN.

7.1 Translation in context

Translations of Fairtrade do not happen in empty space. A postcolonial perspective reminds us that the FPC is a contact zone characterized by the intersection of different logics, histories, politics, and power-relations. These shape the positionalities, expectations and possibilities of the persons meeting. For instance, workers’ position in the plantation hierarchy is not only embedded in patron-client relations with the management (Makita 2012) but also reflective of their historic political and economic marginalization as Indian Nepalis, an ethnic minority (Besky 2015). This overlap of ethnic and labour identities (Besky 2015) combines with gendered occupational hierarchies that pit workers at different positions (management, supervisors, tea pluckers) against each other (Khawas 2022; Raj 2022). Very often, managers stem from a different, ethnic background, reflecting the interplay between ethnic identity and occupational hierarchy. All this is embedded within the broader, political economy where the export orientation exposes plantations to price fluctuations, global competition, requiring even cheaper production (Raj 2022: 8; Siegmann 2023).

The trainer needs to mediate between these different logics, positionalities, and needs, acting as a nodal point enrolling actors, ideas, and objects into the network. His position is largely defined by being a representative of Fairtrade, which gives him access to workers and the authority to speak on behalf of Fairtrade. However, he described his ability to move between the ‘lines' as limited. For instance, he recited earlier overnight stays on plantations and in-depth exchanges with workers that was frowned upon by management (interview, 9 January 2017). Further, expressing fears of violent oppression, the trainer explained that encouragement of forceful protests could backfire on workers since companies might shut operations (interview, 21 September 2024). Being aware of these limitations, the trainer stressed that he needed to relate to the ‘indigenous reality’ to explain topics related to rights and empowerment. He described this as a gradual movement becoming visible in qualitative improvements related to workers’ self-confidence and management’s increasing openness to FT’s approach (interview, 21 September 2024). This ‘tactful approach’ (Raj 2022: 8; Siegmann 2023) aimed at avoiding conflicts with companies explains why contentious issues like wages, unions, or protests were excluded from this contact zone. Thus, workers’ persisting dependencies on the management, paired with Fairtrade’s need to collaborate with companies create a liminal space for the trainer. The trainer must walk the thin line between fostering workers’ empowerment and accounting for companies’ economic interests. This navigation explains part of the ambivalence in translation.

Sensitivity to the local power dynamics becomes also visible in the lacking attention and inclusion of unions. While FI advocates for the strengthening of unions, in the case of Darjeeling the NAPP representative felt that unions’ participation would make FPCs vulnerable to party-political influence and capture. Reduced union influence thus ensures the ‘non-political’ character of FPCs (interview, 7 January 2017). This view is shared by workers who, in interviews with Miriam Wenner blamed them for collaborating with the management for personal benefit instead of forwarding workers’ demands.

This attention to local context was, however, only partial. For instance, the training provided no space for workers to share their own visions of justice. Even though not intended, the observed trainings suggest that workers are in the need of being trained about what ‘fair’ trade or ‘good’ labour would mean while not reflecting their understandings of justice (Besky 2015; Ruwanpuray 2016). This is surprising when considering the history of labour struggles at Darjeeling plantations that used to be a stronghold of the Communist party until the 1980s. In 1955, workers had successfully fought for the implementation of labour rights (Sharma 2018). From the 1980s onwards, workers’ demands for justice became increasingly voiced in form of regional ethnic autonomy (Chettri 2013). Against this backdrop, organizations like Fairtrade face the challenge of matching their concept with an adequate vernacular expression that not only reflects a fuller meaning of ‘fair trade’ (with its universal vision of justice) but also workers’ understandings of justice in and beyond the plantation. Our case suggests that ‘clean trade’ (swaccha vyapar) as a localized version of Fairtrade embodies a rather depoliticized version of ‘fairness’ that is not only reflective of the tensions between Fairtrade’s moral aims (justice, fairness, transparency) and the realities of the (global) economy, but also of the trajectories of the colonial plantation system with its associated ethnic and gender-based marginalization, continuing political powerlessness, and the calls for redistribution and change. By shaping the possibilities to imagine Fairtrade on the plantation, the context of the contact zone informs power relations in the GPN for certified tea, as we discuss now.

7.2 Translation and power in GPN

While there are several factors and mechanisms such as premium and audits that shape the actual effects of Fairtrade on plantations, our analysis demonstrates how translation effects power relations between workers and management. This becomes evident in the ways in which discursive power influences workers’ agency and bargaining power through influencing their preferences and agendas. Preference-shaping power describes the ability to shape the preferences of the less powerful (i.e. workers) to make them conform to the interests of the more powerful (i.e. companies) (Dallas, Ponte and Sturgeon 2019: 672). We see resemblance to this concept in the processes of problematization and interessement, whereby the trainer framed the problems of the tea economy in a way that identified international buyers and brokers as culprits, while describing both workers and companies as victims who, when joining Fairtrade, can safe their plantation. Through the framing of the issues, and creating a ‘partnership’ metaphor for relations between workers and customers, workers’ preferences are shaped in a way that favours harmony in industrial relations. Although the trainer stressed that workers in Fairtrade need to be ‘empowered’, he emphasized that they should not engage in forceful struggles for higher wages but rather continue producing tea to maintain Fairtrade certification and safe their plantation.

This framing relates to agenda-setting power, namely actors’ successful removal of ‘contentious issues from the realm of decision-making’ (Dallas, Ponte and Sturgeon 2019: 672). In the trainers’ narrative, the Fairtrade GPN works well if all take on their assigned roles. Workers’ legal entitlements, complaint mechanisms, and the Fairtrade HL-standards were not discussed in the observed trainings although such information could increase workers’ ability to make claims towards their company.⁶ The lacking problematization of contentious issues like wages, unions, and strikes reflects a process of shielding workers from these other entities’ influences as part of the interessement. By contrast, transactions with an emotional valence in the form of trust, respect, mutual support, good quality tea for a fair price, sustainable development, and premium became elements stabilizing the Fairtrade network. Against this backdrop it is not surprising that workers continue to associate Fairtrade mainly with the premium and not with labour rights or higher wages. Similarly, Herman (2019: 56) in her study on Chilean Fairtrade wine finds that ‘Fairtrade’s abstract discourses of solidarity and sustainability are only given meaning through their tangible impacts on the producers themselves’.

Preference-shaping and agenda-setting power can influence labour agency by shaping workers’ perceptions of the justification of their own positions. This effects workers’ bargaining power since the ways in which Fairtrade was translated tend to strengthen the position of companies because they were not identified as sharing part of the responsibility for workers’ misery. Also, the call for ‘harmony’ between workers, management and company gives a twist to workers’ enrolment as ‘empowered’ actor. Even though workers perceived an increased empowerment and self-confidence through their involvement with the FPC, and despite Fairtrade being framed as a space for deliberation, this empowerment stops short at the point where workers might consider more radical methods that could disrupt ‘harmony’. Also, workers’ seeming belief that benefits like the premium are conditional on their ‘good behaviour’ might have the effect that they are more willing to continue work under given conditions, thus decreasing their bargaining power.

In sum, the observed translation of Fairtrade in the FPC fosters a de-politicization of the relations between workers and companies. Instead of opening a space for questioning dependencies, companies’ or the government’s responsibilities, the translations tend to promote a status-quo of plantation hierarchies. Even though Fairtrade aids a qualitative improvement of worker-management relations on the visited plantation and supports workers through the premium, we argue that these changes ultimately help to maintain workers’ consent to the existing plantation system instead of outlining alternative approaches to the (tea-)economy (see also Siegmann 2023). This combination of empowerment and harmonization stabilizes the production of tea for the global market. Without workers at plantations, the GPN for orthodox Darjeeling tea would most probably collapse. A general transformation of structures, mindsets and institutions is not (yet) achieved. This way, translation risks to (re-)produce hegemony through standards in GPNs, since workers are made to believe that the forms of their treatment and the Fairtrade certified tea economy were ‘right’. In the examined case this shows how discursive power can become an element of constitutive power, operating through ‘broadly accepted norms [and] expectations’ (Dallas, Ponte and Sturgeon 2019: 673).

8. Conclusion

To enhance understanding of the mechanisms through which VSS become effective as a means of GPN governance, we scrutinized the discursive dimension of power as it operates through the translation of Fairtrade in a local contact zone. Drawing on an example of translation at one specific node of the GPN we researched how an intermediary communicated abstract ideas associated with Fairtrade to plantation workers. To scrutinize how this translation influenced workers’ subjectivities and perceptions of their relative positions in the GPN, we developed a power as translation framework that combined insights from ANT and postcolonial translation studies. We focussed on the moments of problematization and interessement—describing two phases of translation—to highlight the communicative processes, narratives, and discourses that the intermediary as cultural broker mobilized to shape relations at one node and to assign positions to actors in the wider network. The idea of the contact zone as space ‘where disparate cultures meet, clash, and grapple with each other’ (Pratt 1992: 4) allowed us to further explicate the specific context conditions that translators must navigate. The power as translation concept sheds light on how ideas, actors, and objects are mobilized to link the nodes of the network in qualitatively different ways and contributes to the understanding of power in, and governance of, GPNs in three ways:

First, we show how relational power in form of discursive power is interwoven with other forms of power, namely agenda-setting, preference-shaping, and bargaining power. By highlighting translation as a core process through which discursive power works and by focussing on a rather peripheral node of the network, we examined a so-far less researched mechanism through which institutional power of standard-setters effects GPN governance. In our case this mechanism became visible through the assignment of roles to workers and companies in ways that help sustaining the existing plantation system. This indicates that by virtue of establishing relations, positions, and subjectivities, translation is a central process in the assembly and rearrangement of GPNs.

While further research is needed that relates the interpretive work of translations to the actual practices of plantation labour, labour agency, labour control, and commodity trade, our findings indicate how the translation of Fairtrade to plantation workers can contribute to a stabilization of worker-management-company relations. This way, our research supports the finding that Fairtrade certification does not automatically create more justice in overall GPN governance (Johannessen and Wilhite 2010; Kuiper and Gemählich 2017; Kister 2019).

To better understand the effects of VSS and other conventions across scales, and to allow statements on overall GPN governance, it is necessary to examine how changes in one node affect relations to other nodes. This requires comparative research on translation at and between different nodes of the network, in or outside so-called moral markets. This includes translations of VSS to companies, traders, managers, and auditors, and the roles of intermediaries herein.

Second, this article advances the understanding of power relations by highlighting the importance of cultural brokers (translators) as key agents with the ability to form identities, positions and relations in GPNs to benefit specific groups of persons. Our framework permits to reveal how power becomes effective through the interpretation, communication and remoulding of ideas by actors in specific time and space imprinted contexts. Further, acknowledging the importance of intermediaries challenges diffusionist arguments and assumptions pitting northern standard-setters and southern standard-takers against each other, thereby bridging dichotomies between global and local. By allowing for openness, creativity and by taking historical and place-specific contexts into consideration, the concepts of translation and contact zones help explaining the unforeseen and ambivalent effects of regulation and standards throughout the network. This indicates the importance of contact-zones as critical space-time moments where the assembly of GPNs takes place.

Finally, by pointing at the simultaneousness of transformative and stabilizing translation effects, the power as translation approach that we put forward provides nuance on the general question of what a ‘successful’ translation is, for whom, and where. In ANT terms, successful translation becomes visible in the stabilization of a network; for the postcolonial project a successful translation should include the emancipation and empowerment of the subordinate. Transforming existing GPNs to make them more just and fairer especially for workers requires translations of values, roles, and ideas that break with existing orders instead of stabilizing them. Postcolonial translation studies with its emphasis on the active role of translators suggest that the imagination of a different GPN is possible but, however, contingent on a range of context factors. The power of translation lies in the art of making alternatives thinkable, articulable and thereby actionable.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This article has immensely benefitted from the critical and constructive feedback of the three anonymous referees and of James Faulconbridge. We are also grateful to Tatiana López-Julies and Saumya Premchander for commenting earlier versions. We want to thank Fairtrade International, NAPP, and the Indian tea company for granting us access to the trainings, and the plantation workers for sharing their views, and to Viveka Gurung for her support with the Nepali-English translation. All errors remain our own.

Conflict of interest statement. None declared.

Funding

This research has been funded under the Indo-Swiss Joint Research Programme in the Social Sciences and German Research Foundation DFG project no. 515420286 ‘Assembling fair labour’.

References