Use Gary Gereffi's Global Commodity Chains to explain and analyse Global apparel industry and Taiwan apparel industry,besides to describe the transitionary role of Taiwan in Global apparel Commodity Chains.

Commodity chains and cognates approaches are widely debated in many social science disciplines to understand and explain the drivers, mechanisms and effects of transnational production processes, including development perspectives and economic inequalities. This article aims to situate the understanding of commodity chains and cognate approaches as historically constituted imaginations of spatial economic relations that contingently travel between scientific disciplines and a wide range of social actors (policy makers, enterprises). The article is based on a spatial heuristic for understanding globalization processes inspired by the Leipzig school of global studies. Discussing commodity chains as spatial formats defined by the interplay of imagination / materialization in the context of particular spatial orders (of a globalized economy), leads to a number of hitherto less explored research questions. Drawing on this school of theorizing, I argue that the multiplicity of approaches should be embraced but simultaneously questioned from the perspective of why, how and for whom differences in imagination and enactment matter. Building upon the centrality of performativity based on the interplay of imagination / materialization, I highlight four areas (divided into chain actors and along imagination and materialization) in which commodity chain related research could benefit from a closer engagement with the Leipzig school heuristic.

Do second-hand clothing donations ‘do good?’ Thrift stores promote the message that second-hand clothing (SHC) donations ‘do good’ when they solicit donations from individuals. I argue that this narrative of ‘doing good’ overemphasizes the social and economic value of donated clothes and conceals the negative aspects of overconsumption and the problems associated with the commercial export of SHC. The aim of this thesis is to better understand the relationship between fast fashion, clothing consumption and disposal patterns, and the global trade in SHC donations by examining what motivates individuals to donate SHC to thrift stores, and how thrift stores are linked to the international trade in SHC. I began to map SHC donations from households to thrift stores. I used a global production network (GPN) framework to examine the social, political, and economic relations that contribute to how value is created, increased, and extracted in this commodity chain. Using a case study approach, I conducted 30 interviews with individuals who donated used clothing and I conducted research at four different thrift stores that sell SHC in Victoria, BC. / Graduate / 2020-04-17

This dissertation project examines how value is changed and created through organic certification and the universalizing ideas of capacity building within the olive oil industry in Jordan and how these shifts affect the social and material processes of production. I approach organic olive oil production in Jordan as one method that producers use in accessing markets and capacity building. By shifting from looking strictly at organic certified farms to examining the larger context of capacity building and international standards, I identify how organic is just one strategy in a larger effort to diversify Jordanian agricultural production and to access global markets. However, more work needs to be done to elucidate how development shapes organic and other ‘alternative’ initiatives differently than in European and North American contexts. In order to do this, I incorporate postcolonial critiques of GPN and critical development studies to further our understanding how of these certifications and standards are taken up, challenged, and sometimes abandoned in favor of other production methods in local spaces of the Global South. The local embeddedness of olive oil production and the relative recent history of export provide a unique opportunity for examining how producers, organizations, governments, and universities create new export industries. In order to trace how these capacities are built, this dissertation examines the following questions: how is value redefined as producers try to access distant consumers? What are the material and social strategies? In answering these questions, I examine three types of value: taste/sensory, organic/environmental, and gendered tradition. Through the examination of these values, I found that they were each built through a mechanism: re-asetheticizing local taste, creating a new commodity network, and pushing domestic labor into the public sphere. Each mechanism has intended and unintended consequences for the social relations of production. In summary, this dissertation explores the use (and abandonment) of organic certification within the larger context of development and capacity building in Jordan. In order to explore how value is being created in new ways, the three empirical chapters examine extra virginity, organic certification, and women’s rural organizations. By looking beyond a singular commodity chain, this dissertation examines the processes through which institutional assemblages are formed and destabilized. Therefore, each of the three empirical chapters covers a different aspect of the institutions that are defining value within the larger network of the olive industry. This approach will further our understanding of how quality and conventions function in systems under transition. (Higgins, Dibden, and Cocklin 2008a). Together these findings provide a broad picture of efforts in Jordan to improve and expand the Jordanian olive oil industry. A large aspect of this effort is to produce exportable olive oil. While only a small percentage of producers are exporting, governmental and development networks want to build the capacity of the olive industry so that more farmers are producing to international standards. Through this broad initiative, traditional ideas of quality and the best practices of production are being challenged. These shifts create new networks and products through which rural producers try to capture value. While the overall ramifications of this shift for the average farmer are small now, with further government standardizing, production and its associated social relations could be significantly changed. The traditional farmers who were able to sell within their personal networks may lose their ability to sell flexibly, and simultaneously larger irrigated producers may flourish, having larger environmental impacts.

<p>Among the most significant changes to the agricultural sector in the twentieth century include a sharp decline in employment and the numbers of farms, a decline in the proportion of total value that accrues to agricultural producers, and an increase in farm level and regional specialization. Within the U.S., substantial differences in the characteristics of agricultural producers and the spatial distribution of production persist amid industry change. These changes coincided with changes in global markets, domestic consumption, consolidation and concentration within the processing and retailing sectors, and government policy. The causality that lies behind these developments is the key puzzle that this study addresses. </p><p>This study advances an institutional explanation of industry formation across locations within the U.S. Differences in industry constitution at the local level produce different impacts of and responses to global markets, reflected by economic changes and policy developments, as actors work to secure stability and advantage in markets (Fligstein 2001). This study uses the global value chains' definition of the industry, which incorporates the network of actors arrayed along a process of production, to capture the set of actors with the capacity to affect industry operation (Gereffi 1994). An assessment of the relative importance of local economic characteristics, global markets, organization and coordination within industries, and government policies to where production locates in the primary objective of the study.</p><p>The pork and non-cigar tobacco industries across several states within the United States from 1959 through 2005 allow for a contrast along the key changes identified above. Within case comparison is used to construct causal narratives of industry change at the state level. Panel and pooled time series analysis assess the relative importance the factors to agricultural change.</p><p>Local economic characteristics largely fade from significance with the inclusion of the theoretical perspectives. Total and net trade in agricultural and manufactured products is generally significant across industries for production, although this is not the case for specific tobacco types. The proportion of farms composed of small farms is significant for production and for farm structure in both industries. The presence of manufacture is significant for hog production and could not be assessed for tobacco. While federal policies are broadly significant for the tobacco industry, identified state policies exhibit few consistent effects for hog production. Importantly, farm structure measures were only available for Census years, which reduces sample size. Second, many of the measures are industry-specific, which reduces comparability.</p> / Dissertation

The 21st century has witnessed a significant growth of financial activity in the food system. Although these developments have been mirrored with a rise in interest towards studying financialisation, there is still much to uncover of its complex workings in an equally complex system. Many studies have focused on the measurement of financialisation, but less have ventured to assess the practical nature of financialisation: how it spreads, who spreads it and what are its effects for the system it is colonising. This study creates a model to understand these practicalities. To test this model, I use quantitative soybean commodity chain data by the Trase database combined with a qualitative case study on Bunge Ltd., one of the biggest soybean traders and processors globally.Contrary to how financialisation is often treated, this study strengthens the understanding of financialisation as a deliberate process put in practice by the actors and structures in its host system. It is a process inherent to the foundations of the current neoliberal world order and globalised capitalist system, which it influences and is influenced by. To assess the practice of the financialisation process, in this thesis I have created a model that can be adapted to systems and commodities within as well as beyond the food system.

Submitted by Renata Lopes (renatasil82@gmail.com) on 2016-05-13T12:01:02Z No. of bitstreams: 1 rabibflorianoantonio.pdf: 1313430 bytes, checksum: ec62635d2dcd88082de9281653502200 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2016-06-27T20:09:41Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 rabibflorianoantonio.pdf: 1313430 bytes, checksum: ec62635d2dcd88082de9281653502200 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-27T20:09:41Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 rabibflorianoantonio.pdf: 1313430 bytes, checksum: ec62635d2dcd88082de9281653502200 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2013-01-08 / O objetivo desta dissertação é ampliar a discussão sobre a questão do crédito e da institucionalização dos mercados enquanto elementos constituintes no desenvolvimento econômico da economia cafeeira no Vale do Paraíba Fluminense no século XIX, através da análise de inventários, testamentos e outras fontes primárias disponíveis no acervo da Universidade Severino Sombras, de Vassouras (RJ), que conserva grande parte da documentação da elite cafeicultora que viveu e atuou na cidade ou se relacionou a ela durante o século XIX. A grande problemática que aqui se faz presente é tentar entender como uma economia de commodities, oriunda de um sistema colonial de base escravista, que se mantém no processo de inserção da economia-mundo de bases capitalistas, em transformação conseguiu encadear elementos financeiros, em especial particulares, para manter a inserção de capital em uma economia onde as bases monetárias e instituições creditícias se viam aparentemente insuficientes para manter a economia exportadora, em especial o café, visto que o produto dependia de investimentos constantes de capital para se manter nos períodos de entressafra e nas quedas de preço. / The goal of this dissertation is to expand the discussion on the issue of credit and the institutionalization of markets while constituents in economic development of the coffee economy in Vale do Paraíba Fluminense in the nineteenth century, through the analysis of inventories, wills and other primary sources available in the library University Severino Shadows, Brooms (RJ), which retains much of the documentation of the coffee-growing elite who lived and worked in the city or was related to her during the nineteenth century. The big problem that is present here is trying to understand how an economy of commodities originating from a basic colonial slave system, which remains in the integration process of the world economy to a capitalist basis, succeeded in transforming financial chain elements, especially particular, to maintain the insertion of capital in an economy where the monetary base and lending institutions were seen apparently insufficient to maintain the export economy, in particular coffee, since the product depended on constant capital investments to keep us off-season periods and the price drops.

This thesis is about the organisation, character and change of labour relations in expanding capitalist wool farming in the Cape between 1860 and 1950. It is an attempt to analyse labour in wool farming within a transnational framework, based on an expansion of capital from core to periphery of the capitalist world-economy. Wool farming in peripheries like the Cape was part of capitalist production through the link to primarily the British textile industry. This relationship enabled wool farmers to invest in their farms in sheep, fences and windmills. They thereby became agents of capital expansion in the world-economy, which was a prerequisite for a capitalist expansion. Although wool production in the Cape was initially an imperial division of labour, that relation changed during the twentieth century as Britain’s leading role as textile producer was challenged by other capitalist core countries. Capitalism as a transnational production system, based on commodity chains from periphery to core, became the most crucial structure for wool farmers in the Cape, who could increase their exports. The thesis also shows that the pre-capitalist generational division of labour among black peasants, through which farmers acquired labour, especially shepherds, was both discarded and intensified. Shepherding was intensified along with fencing during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century due to threat from jackals and lack of sufficient water supplies. Those farmers who invested in technology in the form of jackal-proof fences and windmills managed to change production from herding to rotational grazing in camps, which meant that shepherds were replaced by camp walkers, who controlled fences instead of sheep. Those farmers who did not invest were forced to exploit the pre-capitalist relations more intensively and hire shepherds in order to be able to produce and sell wool to textile manufacturers in capitalist core areas. As the young adult males disappeared from farms to the mines, the role of children and youths as shepherds became increasingly important. By the 1940s almost all the shepherds were children or youths, but they were about to be made redundant, as the number of shepherds decreased during the 1930s and 1940s.

Wirtschaftliche Prozesse sind in Zeiten der Globalisierung zunehmend komplexer. Immer mehr Akteure sind an der Erstellung eines Produktes von der Konzeption bis zur Konsumption durch die Verbraucher beteiligt. Innovationen im Bereich von I&K-Technologien oder im Verkehr, sinkende Transport- und Transaktionskosten sowie organisatorische Neuerungen ermöglichen eine räumliche Trennung einzelner Produktionsschritte der Wertschöpfungskette. Es entstehen Unternehmensnetzwerke, die nicht auf räumlicher, sondern organisatorischer Nähe basieren. Die Verflechtungen zwischen den Akteuren können in Wertschöpfungsketten abgebildet werden. Allgemeine Betrachtungen zu Wertschöpfungsketten, Modelle zu Warenketten und zum politisch-ökonomischen Zusammenhang in der Nahrungsmittelproduktion bilden die theoretische Grundlage dieser Arbeit. In Kuba haben sich die Produktions- und Warenketten vor dem Hintergrund der binnen- und außenwirtschaftlichen Krise in den Jahren 1989/90 stark verändert. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden ausgehend von den Entwicklungen in der Lebensmittelwirtschaft Kubas, die Verflechtungen zwischen den Akteuren des Agrarsektors, der Lebensmittelindustrie und des Einzelhandels untersucht. Die empirische Analyse umfasste darüber hinaus Betrachtungen zu den Transport- und Distributionsvorgänge innerhalb der Warenketten, den Macht- und Kontrolleinflüssen einzelner Akteure und zu den räumlichen Strukturen. Durch die qualitative Untersuchung konnten im Ergebnis fünf verschiedene Typen von Produktions- und Warenketten festgestellt werden. Die erste Gruppe repräsentiert industrielle Warenketten, die für den rationierten Einzelhandel produzieren. Die zweite Gruppe umfasst die industriellen Warenketten, die auf das Devisensegment orientiert sind. Die dritte Gruppe bildet jene Warenketten ab, bei denen das Segment der industriellen Produktion fehlt. Sie sind auf die direkte Versorgung der Bevölkerung mit frischen Agrarprodukten ausgerichtet. Gerade die Produktions- und Warenketten der dritten Gruppe stellen eine besondere Form dar. Wefen der ökonomischen Krise und den Transportschwierigkeiten in Kuba haben sich seit 1994 lokale Wirtschaftskreisläufe herausgebildet. Sie stellen die kürzesten Produktions- und Warenketten der Insel dar. / In times of globalisation economic processes become increasingly complex. More and more actors are involved in the production - starting at the design and ending at the consumption - of a product. Innovation in Information and Communication Technology or transport, decreasing transportation and transaction costs as well as process innovations facilitate a spatial separation of individual production steps of the value-added chains in different locations. Therefore new business networks develop which are not based spatial, but organisational proximity. Connections between the different actors can be shown in value-added chains. The theoretical frame for this dissertation are general approaches on value-added chains, models for commodity chains and political-economic relations in food industry. In Cuba commodity chains have changed radically due to the interior and exterior economic crisis in 1989/90. This work, based on the development of the Cuban food industry, studies the material and immaterial connections between the actors of the agricultural sector, food industry and retail trade. The empirical analysis also includes observations on transport and distribution processes within commodity chains, power and control impact by specific economic and institutional actors and spatial structures of commodity chains. Through the qualitative analysis, using the example of the tomato, five different types of commodity chains were identified. The first group represents industrial commodity chains, which produce for the state rationed retail trade. The second group includes industrial commodity chains, which focus on the currency segment. The third group sums up those commodity chains which lack the industrial segment. They focus on the population’s direct supply with fresh agricultural products. Especially the third group’s commodity chains represent a special type. Due to the economic crisis and the connected transportation problems, local economic cycles evolved in Cuba since 1994. Opposite to the industrial commodity chains they represent the shortest commodity chains on the island and therefore differ from the first and second group of commodity chains.