Fair-trade, Hyperbole-free Chocolate Information
March 23, 2016 12:17 PM   Subscribe

Seeking books and articles (journalistic or scholarly) on chocolate, slavery, and child labor that focus on the facts of the matter, rather than on advancing a cause.

I'm all for fair/direct trade and want to advocate for it - I'm writing a chapter on the subject for a book - but want to base that advocacy on solid information. My Google (and database, and library) research is failing, though, and most of the sources I've found are of the "Look, there's slavery in your chocolate, it's terrible!" variety. (I also have plenty of "actually, Fair Trade is an incomplete solution" sources.)

Sources for data and anecdotes about labor conditions and trade inequity are welcome. Anything that gives an overview of the progress of journalistic coverage on the topic would also be awesome.
posted by sibilatorix to Grab Bag (6 answers total) 2 users marked this as a favorite
 
You might try looking through Rachel Laudan's posts and articles about chocolate-- I haven't read them all, so I don't know what's there, but she's a food historian, rather than a journalist, so her focus is on accuracy, rather than advocacy.
posted by dizziest at 2:45 PM on March 23, 2016


Response by poster: Rachel Laudan doesn't have anything on the topic - but her work is fascinating, so thanks for the link!

I did find one reasonable journalistic article on TowardFreedom.com via a search at academia.edu. Now I need to check it's sources...
posted by sibilatorix at 4:58 PM on March 23, 2016


Check out Bitter Chocolate, http://www.amazon.com/Bitter-Chocolate-Industry-Carol-Off/dp/1595589805. I think it might be up your alley.
posted by reren at 7:05 PM on March 23, 2016


You might want to check out this old fpp
posted by adamvasco at 7:07 PM on March 23, 2016


Also child labour and slavery in the chocolate industry
posted by adamvasco at 7:13 PM on March 23, 2016


There's a blurb on cocoa production in the wikipedia entry on child slavery that might serve as another starting point.
posted by aniola at 4:26 PM on March 27, 2016


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