As connecting to the global economy has torn individual traders from the decades-old co-operative societies, a wave of “witchcraft” accusations and market burnings have helped illuminate the importance of the crafts industry’s moral economy of creativity and innovation and the ongoing debate about what ethical and moral development looks like in Kenya. Ideas of ethics and transparency, as produced through the application of a Fair Trade sticker, strategically erase complex economic and ethical realities while simultaneously indexing ideas of digital modernity and ethical citizenship. A Fair Trade sticker shines a selective light on marketable realities while simultaneously obscuring those inconvenient to marketing crafts. This new wave of ethical branding and NGO aesthetics enables a “race to the bottom” by businesspeople to find and organize the most exploitable artisans (the handicapped, single mothers, homeless children) into workshops and artisan organizations that explicitly market the marginality of the producers.
