English to Italian Social Sciences Social Science, Sociology, Ethics, etc. Commercio equo e solidale

Informants’ voices spoke indeed more closely to Marx’s (1999) labour theory of value. Commensuration by labour, in fact, is central to such theory: as the value of every commodity consists of the amount of time involved in producing it, what is exchanged in trade is this measure of productive labor. Fair-trade consumers’ position, then, can be interpreted as an effort to de-fetishize commodities, or ‘lift the veil’ obscuring capitalism’s inherent exploitation. Through countless means—from the actual packets of tea and coffee, to newspaper advertisements—fair-trade’s imagery offers a space for the ** reappearance Southern producers’ lives **. As Bryant & Goodman comment:

The aim is to peel away hidden layers of information about the commodity to reveal the social and environmental conditions of its production that are ‘fair’. Value in solidarity-based exchange is created through the de-fetishizing of commodity cultures precisely to allow consumers, it is hoped, to make moral and economic connections to the producers. (2004: 359)