Development ethics and evolving methods: a comparison of fair trade with the Millennium Villages Project

Abstract

The motivations for rural and agricultural development in the twenty-first century are not different from previous centuries, but evolving technologies in the late twentieth century have altered many methods and institutional arrangements for accomplishing development. The internet has facilitated initiatives that in earlier decades would have required large, complex organizations in both donor and developing countries. We will compare the ethical and institutional strengths and weaknesses of two such initiatives in Malawi: a smallholder farmers organization involved in fair trade and the Millennium Village Project. These are two of a large array of institutions which are currently being used to benefit smallholder agricultural producers. We will examine their relative merits through the lenses of various ethical paradigms and show that the institutional arrangements of the two programs are complimentary in the evolution of agricultural trading systems linking the global north and south.

Keywords:

• fair trade
• Millennium Villages
• development practice

Notes on contributors

Tracy Lyn Beedy has worked in international development in Latin America and Africa since 1989. She completed her dissertation at Michigan State University in 2008, and the doctoral specialization in Ethics and Development in 2011. Since 2009, she has been an Associate Scientist and Scientist with the World Agroforestry Centre (ICRAF) in Lilongwe, Malawi.

Stephen L. Esquith has been working on ethical problems in developing countries since 1990. His research and teaching has focused on democratic transitions and development in Poland and Mali. He has written on the rule of law, the problem of democratic political education, mass violence and reconciliation, and moral and political responsibility. He is the author of Intimacy and Spectacle (Cornell University Press, 1994), a critique of classical and modern liberal political philosophy, and The Political Responsibilities of Everyday Bystanders (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2010) on mass violence and democratic political education.