Research
CFATS grows out of the successful Fair Trade Research Group established at Colorado State University (CSU) in 1999. Working with an international network of scholars and practitioners, the CSU team has pursued research projects funded by the Ford Foundation, the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, and others. The Center analyzes a range of local, national, and global initiatives which seek to enhance social justice and environmental sustainability through fair and alternative production, distribution, and consumption practices. CFATS staff is currently pursuing a set of cutting edge studies across this research domain.

Current Projects
Recent Publications
Password Protected Archive

Education
The Center currently works with a number of graduate students investigating various dimensions of fair and alternative trade. In addition, several courses in the Graduate Program on Social Change in the Department of Sociology at CSU are designed to explore the questions related to fair and alternative trade and globalization from below, including SOC660 (Development Theory), SOC666 (Globalization and Socioeconomic Restructuring), SOC667 (State, Economy and Society), and SOC669 (International Inequality and Change).

Graduate Funding Opportunity
Students and Projects
Center Associates
Center Faculty and Staff

Outreach
The Center, with seed funds from the Bohemian Foundation (Pharos Fund) is working on a Conscious Consumers Program in the local Fort Collins Community. See the inventory of Fair and Alternative Trade and Locally Grown goods that maps ethical consumption. An interactive Google Earth component allows you to "fly" to each of the listed businesses for details and directions (the Google Earth program is needed to view this; if you would like to install it, click here). Once fully funded, the Conscious Consumers Program will work with local schools and community groups on global trade and development issues and the options available for market based social change.

In the News
Web Media
Speaking Engagements

Founding Meeting of Fair Trade Research Network, Keystone Colorado, May, 2000 NEW! This book explores the challenges and potential of Fair Trade, one of the world’s most dynamic efforts to enhance global social justice and environmental sustainability through market based social change.   Fair Trade: The Challenges of Transforming Globalization Laura T Raynolds, Douglas Murray, John Wilkinson     One Cup at a Time, for a brief history.

The Center’s Mission

The Center is a multidisciplinary program to study the pursuit of social justice and environmental sustainability through fair and alternative trade initiatives. The Center is not engaged in advocacy. Instead, we believe the critical assessment of this emerging global phenomenon will provide scholars, practitioners, conscious consumers and progressive producers with much needed insights into the options and potential for market based initiatives for social change.

The Center is building activities in three basic areas: research, education and outreach. The Center staff will work with Center Associates, Center Fellows, students and community members to provide timely research on cutting edge questions; workshops and seminars on issues identified by the many different stakeholders and interested parties; and local, national and international outreach initiatives to advance the understanding of fair and alternative trade.

Why Fair and Alternative Trade?
Globalization, in its current neo-liberal form of unfettered trade liberalization and economic integration, and the social and political transformations that accompany it, is forging ahead at an unprecedented rate. A growing number of groups and individuals around the world are creatively challenging the range of negative effects that have come with this process through the pursuit of alternative trade and development initiatives that promote more environmentally sustainable and socially just outcomes of this transformative process.

Such efforts can be found in everything from organic farming in the U.S. and Europe (and increasingly in the developing world as well), to sustainable forestry in Latin America and Asia, from more socially just diamond mining and petroleum exploration linked to democracy and grassroots empowerment in Africa, to eco-clothing and anti-sweatshop initiatives in Europe and the U.S. The interests behind these initiatives range from local NGOs to transnational corporations. Together the fair or alternative trade initiatives are part of an emerging phenomenon described as globalization from below, a broad based and as yet poorly understood movement linking consumers with producers.