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This chpater presents a case study focusing on the Community Agroecology Network (CAN), an organization started by the United States and Mesoamerica’s activists, whose effort is to create an alternative trade and knowledge network. The basic aim behind CAN is to benefit conservation and social development efforts by linking producers, consumers, and producer organizations. CAN is a response to the problems arising out of the dominance of certification processes in Fair Trade and organic coffee networks, and the chapter discusses the organization’s main goals of intercommunity relationship development, direct coffee marketing, and ecological sustainability. It moots a comparison between alternative agro-food networks and CAN on the grounds of biodiversity conservation, empowerment, and enhanced livelihoods.

This chapter explores alternative trade from the vantage point of consumption and its meanings by focusing on an alternative currency system in Ithaca, New York. It asks whether Ithaca's alternative currency, called HOURS, would promote a different and perhaps more equitable and sustainable economic reality, and how. The chapter first considers the role of “conventional” modern money in the production and perpetuation of the current global model of trade relations before turning to the question of how the use of an alternative kind of money may shape alternative economic relations and notions of fairness in Ithaca. It shows that the vast majority of commodities and exchanges in Ithaca remain outside the sphere of circulation of the city's HOURS system, which makes the alternative trade network an imperfect substitute for the dollar economy. It argues that the limited circulation of HOURS, despite the system's nearly twenty years of existence, is a reflection of fair trade networks that benefit a privileged minority of commodity producers.

This chapter draws some conclusions from the case studies presented in this book regarding the local impact of fair trade networks and certification. These case studies highlight the anthropology of fair trade as well as various types of fair trade commodities such as Darjeeling tea, coffee, crafts, and cut flowers. Fair trade proponents often argue that the initiative integrates geographically and culturally distant producers, consumers, and distributors into a single global partnership based on shared values and goals, but research among fair trade coffee producers in Mexico and the buyers of their coffee in the United States casts doubts about such unity. Based on these observations, the chapter outlines a broader path toward a more economically equitable and socially just exchange system at both the global and local levels. In particular, it urges those who sympathize with the goals of alternative trade to articulate a set of universal trading rights, analogous and perhaps related to those of human rights as expressed in the charters of various multinational organizations.

Financial markets bring together buyers and sellers of financial assets. This chapter examines the institutional arrangements—private contracts, self-regulatory rules, and public regulation—and information intermediaries—exchanges and other trading venues—that comprise the ‘structure’ of financial markets. We describe the structure of secondary markets for both public equity securities and corporate bonds. Two key themes emerge from this discussion. First, competition—fostered in part by technology and in part by regulatory changes—has shaken up the environment in which financial markets operate, with an influx of new alternative trading platforms now competing with traditional exchanges. Second, the production of trading information is one of the most important functions of financial markets. In this way, we should understand financial markets themselves as operating alongside the information intermediaries discussed in Chapter 6—another mechanism supporting the efficiency of equity markets.