Geographies of Commodity Chains / Edition 1

by Alex Hughes, Suzanne Reimer

Overview

Individuals, consumer groups, nation states and supra-national bodies increasingly have interrogated the ethics of particular production and consumption relations such as GM foods. Flowing from and bound up with these political concerns is the growing interest in the mutual dependence of sites of (for example) production, distribution, retailing, design, advertising, marketing and final consumption.

This timely volume draws together contributions concerned with the production, circulation and consumption of commodities. Not only do these case study examples seek to transcend older understandings of production and consumption, but they also explicitly tap into wider public debate about the meanings, origins and biographies of commodities.

Taking a geographical approach to the analysis of links between producers and consumers, the book focuses upon the ways in which these ties increasingly are stretched across spaces and places. Critical engagements with the ways in which these spaces and places affect the economies, cultures and politics of the connections between producers and consumers are skilfully threaded through each section.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780415339100
Publisher:	Taylor & Francis
Publication date:	05/20/2004
Series:	Routledge Studies in Human Geography
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.19(h) x (d)

About the Author

Alex Hughes, Suzanne Reimer

Table of Contents

1. Introduction Part 1: Commodity Chains, Networks and Filières 1. From Farm to Supermarket: The Trade in Fresh Horticultural Produce from Sub-Saharan Africa to the United Kingdom 2. Are Hogs like Chickens? Enclosure and Mechanization in Two 'White Meat' Filières 3. Spilling the Beans on a Tough Nut: Liberalisation and Local Supply System Changes in Ghana's Cocoa and Shea Chains Part 2: Commodity Chains and Cultural Connections 4. New Geographies of Agro-Food Production: An Analysis of UK Quality Assurance Schemes 5. Culinary Networks and Cultural Connections: A Conventions Perspective 6. Initiating the Commodity Chain: South Asian Women and Fashion in the Diaspora Part 3: Commodities, Representations and the Politics of the Producer-Consumer Relation 7. Geographical Knowledges in the Ecuadorian Flower Industry 8. Citrus, Apartheid and the Struggle to (Re)present Outspan Oranges 9. Tropics of Consumption: 'Getting with the Fetish' of 'Exotic' Fruit? Part 4: Ethical Commodity Chains and the Politics of Consumption 10. Unravelling Fashion's Commodity Chains 11. Accounting for Ethical Trade: Global Commodity Networks, Virtualism and the Audit Economy 12. The 'Organic Commodity' and Other Anomalies in the Politics of Consumption 13. Knowledge, Ethics and Power in the Home Furnishings Commodity Chain