1 The Moral Economy of Face: Marketized Gift and Depoliticized Solidarity in South Korea’s Fair Trade Seung Cheol Lee (University of Mississippi) Note: This is a pre-publication version of an article that has been published in the journal, Journal of Cultural Economy (https://doi.org/10.1080/17530350.2020.1749107) Abstract Metaphors of ‘face’ are often found in South Korea’s fair trade activism, as fair trade is frequently described as ‘face-to-face commerce’ and its goal is presented as pursuing ‘global trade with a human face.’ By asking how and why fair trade relies on the metaphors of face, this article analyzes the political implications and limits of the trope. I first examine the intimate connection between gift-exchange and face based on Marcel Mauss’s analysis of the gift and I present face as a locus of symbolic recognition and politics. Next, drawing on ethnographic research into Beautiful Coffee, the largest fair trade organization in South Korea, I illuminate fair trade as a hybrid practice of ‘marketized gift-exchange’ in which the various faces of producers and consumers are produced and circulated along with market transactions. In examining the meanings of those faces, I maintain that the prevalent metaphor of face in fair trade betrays the contradictory nature of market-based solidarity that is sought through the activism to redefine the whole economic structure based on moral and ethical practices. Keywords: gift exchange, fair trade, moral economy, recognition, Marcel Mauss Introduction The first thing that greets you when you enter the office of the fair trade organization Beautiful