Description
Book SynopsisFeaturing new contributions by leading globalization scholars, this timely volume analyzes the organization, geography, politics, and power dynamics of international trade and production networks understood as global commodity chains.
Trade Review"Jennifer Bair has brought together a very stimulating collection of theoretical and empirical essays on this highly important approach for understanding the immense changes occurring in the global economy. This should be a key book for researchers and policy-makers alike."—Peter Dicken, University of Manchester
"This exciting collection moves the decade-old commodity chain research into new frontiers and insights. The masterful introduction is followed by multifaceted explorations of old and vital new areas of the global economy, from produce to electronics. The contributions are as theoretically exciting as the implications are doleful."—Charles Perrow, Yale University
"[T]he book laudably represents the broad specter of research questions that can be asked and answered through chain-inspired thinking—a tribute to the free use of the chain construct with no disciplinary imperialism attached."—Niels Fold,
Economic GeographyTable of ContentsFrontiers of Commodity Chain Research Table of Contents Introduction 1. Commodity Chains: Genealogy and Review Jennifer Bair Part I. Operationalizing Global Chains: Theoretical and Methodological Debates 2. Historicizing Commodity Chains: Five Hundred Years of the Global Coffee Commodity Chain Steven Topik 3. Trading Up the Commodity Chain?: The Impact of Extractive and Labor-intensive Manufacturing Trade on World-system Inequalities David Smith and Matthew Mahutga 4. Protection Networks and Commodity Chains in the Capitalist World-Economy Immanuel Wallerstein Part II. Getting at Governance: Power and Coordination in Global Chains 5. The Comparative Advantages of Tropical Commodity Chain Analysis John Talbot 6. From Commodity Chains to Value Chains: Interdisciplinary Theory Building in an Age of Globalization Timothy J. Sturgeon 7. Global Commodity Chains, Market Makers, and the Rise of Demand-Responsive Economies Gary Gereffi and Gary Hamilton Part III. Workers and Activists in Global Chains 8. Mimicking 'Lean' in Global Value Chains: It's the Workers Who Get Leaned on Kate Raworth and Thalia Kidder 9. Unveiling the Unveiling: Commodity Chains, Commodity Fetishism, and the 'Value' of Voluntary, Ethical Food Labels Julie Guthman 10. Chain (Re)actions: Comparing Activist Mobilization against Biotechnology in Britain and the U.S William Munro and Rachel Schurman Index
