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Consuming Anti-Consumerism: The German Fairtrade Movement and the Ambivalent Legacy of ‘1968’

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2019

Benjamin Möckel Open the ORCID record for Benjamin Möckel [Opens in a new window]
Benjamin Möckel*
Affiliation:
University of Cologne, Faculty of Philosophy, Department of History, Albertus-Magnus-Platz, Cologne 50923, Germany
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Abstract

The article explores the influence of ‘1968’ on the West German fair trade movement. It argues that 1968 constituted an ambivalent legacy for the perception of mass consumerism: while the 1960s student movement radically criticised modern consumer society, it also put new emphasis on consumer products as markers of individual identity. The article analyses this relationship by focusing on the design, representation and advertising of fair trade products by the German fair trade organation GEPA. The first two case studies examine the politicisation of fair trade products in its early campaigns in the 1970s and the subsequent attempts to use everyday products like coffee, tea and honey to educate consumers about their individual lifestyles. The third case study looks at the GEPA's first mail-order catalogues and asks how the GEPA tried to transform an icon of modern mass consumerism into a tool to communicate its fair trade approach.

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Article
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Contemporary European History , Volume 28 , Issue 4 , November 2019 , pp. 550 - 565
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2019 

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References

1 From a transnational perspective, this is a rather late development. Many British NGOs and charity agencies established such links much earlier: Hilton, Matthew, The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013), 80–105CrossRefGoogle Scholar). As I will argue below, German fair trade agencies were often much more sceptical towards attempts to professionalise their business operations.

2 N.A., ‘Grundgedanken und Struktur zu einem neuen Corporate Design Konzept für die gepa’ (GEPA archive, Wuppertal, Box C).

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 See for the certification processes: Bennett, Elisabeth, ‘A Short History of Fairtrade Certification Governance’, in Dine, Janet and Granville, Brigitte, eds., The Processes and Practices of Fair Trade. Trust, Ethics, and Governance (London: Routledge 2013), 53–78Google Scholar.

6 In 1975, when the GEPA was founded, the Kirchlicher Entwicklungsdienst (KED) provided 20,000 deutschmarks out of the 38,000 of its seed capital to give the Protestant and Catholic charities a majority in the new institutions. See Quaas, Ruben, Fair Trade: Eine global-lokale Geschichte am Beispiel des Kaffees (Köln: Böhlau Köln, 2015), 150CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Financial contributions from the church institutions increased rapidly in the following years. Still today, Brot für die Welt, Misereor and the Catholic and Protestant youth organisations are the main shareholders of the GEPA (http://www.gepa.de/gepa/mission/gesellschafter-netzwerke.html (last visited 22 Jan. 2019).

7 See the following section for a more detailed analysis. For a more general argument about the relationship between ‘1968’ and a reinvention of capitalisms in the subsequent decades: Luc Boltanski and Ève Chiapello, The New Spirit of Capitalism (London: Verso, 2007).

8 For the expansion of household incomes and new consumer demands see Hartmut Kaelble, ‘Europäische Besonderheiten des Massenkonsums 1950–1990’, in Hannes Siegrist, Hartmut Kaelble and Jürgen Kocka, eds., Europäische Konsumgeschichte: Zur Gesellschafts- und Kulturgeschichte des Konsums (18. bis 20. Jahrhundert) (Frankfurt, New York: Campus, 1997), 169–203; Michael Wildt, Am Beginn der Konsumgesellschaft: Mangelerfahrung, Lebenshaltung, Wohlstandshoffnung in Westdeutschland in den fünfziger Jahren (Hamburg: Ergebnisse Verlag, 1993). For Nico Stehr, this expansion of private affluence combined with more accessible information about consumer products are the key factors of what he calls the ‘moralisation of markets’ since the 1960s: Nico Stehr, Moral Markets: How Knowledge and Affluence Change Consumers and Products (Boulder: Paradigm Publishers, 2008).

9 Gavin Fridell, Fair Trade Coffee: The Prospects and Pitfalls of Market-Driven Social Justice (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2007); Gavin Fridell, ‘Fair-Trade Coffee and Commodity Fetishism: The Limits of Market-Driven Social Justice’, Historical Materialism, 15, 4 (2007), 79–104.

10 This follows the argument of Joshua Clark Davis, who has recently shown how ‘activist entrepreneurs’ consciously combined political activism and commercial activity since the 1960s. Left-wing businesses in Germany, like alternative book shops, reveal a similar phenomenon: Joshua Clark Davis, From Head Shops to Whole Foods: The Rise and Fall of Activist Entrepreneurs (New York: Columbia University Press, 2017); Uwe Sonnenberg, Von Marx zum Maulwurf: Linker Buchhandel in Westdeutschland in den 1970er Jahren (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2016).

11 Max Horkheimer and Theodor W. Adorno, Dialektik der Aufklärung: philosophische Fragmente (Frankfurt: Fischer 1969[1944]); Herbert Marcuse, Der eindimensionale Mensch: Studien zur Ideologie der fortgeschrittenen Industriegesellschaft (Neuwied: Luchterhand, 1967); Jürgen Habermas, ‘Notizen zum Missverhältnis von Kultur und Konsum’, Merkur. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Europäisches Denken, 10 (1956), 221–8.

12 Wolfgang Fritz Haug, Kritik der Warenästhetik (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1971); Wolfgang Schmidbauer, Homo Consumens. Der Kult des Überflusses (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1972); Karl Bednarik, An der Konsumfront (Stuttgart: Kilpper, 1957).

13 Arnold Gehlen, ‘Konsum und Kultur’, in Einblicke (Gesamtausgabe, Band 7) (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 1978), 3–14; Hans Freyer, Theorie des gegenwärtigen Zeitalters (Stuttgart: Deutsche Verlagsanstalt, 1955).

14 See, for this argument, Thomas Hecken, Das Versagen der Intellektuellen: Eine Verteidigung des Konsums gegen seine deutschen Verächter (Bielefeld: Transcript, 2010). This can be traced back to turn of the century German discourses on mass culture, advertisement and material culture, see for example Gudrun M. König, Konsumkultur: Inszenierte Warenwelt um 1900 (Wien: Böhlau, 2009).

15 Jean Baudrillard, La Société de Consommation (Paris: S.G.P.P, 1970).

16 Steven Fielding, ‘Activists Against “Affluence”: Labour Party Culture During the “Golden Age,” Circa 1950–1970’, Journal of British Studies, 40, 2 (2001), 241–67; Stuart Middleton, ‘“Affluence” and the Left in Britain, c.1958-1974’, The English Historical Review, 129 (2014), 107–38; Robert Millar, The Affluent Sheep (London: Longmans, 1963).

17 John Kenneth Galbraith, The Affluent Society (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1958); Vance Packard, The Hidden Persuaders (New York: McKay, 1957); Vance Packard, The Waste Makers (New York: McKay, 1960).

18 Thomas Hecken, Gegenkultur und Avantgarde 1950–1970: Situationisten, Beatniks, 68er (Tübingen: Francke, 2006); Margret Kosel, Gammler, Beatniks, Provos: Die schleichende Revolution (Frankfurt: Bärmeier & Nikel, 1967). For the debate about ‘new lifestyles’ in Germany: Karl Ernst Wenke and Horst Zillessen, eds., Neuer Lebensstil: Verzichten oder Verändern?: Auf der Suche nach Alternativen für eine menschlichere Gesellschaft (Opladen: Westdeutscher Verlag, 1978).

19 Eric J. Hobsbawm, The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914–1991 (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 334.

20 Frank Trentmann, The Empire of Things: How We Became a World of Consumers, from the Fifteenth Century to the Twenty-First (London: Allen Lane, 2016), 321–4.

21 Ibid.

22 Alexander Sedlmaier and Stephan Malinowski, ‘“1968” – A Catalyst of Consumer Society’, Cultural and Social History, 8, 2 (2011), 255–74.

23 Thomas Frank and Matt Weiland, Commodify Your Dissent: Salvos from the Baffler (New York: W.W. Norton, 1997).

24 Thomas Frank, The Conquest of Cool: Business Culture, Counterculture, and the Rise of Hip Consumerism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997); Detlef Siegfried, Time is on My Side. Konsum und Politik in der westdeutschen Jugendkultur der 60er Jahre (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2006).

25 See, for example, Marc Levinson, The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy Bigger (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2008).

26 Lydia Nembach-Langer, Revolution im Einzelhandel: die Einführung der Selbstbedienung in Lebensmittelgeschäften der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (1949–1973) (Köln: Böhlau, 2013); Karl Ditt, ‘Rationalisierung im Einzelhandel: Die Einführung und Entwicklung der Selbstbedienung in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland’, in Michael Prinz, ed., Der lange Weg in den Überfluss. Anfänge und Entwicklung der Konsumgesellschaft seit der Vormoderne (Paderborn: Schöningh, 2003), 315–56.

27 “Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dritte Welt Läden” (AG3WL).

28 See Quaas, Fair Trade, 174, 223, 295.

29 In Pioch's text and even more in the below mentioned text by Gerd Nickoleit, contemporary development theories, especially the Prebisch-Singer thesis, were an important theoretical vantage point. Furthermore, the idea of educating the public on development politics regularly referred to Paulo Freire and his concept of ‘conscientisation’. See Paulo Freire, Education for Critical Consciousness (London: Continuum, 1974); Paulo Freire, Conscientization (Geneva: World Council of Churches, 1975).

30 Ernst-Erwin Pioch, ‘Problemskizze zur Gründung einer “Aktionsgemeinschaft Dritte Welt-Handel”’ (8 June 1970), Misereor Archive Aachen, ‘Fairer Handel’, inventory 6 (in the following citations: MAA, FH 6)

31 Nickoleit, Entwicklung, 16.

32 Ibid.

33 A similar argument can be found in Ernst Schmied, Die ‘Aktion Dritte Welt Handel’ als Versuch der Bewusstseinsbildung: Ein Beitrag zur Diskussion über Handlungsmodelle für das politische Lernen (Aachen: Aktuell-Verlagsgesellschaft, 1977), 31. For a more detailed analysis see Benjamin Möckel, ‘Gegen die “Plastikwelt der Supermärkte”. Konsum- und Kapitalismuskritik in der Entstehungsgeschichte des “fairen Handels”’, Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 56 (2016), 335–52.

34 See, for example, Schmied, Die ‘Aktion Dritte Welt Handel’; Harry Neyer, ‘Vom Bastkorb zum Guatemala-Kaffee. Trends, Tendenzen und offene Fragen bei der Aktion Dritte Welt Handel’, in E + Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, 4 (1973), 19–21.

35 Pioch, Problemskizze, 2, Nickoleit, Entwicklung, 17, Neyer, Bastkorb, 20.

36 This strategy was anything but new. The abolitionist movement, anti-colonial movements and political campaigns since the early nineteenth century had already made use of consumer products and everyday items in a similar way.

37 The campaign took up an approach that was first introduced by a group of activists from the Netherlands. On the campaign see MAA, FH 12.

38 Peter van Dam, ‘Moralizing Postcolonial Consumer Society: Fair Trade in the Netherlands, 1964–1997’, International Review of Social History, 61, 2 (2016), 232–4. See Peter van Dam's article in this forum.

39 Through the Schalom-Network, instant coffee from Tanzania was also sold in Germany, for example on the bi-annual national gathering of the Protestant Church in 1963 in Dortmund: ‘Aktion “Aluschok” beim Katholikentag’, in E + Z Entwicklung und Zusammenarbeit, 15 (1974), 11, 29. See also Quaas, Fair Trade, 143–6.

40 For the campaign see Ernst Schmied, Die “Aktion Dritte Welt Handel”, 231–46; Markus Raschke, Fairer Handel. Engagement für eine gerechte Weltwirtschaft (Ostfildern: Matthias-Grünewald-Verlag, 2009), 64–6. For a report on the campaign from the United Kingdom that shows its transnational interconnectedness: ‘Chocolate With a Bite’, New Internationalist (Special Issue), 33 (1976), 16.

41 For a long-term perspective on this link see Frank Trentmann, ‘Before “Fair Trade”: Empire, Free Trade, and the Moral Economies of Food in the Modern World’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 25 (2007), 1079–102.

42 Gilbert R Winham, International Trade and the Tokyo Round Negotiation (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1986).

43 This differed from the macroeconomic concepts that the ‘Haslemere Group’ had put forward in its declaration from 1968.

44 See for some more details Raschke, Fairer Handel, 64–6.

45 MAA, FH 12.

46 Ibid.

47 ‘Erfahrungsbericht Aktionsgruppen Katholikentag 1974’ (MAA, FH 81: A3WH: 84. Deutsche Katholikentag Mönchengladbach, 1974).

48 Ibid.

49 An interesting statement about this dispute from the perspective of the ‘Tupac Amaru’ world shop in Bremen that started to import coffee from Nicaragua independently of the GEPA can be found in the AG3WL circular: n.n., Nicaragua-Kaffee, die GEPA und wir, in: Archive of the AG3WL, Mainz, AG3WL newsletter, No. 6 (Nov/Dec 1982), 27–32.

50 On the dispute see Quaas, Fair Trade, 235–8.

51 Sven Reichardt, Authentizität und Gemeinschaft: Linksalternatives Leben in den siebziger und frühen achtziger Jahren (Berlin: Suhrkamp, 2014); Detlef Siegfried, ‘Die Entpolitisierung des Privaten: Subjektkonstruktionen im alternativen Milieu’, in Dietmar Süß and Norbert Frei, eds., Privatisierung: Idee und Praxis seit den 1970er Jahren (Göttingen: Wallstein, 2012), 124–39.

52 See, for example, the product flyer for ‘fedecocagua coffee’ from 1986. The same text was used for similar flyers for honey, tea, cocoa and other products (GEPA archive, Wuppertal, Box B).

53 Ibid.

54 Ibid.

55 See product flyer ‘Honig aus Mexiko’ (GEPA archive, Wuppertal, Box B).

56 The focus of the fair trade movement gradually shifted from macroeconomics to microeconomics with the ‘smallholder’ as the new symbol of a small-scale utopia.

57 Ibid.

58 See for example Monika Krause, The Good Project: Humanitarian Relief NGOs and the Fragmentation of Reason (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014).

59 For the term and concept of ‘glocalisation’ see David Kuchenbuch, ‘“Eine Welt”: Globales Interdependenzbewusstsein und die Moralisierung des Alltags in den 1970er und 1980er Jahren’, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, 38, 1 (2012), 158–84; Roland Robertson, ‘Glocalization. Time-Space and Homogeneity-Heterogeneity’, in Roland Robertson, Mike Featherstone and Scott Lash, eds., Global Modernities (London: SAGE Publishing 1995), 25–43.

60 Peter Hadwiger, Jochen Hippler and Helmut Lotz, Kaffee: Gewohnheit und Konsequenz (Wuppertal: Edition Marandú, 1983); Ursula Brunner and Johanna Skrodzki, Bananen. Konsequenzen des Geschmacks (St. Gallen: Diá, 1988); Urs Ramseyer, Reis: Konsequenzen des Geschmacks (St. Gallen: Diá, 1988); Jochen Hippler, Honig: von Menschen und Bienen (St. Gallen: Diá, 1985); Bernd Merzenich, Gewürze: Konsequenzen des Geschmacks (St Gallen: Diá, 1986); Sibylle Kaminski and GEPA, eds., Colonialwaren-Lesebuch (St. Gallen: Diá, 1986).

61 MAA FH, ‘Aktion Gewürze’, in ‘Organisationen Fairer Handel, A3WH Materialien, Teile I und II’.

62 For the broader context of the internationalation of eating habits in West Germany during these decades see Maren Möhring, Fremdes Essen: Die Geschichte der ausländischen Gastronomie in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland (München: Oldenbourg, 2012).

63 Frances Moore, Joseph Collins and Cary Fowler, Food First: Beyond the Myth of Scarcity (New York: Ballantine Books, 1981); Jim Mason and Peter Singer, Animal Factories (New York: Crown Publishers, 1980); Jeremy Rifkin, Beyond Beef: The Rise and Fall of the Cattle Culture: The Rise & Fall of Cattle Culture (New York: Plume, 1993).

64 MAA FH, ‘Aktion Gewürze’.

65 Leaflet: ‘Gewürze als Lern- und Aktionsmodell an Schulen’, GEPA archive, Wuppertal, Box 3.

66 Cookbooks and other guidebooks flourished in the 1970s and 1980s not only in Germany but internationally. See, for example, Barbara Rütting, Mein Kochbuch. Naturgesunde Köstlichkeiten aus aller Welt (Karlsruhe: Brecht-Verlag, 1976); Eileen Candappa and Harry Haas, Gemeinsam Kochen. Ein Werkbuch für Familien und Gruppen (Frankfurt: Beratungsstelle für Gestaltung, 1976). This topic also shows how heterogeneous topics could intersect, in this case development politics, ecological concerns and concerns about individual health and lifestyle.

67 On ‘lifestyle politics’ see W. Lance Bennett, ‘Branded Political Communication: Lifestyle Politics, Logo Campaigns, and the Rise of Global Citizenship’, in Michele Micheletti, Andreas Follesdal and Dietlind Stolle, eds., Politics, Products and Markets: Exploring Political Consumerism Past and Present (New Brunswick: Transaction, 2004), 101–26; Matthew Hilton, The Politics of Expertise: How NGOs Shaped Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013); Matthew Hilton, Consumerism in Twentieth-Century Britain: The Search for a Historical Movement (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Jörn Lamla, ‘Politisierter Konsum – konsumierte Politik. Kritikmuster und Engagementformen im kulturellen Kapitalismus’, in Jörn Lamla and Sighard Neckel, eds., Politisierter Konsum – konsumierte Politik (Wiesbaden: Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften, 2006), 9–37.

68 Hans Magnus Enzensberger, ‘Unsere kleinbürgerliche Hölle’, Die Zeit, 25 Nov. 1960.

69 The plans to establish a mail-order catalogue were a recurring topic in the circular letter of the ‘Arbeitsgemeinschaft Dritte Welt Läden’ (AG3WL), the umbrella organisation of the world shops. See, for example, ‘GEPA/Versandlisten: Aufruf zur Diskussion’ (Archive of the AG3WL, Mainz, AG3WL newsletter, No. 32 (July 1988) and ‘Open letter to the GEPA’ (Ibid.).

70 GEPA archive, Wuppertal, Box 1. In contrast, the GEPA sent the first official mail-order catalogue from 1991 proactively to customers whose addresses it had gathered in the previous years.

71 On the political significance of the different fair trade coffees from Tanzania, Nicaragua and Mexico see Ruben Quaas, ‘Selling Coffee to Raise Awareness for Development Policy: The Emerging Fair Trade Market in Western Germany in the 1970s’, Historical Social Research / Historische Sozialforschung, 36, 3 (2011), 164–81, 172–7.

72 ‘GEPA: Wer wir sind. Was wir machen. Warum wir es tun’ (Anlage zum Nahrungsmittelprospekt, 1988).

73 Ingo Herbst, Letter to GEPA customers (12 Sept. 1991), Archive of the GEPA, Wuppertal, Box B.

74 GEPA catalogue 1991/92, 1 (Archive of the GEPA, Wuppertal, Box B).

75 Ibid., 34–5.

76 ‘GEPA catalogue 1995/96’ (GEPA archive, Wuppertal, Box ‘Weltladengruppen 2’). Unfortunately, it is not clear who was responsible for the hand-written comments in the catalogue.

77 Ibid., 11.

78 Ibid., 41.

79 Enzensberger, ‘Unsere kleinbürgerliche Hölle’.

80 Priddat, Birger, Ökonomische Knappheit und moralischer Überschuss: Theoretische Essays zum Verhältnis von Ökonomie und Ethik (Hamburg: Steuer- und Wirtschaftsverlag, 1994)Google Scholar; Priddat, Birger, Moralischer Konsum: 13 Lektionen über die Käuflichkeit (Stuttgart: Hirzel, 1998)Google Scholar.

81 This is the argument in Fridell, Fair Trade Coffee.

82 See, for example, ‘The Future Development of Oxfam Gift Shops’ (Oct. 1969), in MS Oxfam TRD/4/3/1.

83 For the catalogues see MS Oxfam TRD/7/1.

84 Richard Adams, Who Profits? (Oxford: Lion Books, 1989), 81–97.

85 For Oxfam see, for example, Roy Scott, Future of the Helping-by-Selling Project (MS Oxfam TRD/3/6/1), Jonathon Stockland, Bridge – an Evaluation (Apr. 1986), 42, in MS Oxfam TRD/3/6/3. For Traidcraft, see Adams, 124–30.

86 The global dimension cannot be developed here in more detail. It will be explored much more thoroughly in a monograph that the author is writing at the moment, provisionally titled ‘The invention of the ethical consumer. Global products and political activism in Britain and West Germany, 1960s–1990s’.

87 See, for example, Besky, Sarah, The Darjeeling Distinction: Labor and Justice on Fair-Trade Tea Plantations in India (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2014)Google Scholar; Moberg, Mark, ‘Certification and Neoliberal Governance: Moral Economies of Fair Trade in the Eastern Caribbean: Moral Economies of Fair Trade’, American Anthropologist, 116, 1 (2014), 8–22CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Wilson, Bradley, ‘Delivering the Goods: Fair Trade, Solidarity, and the Moral Economy of the Coffee Contract in Nicaragua’, Human Organization, 72, 3 (2013), 177–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

88 During my research in Egypt and India, this lack of participation was a recurring theme in conversations with NGOs, cooperatives and companies. This criticism was openly articulated during the foundation of the ‘International Federation of Alternative Trade’, which was first planned as an organisation of European ATOs, but was then also opened for producers. See the Annual Report of the IFAT from its first meeting in Noordwijk ann Zee in 1989.

89 Slobodian, Quinn, Foreign Front: Third World Politics in Sixties West Germany (Durham: Duke University Press, 2012)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

90 On the ‘in and against the market’ dichotomy see Eric Fichtl, ‘The Fair Trade Movement in Historical Perspective: Explaining the “in and against the Market” Predicament’, Masters Thesis, 2007. The dichotomy of ‘raising money’ and ‘raising awareness’ is highlighted by Quaas, Selling Coffee to Raise Awareness. For the debate between the economical and symbolic significance of fair trade see Stummann, Franz-Josef, Aktion Dritte Welt: Eine Fallstudie zur entwicklungspolitischen Bewusstseinsbildung der Jugend (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1976)Google Scholar.