Activism in a Network Society
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 May 2025
New possibilities of communication and a widening range of fair trade products prompted an evolution in the direction of a less hierarchical global network of actors since the late 1980s. The advent of the ‘network society’ has had a fundamental impact on civic activism. The history of the fair trade movement is particularly instructive in this respect, because activists had attempted to muster transnational coalitions ever since its inception. This chapter highlights the history of the Clean Clothes Campaign, which mustered a coalition of trade union representatives and human rights activists from the global South and solidarity activists in the North to pressure companies in the textile industry to improve working conditions. The history of the Clean Clothes Campaign also provides a perspective on the altered landscape of fair trade activism in the wake of the success of fair trade certification, which was extended into textiles with the introduction of fair trade-certified cotton in the early 2000s. Surveying the breadth of the movement, this chapter develops a typology of adversarial and collaborative approaches employed by activists targeting businesses.
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