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Despite recent critical analyses of the nature and impacts of social and environmental certification, the increasingly complex landscape of voluntary, industry and third-party codes and certification processes that have emerged in specific sectors is poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the potential threats posed by an increasingly complex and contested "ethical" landscape in undermining radical initiatives designed to bring about improvements to material and social well-being. In response, this paper explores the current dynamics of social and environmental certification in the South African wine industry. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and Western Cape, the paper analyses the overlapping and sometimes conflictual processes of social and environmental certification, and the role of key drivers in establishing them within the wine industry. It explores whether attempts to capture a portion of the expanding market for "ethical" wines and the expansion of corporate interests in "responsibility" and "ethics" work to depoliticize the meaning and nature of transformation. The implications of the findings are that, in the absence of legislative requirements to transform the wine industry, social codes and civic conventions are likely to remain significant, but that greater understanding is required of the different meanings and outcomes of transformation and empowerment being deployed within the industry. The paper concludes that a significant problem facing transformation and alternative trade in the wine industry, and more broadly, lies in the growing gap between the abstract ethical discourse of corporate actors, on the one hand, and the moral experience of workers on the other. (Contains 2 tables.)

This paper evaluates the outcomes from an ambitious wildflower harvesting programme in South Africa's Western Cape, which has sought to achieve positive outcomes in terms of socio-economic development and biodiversity conservation. Indigenous wildflowers, harvested according to conservation principles, are processed into 'Cape Flora' bouquets and sold into international and domestic markets. The principal supply chain provides an example of ethical trade due to the explicit environmental and social standards that are required at local sites of production. The incorporation of such standards represents an attempt to engender economic and social upgrading within the value chain. In this sense, the programme is consistent with dominant policy discourses, which suggest that exploiting potentially profitable niches within international trade flows represents a 'high road' to economic growth and transformation. The paper focuses upon the job creation and social impacts of the programme in the context of efforts to overcome South Africa's deeply entrenched socio-economic disparities and high poverty levels. Despite impressive growth in production and exports during the global financial crisis, there have been mixed outcomes in terms of benefits to stakeholders at the upstream end of the supply chain. The paper concludes by considering the extent to which local initiatives operating under the framework of ethical trade possess the potential to facilitate effective social and economic upgrading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the significance of the relationships and disjunctures between the global moral discourses of Fairtrade that are articulated through ethics of fairness in supply chains and the everyday moral experiences, discourses and practices of producers that shape moral economies in specific localities. Due to increased governance through universal codes, standards and certification, Fairtrade risks becoming an abstract ethical and regulatory tool, disconnected from the moral economies of those poor farmers it is intended to benefit. In response, the paper makes a case for a deeper understanding of the moral economies of farmers involved in Fairtrade networks and the ways in which these emerge out of moral experiences that are deeply embedded in local social and cultural relations. Through a case study of Eksteenskuil Agricultural Cooperative in South Africa’s Northern Cape, it seeks to demonstrate the importance of understanding the moral experiences of producers to better consider what is at stake for them, focusing on notions of cooperation, fairness and the ‘good farmer’, perceptions of community, and concerns with survival and self-sufficiency. The paper concludes that working in culturally-sensitive ways with producer communities and understanding how their local moral worlds are structured is vital in bridging the gap between abstract ethical discourses and the place-based moral experiences of producers, and to ensuring the effectiveness of Fairtrade initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to make a contribution to on-going debates about how to conceptualise the spatial processes of renewable energy transition. It makes a case for understanding renewable energy transitions as simultaneously spatial and political processes, constitutive of new territories and configuring development pathways. Drawing on a case study of South Africa's Renewable Energy Independent Power Procurement Programme (REI4P), the paper explores the ways in which energy transitions are intrinsically bound up with both the materiality and the historical and contemporary politics of land. It then examines the relationship between energy transitions and territory to conceptualise the ways in which transitions take on an experimental shape in the form of 'zones'. The paper argues that these zones are new territories deploying forms of spatial and political-administrative exceptionality, which allow political and economic actors to exercise authority and commercial power. Two types of zone emerging from South Africa's energy transition exemplify these processes: legally-defined zones for the development of solar and wind energy and zones of socioeconomic development required by REI4P. The paper explores the spatial and political consequences of these strategies and suggests that these may not necessarily translate into conflict and confrontation, but instead produce uneasy co-existences of different political, social and spatial projects and interests, with potential to create new polities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging research on the increasing significance of consumption in the global South is concerned with its links to the globalizing middle classes. Against the backdrop of optimism invested in the new global middle classes to fuel consumption-led growth, this paper contributes to new debate about the articulations and significance of ethical consumption in the global South. Missing from much current mainstream policy, media and academic debate is acknowledgement of the diversity of the global middle classes and an understanding of how ethical interpretations and behaviour differ in various consumer markets around the world. In response, this paper draws on qualitative research in South Africa’s Western Cape to explore the cultural significance of everyday ethical realities in shaping consumption in the global South. In addition to addressing the relative absence of research into ethical consumption in global South contexts, the paper makes two key contributions based our findings. First, it challenges the tendency, particularly in economic discourses, to generalise about the ‘new’ global middle class consumers by highlighting the significance of locality and context in shaping consumption practices in the Western Cape; specifically it finds that, for diverse middle class consumers, thrift is an important ethical choice and practice determining consumption patterns. Second, it highlights the significance of everyday ethical practices in shaping consumption in the Western Cape, focusing specifically on how thrift is imbricated in concerns with not just economic constraint, but also care, habit and aspiration. The paper concludes with reflections on the wider implications of these findings and suggests that they illustrate a need to theorise ethical consumption from contexts in the global South, on their own terms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a critical engagement with current initiatives for ethically-labeled goods in South Africa, thus offering an intervention in a literature on ethical consumption that has previously prioritized the global North. Through an interview-based methodology supported by focus groups in the Western Cape, the paper attends specifically to the strategies shaping recent forms of ethical consumption in South Africa on the part of business and civil society. Campaigns and strategies associated with three of the most prominent ethical labeling initiatives in South Africa—Proudly South African, Fairtrade Label South Africa and the Southern African Sustainable Seafood Initiative (SASSI)—are evaluated. Barnett et al.’s (2011: 90) notion of “mobilizing the ethical consumer” is brought into conversation with ethical consumption literature on local embeddedness in order to assess the ways in which the organizations responsible for these initiatives combine globalizing business and political networks of responsibility with local institutions and values in South Africa. The role played by the discursive construction of a growing South African ‘middle class’ is also acknowledged as part of the process of encouraging ethical consumption on the part of these actors. In conclusion, it is suggested that understanding ethical consumption in South Africa, as elsewhere, requires sensitivity to both transnational networks of globalizing responsibility and localized expressions of ethical consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes dialogue between postcolonial theory and the analytical frameworks of global value chains (GVCs) and global production networks (GPNs). It does so in order to open up more culturally sensitive accounts of global supply networks and exporting localities than those provided by prevailing political-economic approaches. Particular focus is placed on Zein-Elabdin's postcolonial notion of economic hybridity to advance understanding of the institutional contexts shaping production networks. The value of applying this concept to GVC/GPN studies is illustrated in the case of a sustainable wildflower harvesting supply network in South Africa's Western Cape, which supplies ethically promoted bouquets to domestic and European markets. Transnational cultural politics, including those associated with colonial encounters, are shown to shape the hybrid institutional context of this production network. It is suggested that such a perspective on institutional hybridity offers just one fruitful conversation between postcolonial approaches and GVC/GPN frameworks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article contributes to debate on the evolving expressions of business responsibility in emerging market economies and developing economies by exploring and theorizing the ways in which the Fairtrade standard for supply chains is being re-worked and implemented in South Africa. To understand the changing ways in which the global Fairtrade standard is embedded in South Africa, the article argues for attention not only to recent strategic re-articulations of the standard through national-level initiatives, but also to the localized experiences of producer groups, including those in peripheral regions. This argument is supported by interview-based research revealing the challenges faced by a particular Fairtrade producer community - Eksteenskuil Agricultural Cooperative (EAC) in the Northern Cape. A relational approach developed from economic geography shows how challenges concerning market access, land tenure and community empowerment for this producer emerge from a combination of global Fairtrade conventions, South Africa's dynamic national-institutional context and local politics of place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Corporate efforts to demonstrate ‘sustainability’ within production networks are driving a continued demand for new metrics. This raises questions concerning which experts will be enlisted in their creation, what data and calculative methods they will draw on, and how and whether different publics will be convinced of the rigour of these metrics and their ethical purpose. Debates about futures and expectations tend to be western-centric; in response, this paper highlights the sophisticated environmental science and knowledges in a global South context where politics and uncertainty are of utmost importance. It draws on research into sustainable wild flower harvesting in the Cape Floral Kingdom (CFK), in the Western Cape province of South Africa, to explore the politics of expectation and future-making driving debates about biodiversity conservation and socio-economic empowerment within rural communities. It focuses specifically on how expectations of technologies, databases, knowledge and the environment play out in this particular site of production, influencing debates about sustainability, but also perspectives on what is ethical. The case study demonstrates that expectations are neither uniform nor uncontested, but bound up with inequities of power and authority in defining futures. The paper draws on postcolonial approaches to conclude that a radical opening of databases and knowledge production might challenge these asymmetries, but that constraints exist because of external pressures and expectations that arise from the political economy of biodiversity conservation. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper examines the importance of place for the cultural and environmental dynamics shaping Fairtrade cooperatives. It draws on a case study of the Eksteenskuil Agricultural Cooperative (EAC) in South Africa's Northern Cape, which supplies Fairtrade raisins to Traidcraft plc, one of the UK's leading Fairtrade organizations. It examines how the histories and geographies of place continually challenge and redefine the meaning and effectiveness of Fairtrade. It concludes with a number of recommendations for both Fairtrade organizations in general and EAC/Traidcraft specifically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Despite recent critical analyses of the nature and impacts of social and environmental certification, the increasingly complex landscape of voluntary, industry and third-party codes and certification processes that have emerged in specific sectors is poorly understood. In particular, little is known about the potential threats posed by an increasingly complex and contested ‘ethical’ landscape in undermining radical initiatives designed to bring about improvements to material and social well-being. In response, this paper explores the current dynamics of social and environmental certification in the South African wine industry. Drawing on fieldwork in the UK and Western Cape, the paper analyses the overlapping and sometimes conflictual processes of social and environmental certification, and the role of key drivers in establishing them within the wine industry. It explores whether attempts to capture a portion of the expanding market for ‘ethical’ wines and the expansion of corporate interests in ‘responsibility’ and ‘ethics’ work to depoliticize the meaning and nature of transformation. The implications of the findings are that, in the absence of legislative requirements to transform the wine industry, social codes and civic conventions are likely to remain significant, but that greater understanding is required of the different meanings and outcomes of transformation and empowerment being deployed within the industry. The paper concludes that a significant problem facing transformation and alternative trade in the wine industry, and more broadly, lies in the growing gap between the abstract ethical discourse of corporate actors, on the one hand, and the moral experience of workers on the other. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: Despite being a poorly defined and vague concept, empowerment is currently of political and theoretical significance and nowhere more so than in South Africa, where it seen as central to post-apartheid transformation. This paper explores the ways in which empowerment has been understood, defined and deployed by post-apartheid governments in the context of a gradual shift from nation-building to neo-liberal governance. It examines the impact of legislation and government policy through a critical examination of empowerment initiatives in the wine industry. Drawing on research conducted in the Western Cape in 2004, the paper analyses how empowerment is interpreted and appropriated both within legislation and specifically within the wine industry. It explores what the wine industry reveals about the disempowering work of neo-liberalism, even as it is couched in the discourses of empowerment. Findings suggest that equating empowerment with economic empowerment threatens to reinforce structures of domination, rather than transforming them, while leaving power relations largely untouched. The case study reveals that until more radical understandings of power and empowerment are acknowledged and incorporated into government policies the failure to address broader issues of social and economic transformation will persist and policies aimed at the empowerment of marginalised individuals and communities will continue to have apparently pre-determined and depoliticised outcomes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: This paper draws on empirical research in South Africa to explore questions about the exclusionary nature of citizenship, the problems and possibilities of participatory citizenship and its potential reconceptualisation through the lens of gender. The paper examines some of the major debates and policies in South Africa around issues of citizenship, participation and gender and explores why the discursive accommodation of gender equity by the South African government is not fully realised in its attempts to construct substantive and participatory citizenship. It explores some of the emergent spaces of radical citizenship that marginalized groups and black women, in particular, are shaping in response. Findings suggest that whilst there are possibilities for creating alternative, more radical citizenship spaces, these can also be problematic and exclusionary. The paper draws on recent feminist writing to examine the possibilities for rethinking citizenship as an ethical, non-instrumental social status, distinct from both political participation and economic independence. This reframing of citizenship moves beyond notions of ‘impasse’ or ‘hollowness’, challenges the public/private distinction that still frames many debates about citizenship and considers the emancipatory potential of gendered subjectivity. The paper argues that citizenship is shaped by differing social, political and cultural contexts and this brings into sharp focus the problematic assumption of the universal applicability of western concepts and theories. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

This paper considers the ongoing political transformations in South Africa in the context of debates about good governance and participatory democracy. It first appraises the current transformations of local government in South Africa, focusing specifically on relationships between gender equality and citizenship on the one hand, and local government policy, legislation, and community participation on the other, and then explores meanings of participation and how they inform approaches towards local socio-economic development. The findings of primary research conducted with civil society organisations and black women in communities in the Cape Town metropolitan area are explored through three interrelated themes. First, the model of structured participation that is central to South Africa’s democratic transformation is assessed from the perspective of black women. Second, cultures of alienation, both within local governance structures and amongst black women and the extent to which recent restructuring is combating or contributing to these are explored. Third, how participation policies are dealing with conflict within and between target groups are analysed, whether stakeholder group politics obliterate important differences in interests and whether alternative structures might be more effective in terms of women’s participation and empowerment. Finally, the findings are interpreted in relation to theoretical concepts of good governance and participatory democracy, and the potential and problems of realising South Africa’s transformation process toward developmental local government are assessed. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]