Farmers of the Golden Bean: Costa Rican Households in the Global Coffee Economy / Edition 1

by Deborah Sick

Overview

Sick explores contemporary issues of gender, empowerment, access to resources, and fair trade as she examines how Costa Rican coffee-producing households cope with the complexities of a globalizing world economy. Using a commodity approach, she integrates household, regional, and global processes. Farmers of the Golden Bean challenges previous assumptions about the nature of economic change and the sustainability of household producers in the global economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780875806174
Publisher:	Cornell University Press
Publication date:	12/05/2007
Edition description:	2
Pages:	191
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)
Age Range:	18 Years

About the Author

Deborah Sick received her Ph.D. from McGill University. She is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Ottawa.

Table of Contents

Contents
List of Tables and Figures ix
Acknowledgments xi
Preface xiii
Abbreviations xxiii
PART ONE: Coffee and the Family Farmer
1 The Fate of the Family Farmer 5
2 Coffee and the Farming Household 19
3 Los Cafeteros of Pérez Zeledón 34
4 The Political Economy of Coffee-Farming Households 51
PART TWO: Strategies for Survival and Mobility
5 Against the Wind: Local Organizations and Change 75
6 To Market, To Market 89
7 When Coffee Is Not Enough 105
8 Family Farmers, Global Markets, and the State 121
9 Fair Trade: A Way Forward? 132
Glossary 153
Notes 157
References Cited 167
Index 193

Editorial Reviews

"Succinct and intriguing. The strengths and contributions of this brief work are many."-- Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science

"Offers a formidable blend of quantitative and qualitative evidence, the kind of complementary analysis too often neglected in contemporary ethnography."-- American Anthropologist

From the Publisher