While the movement for fair trading practices in the world market dates back to the 1940s, the labeling and certification initiative “Fairtrade” has existed for about 25 years. My thesis is based on independent research I conducted in November 2013 in La Convención Valley, Peru. Through in-depth interviews with fifteen small farmers and several cooperative officials at La Central de Cooperativas Agrarias Cafetaleras (COCLA), I examine the discrepancies between what Fairtrade’s claims and what farmers themselves perceive to be the benefits and failures of the certification system. I argue that while in theory farmers receive a competitive price for their Fairtrade coffee, in reality this price is subject to many deductions at the cooperative level such that many certified farmers express little understanding of their role in Fairtrade. Additionally, claims of corruption within the cooperative point to deeply entrenched local hierarchies of power. Comparing La Convencion’s history of exploitative feudal systems to present-day complaints of farmers – that the majority of money remains in the hands of cooperative officials, who limit farmers’ access to important market information and flaunt a higher quality of life – suggests that Fairtrade is actually reproducing harmful conditions of the past. I conclude that Fairtrade certification fails to empower farmers to escape local hierarchies of power and the exploitative conditions of the capitalist neoliberal world market. Making global trade truly fair requires an emphasis on an alternative international economic world order that holds consumers more accountable and places more value on the lives and experiences of producers.

Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-26T13:33:38Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 texto completo.pdf: 3256156 bytes, checksum: 120f242a6f4a90d96d10282e81d720f8 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009-07-02 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior / The cooperative education begins with the very idea of cooperative. Aware of the peculiar characteristics of these organizational forms, where cooperation is proposed as an alternative to competition and individualism, the pioneers of the cooperative system themselves set that it will be one of the principles that define and support the cooperatives themselves. It transforms into one of the pillars of sustentation of the cooperative development, being constituent of the principles, as well as the explicit needs of these organizations. This work has as aim to discuss some aspects of the history, definitions and operation of cooperative education in the State of Minas Gerais- agricultural cooperatives and analyze the organizations that offer cooperative education. As methodological work for this analysis, there was first a survey, due to scarce available literature on the situation and to achieve more information about the problem, for it, it was directed questionnaires containing closed and open questions, addressed to all the agricultural cooperatives which it had access in the State. Second, it was performed a descriptive study of organizations that carry out cooperative education in the State of Minas Gerais, which were developed semi-structured interviews and documentary research. It is concluded that cooperative education is poorly developed in the Minas Gerais- agricultural cooperatives, although there is no single definition of what is the thematic or it should include. Therefore, the diversity of studied organizations allows the understanding of existence of multiple concepts of cooperative education, and also the observation of the variety of activities and public to whom theses activities are organized. It is possible to verify the presence of three focus areas - business management, social management and technical assistance to cooperatives members- in the contents that agricultural cooperatives identified as part of cooperative education. Among the organizations there are those that offer many of these contents, but with discrepancies, or sometimes with an emphasis of some contents and little attention given to the others. Yet, it is possible to visualize matches on the activities of cooperative education that are undertaken by these organizations, thereby causing duplicity of developed actions, however, not with the same approach. It´s verified the evidences of existence of a field, in Bourdieu´s way, multiple, diversified and in development, where diverse organizations with different profiles and purposes work. / A educação cooperativista nasce junto à própria ideia de cooperativa. Conscientes das características peculiares destas formas organizacionais, nas quais a cooperação se propõe como alternativa à competição e ao individualismo, os próprios pioneiros estabeleceram que ela será um dos princípios que sustentam e definem as próprias cooperativas. Como um dos pilares de sustentação do desenvolvimento cooperativo, é uma necessidade explícita destas organizações. O objetivo desta pesquisa é trazer para a luz do debate, aspectos relativos à história, definições e funcionamento da educação cooperativista nas cooperativas agrárias no Estado de Minas Gerais e analisar as organizações que atuam oferecendo educação cooperativista. Como trabalho metodológico para essa análise, realizou-se primeiro uma pesquisa exploratória, devido à escassa bibliografia disponível sobre a situação a ser observada e no intuito de alcançar maiores informações sobre o problema em questão. Para isso, foram encaminhados questionários, contendo questões fechadas e abertas, para todas as cooperativas agropecuárias às quais se teve acesso no Estado. Num segundo momento, foi realizada uma pesquisa descritiva das organizações que realizam educação cooperativista no Estado de Minas Gerais; para tanto foram realizadas entrevistas semiestruturadas, assim como pesquisa documental. Conclui-se que a educação cooperativista é escassamente desenvolvida nas cooperativas agrárias mineiras, embora não existindo uma única definição do que seja ou das temáticas que ela deva englobar. Assim, a heterogeneidade das organizações estudadas permite perceber a polissemia do conceito de educação cooperativista e observar também a variedade de atividades e públicos para os quais são organizadas essas atividades. Verifica-se a presença de três áreas privilegiadas nos conteúdos que as cooperativas agrárias identificam como fazendo parte da educação cooperativista: gestão empresarial, gestão social e assistência técnica aos cooperados. Dentre as organizações, existem aquelas que oferecem simultaneamente vários dos conteúdos mencionados, porém com discrepâncias, ou seja, às vezes com ênfase num destes conteúdos e pouca atenção dispensada aos demais. Ainda é possível visualizar coincidências nas atividades de educação cooperativista que são realizadas por essas organizações, ocasionando consequentemente sombreamento das ações desenvolvidas, embora não necessariamente com enfoque similar. Observamse indícios da existência de um campo no sentido de Bourdieu, múltiplo, diversificado e em crescimento, em que diversas organizações de distinto perfil e finalidade atuam.