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Organic regulation makes products legible to consumers around the world, adding value to commodities and seeking to counter socioecological injustice through neoliberal logics of consumer choice and market diversification. Despite the regulatory and consumer need for universal signification, organic agriculture varies considerably between regional contexts and even within the same country. Within India, home to more organic producers than any other nation, certified organic cotton agriculture in Telangana and certified organic coffee production in Andhra Pradesh highlight how organic agriculture provides distinct, but parallel, ways for farmers and intermediaries to capture value in these supply chains. These questions are especially pressing in South India, which has struggled to spread the economic development of Hyderabad and coastal Andhra Pradesh to poorer rural areas plagued by suicide and agrarian distress. In this article, we explore how organic farmers and intermediaries in South India navigate the demands of foreign capital and governance while negotiating the benefits of global ethical supply chains alongside their own aspirations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Property theory suggests that in legal pluralist societies people secure rights to resources by seeking out institutions that can sanction and validate their claims. This validation legitimates their property claims. Simultaneously, the institutions build and solidify their authority as property-granting entities vis-à-vis competing authorities. In Ghana the charcoal commodity chain involves rights recognized by both formal and customary institutions. A detailed study of property and authority in the context of Ghana's charcoal chain is done by focusing on institutions that mediate people's access to resources, how these institutions mediate access, and how the authority of institutions has changed over time. This study shows how chiefs, having no legal mandate in trees, are gaining authority over Ghana's charcoal production. Chiefs' authority is drawn from long-established customs and social structures in land/tree management, as well as validation of claims by establishing policing groups to enforce fees. Chiefs contest each other and, at the same time, contest and push the state out from communities. Consequently, the Forestry Commission has very limited de facto authority over trees despite its de jure mandate in this arena. The legitimacy of institutions stems from the coercive and customary-social ability to control access to resources and opportunities. • Chiefs have no legal mandate in trees, yet they control Ghana's charcoal production. • Chiefs grant access to trees via property, identity, social relation and moral economy. • Forestry Commission has limited de facto authority over trees despite their legal mandate. • Legitimacy of institutions stems from coercive and social ability to control access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Informal small-scale mangrove wood harvesting has received limited attention, though it is a widespread threat to mangroves in many parts of the tropics. We investigated wood use and the impacts of harvesting on mangrove forests in the Bay of Assassins in southwest Madagascar. We measured forest structure, composition, and harvesting across 60 vegetation plots and investigated human uses of the mangroves through Rapid Rural Appraisal techniques. We found that unlike other mangroves in the region, those in the Bay of Assassins are dominated by Ceriops tagal. Tree harvesting rates are high, with a mean of 28.7% (SD 19.4) of trees harvested per plot. This is similar to heavily harvested mangroves in other parts of the tropics. A comparison of tree versus sapling importance of the different mangrove tree species indicates that the composition of the mangrove forest is changing, with C. tagal becoming more important. Livelihood activities drive the harvesting of certain species and size classes. Mangrove wood is used mainly for the construction of traditional housing and fencing. There are also emerging uses of mangrove wood, including seaweed (Kappaphycus alvarezii) aquaculture and the production of 'sokay', a lime render made by burning sea shells in mangrove wood kilns and used to improve the durability of houses. Small-scale selective harvesting of mangrove wood is important for local livelihoods but may have wide-ranging impacts on forest composition and structure. Demand for mangrove wood has grown in relation to new commodity chains for marine products, demonstrating the need for integrated landscape management that considers wetland, terrestrial and marine resources together. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Most scholarship within social reproduction theory focuses on women's paid and unpaid care and domestic work, typically within the global North. Rarely has social reproduction theory grappled with unfree labour in commodity supply chains, particularly in the global South. However, these labour relations also involve gendered power relations that cut across the productive and reproductive realms of the economy, which can be illuminated by social reproduction theory analysis. In this article, we reflect on how social reproduction theory can be used to make sense of unfree labour's role in global supply chains, expanding its geographical scope and the forms of labour exploitation encompassed within it. Conceptually, we harness the insights of social reproduction theory, and Jeffrey Harrod and Robert W Cox's work on 'unprotected work' in the global economy to examine how gendered power relations shape patterns of unfree labour. Empirically, we analyse interview and survey data collected among cocoa workers in Ghana through LeBaron's Global Business of Forced Labour project. We argue that social reproduction theory can move global supply chain scholarship beyond its presently economistic emphasis on the productive sphere and can shed light into the overlaps between social oppression, economic exploitation, and social reproduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Small-scale food enterprises occupy a critical space in the food system of Kingston, Jamaica. While they serve the entire population, poor urban households are disproportionately reliant on small-scale food retailers. The nodes and networks of retailers play an important role in the value and commodity chain by providing access to comparatively cheap food but are often impacted by economic vagaries and state-level regulation amongst other factors which potentially challenge the sustainability of the trade. These issues are potentially offset by a highly dynamic system where entry into the trade is maintained by the high levels of unemployment and limited alternatives, even in the informal sector. While the challenges are the likely result of state-level deficiencies, it is possible that these problems are both alleviated and exacerbated by various strategies used to claim space and negotiate food-based livelihoods in the city. This research attempts to fill a conspicuous gap in the literature by examining the pathology of the urban food system as it relates to the characterisation, challenges and experiences of small-scale food retailers. The results are based on a combination of questionnaire surveys and interviews with small-scale food retailers in the city. They reveal the existence of gender- and age-based differences in education, profits earned and motivations for entry. Additionally, these vendors face a range of challenges including deficiencies in state support. While many of their challenges are partly compensated by reliance on inwardly focussed networks, statistical characterisation may provide vital insight into opportunities for policy interventions which specifically target this marginalised group. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how intersectional inequalities can facilitate the extraction of surplus value from agriculture. Through an ethnographic case study of the Burkina Faso cotton sector, I describe a 'chain of exploitation' wherein actors pass economic pressures on to less-powerful actors. People resist their own exploitation, yet justify exploiting others through discourses about intersectional inequalities – overlapping axes of social difference including class, gender, rural/urban status, and education level. I thus argue that intersectional social inequalities – exacerbated by economic pressures – can: (1) justify and thus facilitate the transfer of exploitation, and (2) fragment resistance efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There are many approaches to teaching about globalization, commodity chains, and sustainability. Education for sustainable development demands teaching approaches that capture multidimensional and integrated aspects of environmental, social, economic, and political factors. In geography, additional aspects require attention, such as understanding how peoples' everyday lives, living conditions, and business relations depend on contextual circumstances including place, time, and scales. This article presents a time-geographic teaching approach that enables systems thinking through contextual analysis. We present a time-geographically inspired educational approach which was implemented at a Swedish university in a yearly course, from 2007 to 2015 (9 years in total). Next, we review 48 student exam papers regarding how students performed a time-geographic contextual analysis of commodity chains and sustainability. We found that the teaching approach encouraged multiple descriptions and reflections by students. It developed students' abilities to apply geographic concepts and to identify complex relationships in time and space that define sustainability challenges and strategies. Students linked everyday life to global and local processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Copyright of Annals of the Polish Association of Agricultural & Agribusiness Economists is the property of Polish Association of Agricultural & Agribusiness Economists and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Serial crises in the global economy have spurred renewed debate over contemporary transformations in geographies of uneven development. Global production network (GPN) studies have not been inured to this trend; indeed, in both geography and development sociology, a variety of approaches have emerged to grasp the multi-scaled, relational process of uneven development through the lens of global production. This progress report parses three of these: firm-centric scholarship that increasingly incorporates disinvestment and devaluation as an empirical 'dark side' to global production network participation; Marxist approaches that explore the evolving relationship between global inequality and global production; and neo-Marxist studies of regional conjunctures that highlight the constraints, contingencies and colonial legacies shaping uneven development in both long-standing and new ways. While their epistemological differences and normative assumptions are mostly incommensurable, more dialogue across these positions is nonetheless warranted if scholars are to grasp the vicissitudes upending received patterns of uneven development and portending uncertain futures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Several decades ago scholars studying the state, political economy, and power relations were obliged to engage with the ideas of Nicos Poulantzas. Today, his ideas are hard to find in most sociological theorizing—particularly in the United States. This trend is unfortunate, but not unavoidable. This article proposes that we reconsider the insights of Poulantzas as well as the growing community of scholars building a neo-Poulantzasian approach for studies on international politics, economics, and the state. I discuss Poulantzas's prescient but often neglected work on the internationalization of capital and nation-states, along with his theoretical approach to studying the state as a social relation. After highlighting their significance I focus on several neo-Poulantzasian analytical concepts that have extended his insights in creative ways. I argue that Poulantzas and contemporary neo-Poulantzasians offer ideas that are ripe for exploration, elaboration, and incorporation into multiple burgeoning and interrelated areas of inquiry for sociology and beyond. These include studies on the political-economy of development, studies on internationalization and its effect on national-level governance, and studies of the state in the (semi-) periphery. If successful, this article will provoke scholars to engage in innovative transdisciplinary research grounded in the unique and underexplored theories of Nicos Poulantzas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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In the art icle the conceptual basis for harmonizat ion the economic interests of the subjects of logist ics chains of commodity markets are substant iated. A methodical approach to assessing the economic interests' balance of market chain subjects has been determined, which is based on the ident ificat ion of the main «blocks» of interact ion and the system of indicators at the micro, macro and global levels. The orientat ion and depth of the cont radict ions of economic interests of the logist ics chains subjects of the agrarian market of Ukraine are determined. Based on empirical research are proved, that the basic contradict ion in the chain of a given market is a contradict ion between the interests of the ent it ies of the corporate and individual sectors, which violates the dist ribut ion parity value added between subjects and links in the chain that is not in line with nat ional economic interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Illegal American Cocaine Commodity Chain, 1970-2000. This paper provides a historical analysis of the development of the illegal cocaine commodity chain in the Americas. Its geographical focus lies on the Andean region as the prime production area for coca and cocaine between 1970 and 2000. A brief history of cocaine in the Americas serves as an introduction to situate the illegal cocaine commodity chain within the broader historical context of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Thereafter, I explore how political, social and economic circumstances at the global, national and regional level have influenced the geographic and quantitative development of coca and cocaine production in the Andean region. Thirdly, I examine the impact of illegality on the characteristics of the cocaine commodity chain in terms of value added, forms of organization and the constant process of adaption along the commodity chain in reaction to repressive anti-drug policies. Finally, the main nodes along the chain (such as the cocaine production process), the division of labour along the chain and the role of the USA as the largest consumer market for cocaine are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Gold Frontier in South Africa. This paper uses the concept of commodity frontiers to compare the expansions and contractions of the South African gold frontier. Similarities and differences to its counterparts in the USA or Australia become visible in the South African gold frontier's rapid industrialization, massive exploitation of low-skilled workers and tremendous damage to the natural environment. In addition to these regional factors, the approach also shows to what extent the gold economy has its own specific functional interrelations. Finally, the study also demonstrates how global changes and local dynamics can interact in very different and sometimes unexpected ways. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper anthropologically explores how key actors in the Chittagong live bird trading network perceive biosecurity and risk in relation to avian influenza between production sites, market maker scenes and outlets. They pay attention to the past and the present, rather than the future, downplaying the need for strict risk management, as outbreaks have not been reported frequently for a number of years. This is analysed as 'temporalities of risk perception regarding biosecurity', through Black Swan theory, the idea that unexpected events with major effects are often inappropriately rationalized (Taleb in The Black Swan. The impact of the highly improbable, Random House, New York, 2007). This incorporates a sociocultural perspective on risk, emphasizing the contexts in which risk is understood, lived, embodied and experienced. Their risk calculation is explained in terms of social consent, practical intelligibility and convergence of constraints and motivation. The pragmatic and practical orientation towards risk stands in contrast to how risk is calculated in the avian influenza preparedness paradigm. It is argued that disease risk on the ground has become a normalized part of everyday business, as implied in Black Swan theory. Risk which is calculated retrospectively is unlikely to encourage investment in biosecurity and, thereby, points to the danger of unpredictable outlier events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization of food chains and scale increases in business models are dramatically affecting rural areas in Europe, by a simplification of land use, new urban-rural relations and reshaped social networks. While pressures on land use systems have been increasing due to the competition on commodity markets, the role of territorially embedded production systems remains crucial in keeping farm biodiversity and unique cultural landscapes, as well as social and cultural ties. Building on the social-ecological resilience approach (Darnhofer (2020b), this paper examines the resilience of territorially embedded production systems in different regions of Europe, including emergent and ongoing patterns of material, social and cultural relations. It shows how primary producers improve the resilience of their production systems in response to increasing pressures resulting from changing ecological, economic, social and cultural conditions. Three production systems are examined: carp farming in Middle Franconia, Germany; wine production in Tuscany, Italy; and olive oil production in Alentejo, Portugal. The paper adopts an adapted relational approach to conceptualise how resilience develops in terms of the ability of producers and their networks to develop new markets, reduce costs and add value. Different types of enacted relations (sets of mutually empowering connections in space and time) are identified, including relations among family members, between farmers, along the commodity chain and with other stakeholders, such as tourism, policy and regional administrations. Using these insights, the paper argues that it is important to shift the focus of agricultural resilience from the producer level to the network level, particularly how network dynamics emerge as relations enacted by diverse actors. These collaborative efforts have the potential to enable primary producers to maintain cultural landscapes, preserve their ecosystems and ensure the farms' economic survival and by extension help to maintain the socio-ecological resilience of territorial production systems. • The paper examines the resilience of territorially embedded production systems within Europe. • The authors adapted a relational approach to conceptualise how resilience develops through relations and networks. • The analysis identifies various types of enacted relations - personal relations, between businesses and other stakeholders. • The paper shifts the focus of resilience beyond the producer level to the network level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on temporal myopia as a lens, we explore the near collapse of certification programmes in commodity value chains. Developing our contribution in the context of the Ghana cocoa industry, data for our inquiry comes from semi structured interviews and focus group interviews with loosely connected industry actors, including, farmers, certification officers, regulators, and licenced buying companies. Providing insight into the performative drivers and sustenance of certification programmes, we argue that the pursuit of short-term advantages derived from a repertoire of micro-practices constitutively impede certification programmes. These uncoordinated practices, in reinforcing short-term preferences, we found, precipitates the decoupling of certification standards from present and future value capture, inevitably, producing the delayed and catastrophic problem of the near collapse of the certification programme. The implications for the theory and practice of commodity value chains are presented. • We explore the near collapse of certification programmes in the Ghana cocoa industry. • The pursuit of short-term advantages derived from a repertoire of micro-practices constitutively impede certification programmes. • Decoupling of certification standards from present and future value capture leads delayed and catastrophic problem of the near collapse of the certification programme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This path forward is actually made up of 4 pathways each with several opportunities for change: Pathway 1: I Rooting food systems in diversity, agroecology, and human rights i . Adopting international agreements on food emergencies Building food policies, food policy councils, and new forms of citizen participation. In contrast, four pathways of civil society-led food system transformation could shift USD 4 trillion from the industrial chain to food sovereignty and agroecology, cut 75% of food systems' GHG emissions, and deliver incalculable benefits to the lives and livelihoods of billions of people over the next 25 years.". [Extracted from the article]

The purpose of this paper is propose two vastly different approaches to studying the role of commodity chains in the global economy. Both use the commodity chains framework to analyze the possibilities for industrial upgrading. The first proposes to develop an index of industrial upgrading in individual countries, and then use the index as the dependent variable in causal models incorporating various predictors of industrial upgrading. The second, somewhat more adventurous strategy, proposes a commodity chains-based decision approach that would attempt to model the complex interactions between the commodity chain and its regional environment. The first approach is developed considerably more extensively than the second (which is barely developed at all), both because it builds on former work I have done with others (including David Smith, who is part of this workshop), and because it seems reasonably possible to accomplish empirically. The second approach is developed more briefly and speculatively; suggestions would be appreciated.

This workshop assembled thirty scholars with substantive or methodological interest in the study of global-scale socioeconomic processes across time and space. The purpose of the meeting was to develop ideas for research projects on the structure and dynamics of globalization using new research technologies such as Geographic Information Systems (GIS), spatial analysis methods (including network analysis), and sources of geographic information not usually employed by globalization researchers. This document provides the agenda, abstracts, and papers considered at the meeting, hosted by UC Riverside.

Telecoupling constitutes a particular class of globalized environmental issues that are neither local-cumulative, nor transboundary, nor concerning global commons, but that arise because of specific linkages between distal regions. Such telecoupled issues, e.g., associated with global commodity chains, waste flows, or migration patterns, have been receiving increasing attention from scholars of global land change science. Although governance research has mostly studied existing institutional responses to these issues, telecoupling opens up a problem-oriented perspective on issues of environmental sustainability that occur regionally, but that arise because of global linkages, and raises novel questions about how such issues are and could be governed in a global architecture. We draw insights from existing literature on globally interconnected phenomena to advance our understanding of governing telecoupling toward environmental sustainability. We first identify and discuss five particular challenges that telecoupling poses to global environmental governance: knowledge deficits, divergent interests, high transaction costs of cooperation, the weak legitimacy base of current governance arrangements, and policy incoherence and fragmentation. Second, we review conceptual literature that meaningfully address the governance of telecoupling, while utilizing differing terminologies, for example, through reference to "flows," "chains," or "multiscalar" issues. Building on this, we elaborate on how currently debated governance approaches respond to the identified challenges. We conclude with a brief note on where we believe the discussion on governance of telecoupling stands, and where we see directions for future research.

Financial inclusion has been touted as a developmental good, drawing the poor - that is, the financially excluded - into the ambit of formal banking services. Chapter 6 looks at how microfinance actors located in the Global North interact with and understand their role in relation to poor borrowers in the Global South. Despite the push from MFIs, Radhakrishnan finds that women often refuse this ethos - they are willing to be borrowers but will not accept the symbolic extraction it entails in terms of working motherhood. [Extracted from the article]

This Special Issue of Global Environmental Politics, on water governance, focuses on the disruptive and transformative potential of Indigenous politics for revealing the multiplicity of political economies and enhancing the theory and practice of global environmental politics. In this issue, we unsettle the assumptions of dominant colonial systems of production and exchange (often the starting point for global environmental politics scholars), using water to bring to light the conflicting approaches of settler colonial and Indigenous political economies. With a focus on the settler colonial states of the Global North—specifically, Canada and the United States—the contributing authors interrogate the ways in which different forms of water relations are positioned at the center of conflicting understandings of land, law, and development trajectories. Through analyses of varying forms of water infrastructure, water law, and waterways, and with careful attention to spatial and temporal distances in production and trade systems, the articles curated here examine conflicting legal forms and traditions, upstream and downstream relations, and opportunities for and limits to resistance by affected communities. In a dominant global political economy with increasing distance between sites of extraction, production, consumption, and discard—and even further removed from the financing that underpins these commodity chains—our Special Issue suggests that the acknowledgment and visibility of multiple forms of water relations contribute to reshaping both economies and environmental outcomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyses the rise and fall of two regional monocultures in Mexico: the henequen zone in the southern state of Yucatán and the cotton‐growing area of La Laguna. Both regions experienced a dramatic expansion of commodity production between 1870 and 1910, but their key crops came to be cultivated under different labour regimes: debt peonage in the case of henequen and wage labour in the case of cotton. The process of class formation that unfolded in each region culminated in the 1930s in different kinds of crises. In Yucatán, a political struggle between hacienda owners and the federal government resulted in an agrarian reform "from above." In La Laguna, class conflict between rural wageworkers and the landed bourgeoisie forced an agrarian reform "from below." These previously distinct labour regimes converged in subsequent decades, however, as rural producers became de facto wageworkers on state‐organized and state‐administered production units known as collective ejidos. Ultimately, changes in the global markets for cotton and henequen, combined with the inability of the Mexican state to reconcile the political logic of agrarian clientelism with shifting commodity chain dynamics, resulted in the collapse of these regional monocultures in the late 20th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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This paper takes a world-systemic perspective on global football seen through the lens of the Global North–South political–economic divide that has long motivated development studies. After synthesizing an historical account of the commercial transformation of world football since the mid-1970s, the paper considers the organization and operation of the world football economy using the analytical construct of the "global value chains" perspective. The analysis identifies two distinct football governance structures that broadly correspond to the "producer-driven" and "buyer-driven" governance structures long identified by commodity/value chain scholars, and that imply different flows of resources across world football's North–South divide. The paper concludes by considering implications of the value chain governance structures for both the value chains and sports studies literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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How does dollar centrality persist in the face of continuous US current account deficits and a steadily worsening net international investment position? Two mechanisms create a structural basis for dollar centrality, explaining how dollars enter global credit markets and why surplus countries continue to hold dollar-denominated assets. First, institutional structures deriving from late development suppress domestic demand in major current account surplus countries, making them reliant on external demand for growth. Local banks recycle those dollars into the global economy, creating huge dollar liabilities and assets on their balance sheets. This locks them into continued use of the dollar and reliance on the US Federal Reserve during crises. Second, US firms participating in the global unbundling of production have constructed commodity chains in which they capture disproportionate shares of global profits through their control over Intellectual property. These profits sustain valuations and thus the attractiveness of dollar-denominated assets. Routinization in use of the dollar and compliance with Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and US controlled commodity chains creates infrastructural power in Michael Mann's sense. This routinization sustains US geo-economic power in the face of persistent current account deficits and growing net international debt relative to US gross domestic product. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent literature in the world-systems perspective has refocused attention on questions of 'core' and 'periphery' in historical capitalism, yet rarely critically examines the underlying assumptions regarding these zones. Drawing on a developing dataset on the world's wealthiest individuals (the World-Magnates Database), we trace the development and expansion of sugar circuits across the Atlantic world from the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries to explain how the sugar commodity chain leads us to rethink some prevailing notions of core and periphery. Namely, we challenge the notion that these zones consist of geographical spaces that, since very early in the development of the world-economy, became permanently specialized in the production of raw materials (periphery) or more sophisticated manufactures (core); and that labor forces have been trans-historically relatively free/better-paid in core activities and coerced/poorly-paid in peripheral ones. We argue that, prior to the nineteenth century, the world-economy is not only characterized by the uneven and combined emergence of various forms of labor exploitation, as usually argued within a world-systems perspective, but also one in which core-like and peripheral activities (that is, those providing access to relatively greater or lesser wealth) were not yet as clearly bounded geographically as they would become in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. We find that a longuedurée analysis of sugar production by enslaved labor illustrates not merely processes of peripheralization, but of what we call coreification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the multiple usages of star anise, a spice harvested from trees native to northeast Vietnam and southeast China, and notwithstanding its potential as a 'flex crop' due to being a key component in the pharmaceutical production of the anti-influenza drug Tamiflu, little is known about who cultivates this spice and how it reaches consumers around the world. Putting commodity chain analysis literature into conversation with recent 'flex crop' debates, we analyse the roles of actors along star anise commodity chains originating in rural, upland northern Vietnam. Our qualitative fieldwork reveals the intricate and idiosyncratic nature of these commodity chains upon which ethnic minority cultivator livelihoods depend, and which connect uplands and lowlands through manifold linkages. Cultivators, intermediaries, wholesalers, exporters and marketplace traders are constantly having to renegotiate their positions along these chains to maintain viable livelihoods due to uncertain financial returns and shifting demands. Adding to livelihood insecurities, financial gains have fluctuated wildly over time. The segmented knowledge individuals have of these commodity chains keep many in a vulnerable position, while the Vietnamese state's approach to promoting this commodity as a way to improve local livelihoods is questionable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The advent of refrigerated transport made fresh beef a global commodity, linking South American and Australian producers to hungry consumers in Europe and North America. With vast supplies of cattle, and growing markets in Japan, Russia, and beyond, China was the last great frontier of this global transformation. Rather than a single export trade, China's beef industry was a complex and multidirectional network of producers, processors, and consumers, its many production chains each facing distinct commercial, logistic, and political challenges. This article examines three such chains, the Qing-era caravan trade that drove live sheep and cattle to Beijing, the Harbin meat-packing industry that grew up around the Russian China Eastern Railway, and Japanese-dominated export of beef from Qingdao. A cross-section of these issues shows how the industry as a whole adapted to the new pressures and opportunities of globalization, as well as those presented by technology, foreign investment, imperialism, and war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The central argument of this article is that global cities are, due to their clustering of producer service firms, critical governance nodes in global production networks. More in particular, the article scrutinises the role of producer service firms in uneven development and, especially, in the geographical transfer of value (Hadjimichalis, 1984). Because the direct as well as the indirect mechanisms through which value is transferred geographically require the intervention of producer service firms, global cities can be theorised as governance nodes for centripetal wealth transfers along global commodity chains. Moreover, and in the context of the persisting criticism that the global city concept has a bias towards Northern/Western cities, the article argues that the claim that global cities are critical places for the organisation of uneven development also holds for cities beyond 'the usual suspects'. Referring to cases of how producer service firms in Hamburg and Mexico City erect entry barriers to protect their clients from competition and of how they shape labour relations at the expense of employees, I have maintained that governance is, as Sassen (2010: 158) has argued, indeed 'embedded' into the services provided. From that follows that even 'minor' global cities are strategic governance places from where the transfer of wealth towards the centres of the world economy is organised. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fair trade has made paying producers in poorer countries a "just" price one of its central aims, with the issue constantly in its public communiqués, from the print media to social networking sites. As most research has looked at fair trade in the South, where small producers and craft makers live, discussions of the fair price have centered on whether the wholesale prices paid to them are alleviating poverty. However, circumscribing the issue of the fair price only to its impact in the South impedes our understanding of how fair trade operates in the North, on which the system relies for its existence. Looking at fair trade from a Northern perspective, this paper sees the fair price as a partial illustration of the social processes that characterize reflexive modernity, particularly the ethical dilemmas that surround the composition of prices. But rather than focusing exclusively on activist discourse, the paper uses practice theory to build a more nuanced picture of the diverse beliefs and behaviors that the fair price is entangled with. Drawing on ethnography with people who consume and sell fair trade in the Italian city of Palermo, the paper shows how understanding what a fair price is appears to be an enigma that conceals different aspects of the fair trade network. Specifically, it reveals that the fair price is not a single but a double entity, comprising the wholesale price paid to producers, where "political" emphasis usually lies, and the fair retail price, an entity discussed far less often. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Debates on taxonomies of transaction types have been a fertile source for the analysis and comparison of societies. The present contribution aims to describe types of relationships in a terminology that renders visible both their differentiating features and their shared foundations, so as to make possible a more flexible use of categories. The focus is on the question of how the concept of sharing relates to the distinction between gift and commodity. Starting from the theory of the gift, the term obligation - to give, receive and return - is replaced by the term expectation. This draws attention to three constitutive contradictions of the gift that are found in modified ways in commodity transfers and in sharing. First, each transfer makes expectable a future that cannot be determined. Secondly, each transfer relates to the values of a specific community whose boundaries and coherence always remain ambiguous. Thirdly, transfers constitute persons in a social and even public manner, but they remain opaque. These contradictions define a dynamic field of types of transfer that are characterized variously by weak or strong expectations, differing ranges of value systems and different degrees of the opacity and transparency of persons. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, I examine the valorization process in the indium commodity chain. The first section of the article looks closely at small‐scale polymetallic production in Potosí. Here I demonstrate how producers and mill operators in Bolivia, because of the nature of the metal, do not know their production contains indium and instead perceive their production to be less valuable. The second section of the article seeks to link Bolivian production to international indium markets. I demonstrate how accumulation occurs along the commodity chain for companies that deny the Bolivian origin of their mill feeds. I conclude with an analysis of the state of the commodity in economic anthropology. I argue, with help from Bolivian miners, that previous and contemporary notions of the commodity have neglected an important part of its composition, what Marx referred to as "dead/past labor." Incorporating this notion into our understanding of commodities, I argue, can help us understand the way raw material mineral markets function today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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