Chairperson

ii As large corporations enter into fair trade and assume varying interpretations of fairness, confusion surfaces within the fair trade movement, in effect opening it to possibilities of perpetuating postcolonial understandings, social relations, and trade geographies. I explore how the fair trade network that exists has developed because of the convergence of geohistorical processes at different moments, which resulted in certain dominant movement participants being mediators of meaning. I then analyze whether unmediated exchange between consumers and producers in a fair trade agrotourism program in Nicaragua allows actors to identify common morality and goals. Using marketing propaganda, participant-observation experience, and surveys and interviews of participants within the Fair Trade coffee network, I find that when direct contact occurs between consumers and producers in Matagalpa, both participants end up with shared perspectives of fair trade, even as the debates about the nature of fair trade within the movement become more complex