Solidarity TM : Student Activism, Affective Labor, and the Fair Trade Campaign in the United States Bradley R. Wilson Geography Program, West Virginia University, Morgantown, WV, USA; brwilson@mail.wvu.edu Joe Curnow Ontario Institute for Studies in Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, ON, Canada; joe.curnow@gmail.com Abstract: Ethical labeling campaigns have become a central means for diffusing and negotiating conflicts between social movements and market actors. Fair Trade was a pioneering ethical label and, by many accounts, a success. For nearly a decade, United Students for Fair Trade (USFT) activists worked to build the reputation of the Fair Trade Certified (FTC) label, but in Fall 2011 they withdrew their support and urged ethical consumers to do the same. This paper is an urgent reflection on USFT’s trajectory from guerrilla marketing to boycotting FTC products. While their actions may appear shortsighted and contradictory, their decision to withdraw support from the FTC label has roots in a long struggle for control of Fair Trade. We argue that their actions signal a new stage in consumer action, as activists lose faith in the legitimacy of ethical labels and instead target the agencies that own the ethical brandscape. Keywords: affective labor, ethical consumption, student activism, Fair Trade, boycott, buycott I don’t like the direction the Fair Trade movement is going. I thought this was about solidarity with farmers. But now the Fair Trade label is being sold out to the highest bidder. It’s lost its soul. You know there are some companies I can’t support even if they do carry Fair Trade coffee. McDonalds? Wal-Mart? CocaCola? Really? Who are we working for? (Kim, organizer with United Students for Fair Trade). Over the past decade, the Fair Trade label has moved from the margins to the mainstream in the United States. While the dramatic growth of Fair Trade Certified (FTC) imports is often chalked up to the voluntary entrance of large commercial retailers like Starbucks and Wal-Mart into the Fair Trade fold, it was also a political achievement scored by a powerful coalition of activists and NGOs. Since 1999, thousands of people in the United States have supported campaigns designed to educate consumers and pressure corporate actors to sell FTC products. According to Paul Rice in 2005, CEO of FairTradeUSA, activists played a vital role in “awakening the sleeping giant”, by calling upon consumers to open their eyes to the plight of coffee farmers. By pressuring companies and educating consumers, “activist groups [were] the fundamental vanguard fostering Fair Trade markets” because they “directly politicize consumers” and engage in “direct forms of action” to expand the market for FTC products (Goodman 2004:900–901). Fridell claimed the role of activist Antipode Vol. 45 No. 3 2013 ISSN 0066-4812, pp 565–583 doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2012.01051.x C  2012 The Author. Antipode C  2012 Antipode Foundation Ltd.