Free and fair trade can assume various meanings, depending on who defines the terms. This study draws on the Gramscian notion of hegemony to link meaning and social structure. Taking bananas as a test case, the study employs documents, interviews, and on-site observation to explore five meanings of fair trade: supporting smallholder markets; assuring historical shipping arrangements; encouraging national development; guaranteeing decent working conditions; and preserving ecological balance. Structurally, the first two meanings emerged within the banana trade’s competing hegemonic systems, one dominated by three US-based transnational corporations and the other by former colonial powers in the European Union that favored their own shipping. Although the battle finally required WTO intervention, as Gramsci points out, hegemony can also comes from below. Independent national banana growers made direct trade arrangements with supermarkets. Militant unions became especially active within the TNC system, while small-scale producers and “Fair Trade” advocates refined the EU approach. They each have forced fresh approaches to product certification. As TNC domination weakens and independent producers cultivate supermarket outlets, the expiration of EU banana quotas in 2006 may determine which of these competing approaches to trade prevails. A bottom-up alliance among labor, smallholders, and consumers/environmentalists threatens to inspire a fresh hegemonic trade discourse.
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