Farmers Of The Golden Bean: Costa Rican Households, Global Coffee, And Fair Trade

Synopsis

This new edition of Farmers of the Golden Bean explores the network of local economies that connects coffee farmers with distant consumers in industrialized societies. In Costa Rica, coffee is grown primarily by small household producers who form the country's large, middle-class peasantry. Sick examines how these coffee-producing households cope with the complexities of a globalizing world economy. The analysis of individual and collective responses to the challenges of coffee production addresses issues of gender, family cycles, formal and informal economic activities, and the world coffee market.Sick has created a multilayered ethnography, linking relatively isolated, distant, and exotic places with major markets and metropolitan centers. Using a commodity approach, she offers a unique, integrated analysis of household, regional, and global processes. Farmers of the Golden Bean challenges previous assumptions about the nature of economic change and the sustainability of household producers in the global economy. Exploring contemporary issues of gender, empowerment, access to resources, and Fair Trade, Sick examines how Costa Rican coffee-producing households cope with the complexities of a globalizing world economy.This new edition of Sick's original work includes a revised introduction as well as a new chapter on Fair Trade, bringing this study up-to-date with current issues.