lec5 (a) 2015
Global Commodity Chain (GCC)
Global Value Chains in East Asia WTO 6.03min jun 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9-1ht2OrG2Y
Starbuck's Coffee: Commodity Chain 10 min 2011
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=osW9dfueb_4
Production and consumption interlinks
Core & Peripheries:
Global Commodity Chain
(NIKE)
Integration of Households
Children/youth
Women
* Nike's Globalization and Commodity Chain
http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UTF8&t=m&vpsrc=6&oe=UTF8&msa=0&msi
d=211065077841377470192.0004b3088ffc9f6ceb280
Household in the Global Commodity Chain
(World System Theory):
• Core or Peripheral states:
• Households (non indigenous)
• Classes: Upper & middle income
• Low income & the Poor
• Fourth World status
• Indigenous households: (Canada and L Am)
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Value Chain: Geographically Dispersed Interlinks
* Walmart Fire in Bangladesh 2012 (21.26min): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oLoW5Z9vhhg
(watch 6 min or more)
Globally pervasive child labour:
Child labour uncovered in Apple's supply chain
Internal audit reveals 106 children employed at 11 factories making Apple products
in past year
Juliette Garside, telecoms correspondent
The Guardian, Friday 25 January 2013 19.22 GMT
Apple store
Neoliberalism & its result: GCC in Core:
Declining role of the State
Financial Deregulation
Dismantling of Social Welfare
Privatization of child care
Youth integration into GCC
• Weakening of social policy towards children
•
State is unable to compensate the impact on
Youth in GCC due to poverty generated by the shocks
• Declining funding for youth programs & educ.
• Youth unemployment
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Comparative arguments using WST:
1. Global corporatization has integrated children/ youth in the Core and
Peripheral countries into a global commodity chain.
2. Most children/youth in the Core help extract a major share of surpluses
(corporate profits) through their consumption within a stable political
economy. Thus, a majority of the children/youth in the affluent Canada
(Core) have been transformed into conspicuous consumers or service sector
commodities, while a minority of them (1 in 10 (circa 2010)) live in poverty
3. In contrast, through poorly paid or unpaid household labour
children/youth in the Peripheries are exploited through surplus
extraction for profit for and consumption in the Core. In the Periphery,
those children/youth who are from the rich and middle classes become
comprador consumers. But most of the DWs’ children are absolutely poor
and must work for their livelihood. Thus they become labour commodities
1. Global corporatization has integrated children/ youth in the Core and Peripheral
countries into a global commodity chain.
CHILD LABOR/SLAVERY: NIKE, APPLE, GAP, MICROSOFT -- CHINA, INDIA, PAK
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=57v_v6oSGZI 2010 4min
•
Single division of labor: core accumulates capital as periphery supplies labour
WST & Global Commodity Chain (GCC):
Commodity Chain Research HD
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bs65dIcRKXE
Core: Capital rich
MNCs’ corporate Head Office:
R&D
Product design
Customization
Market distribution
Products
Retail
Ads
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Inequitable Impacts of global Commodity Chains on workers in
Canada (Core): Wilma A. Dunaway,
Wealth & Capital Concentration
Economic Costs
In Commodity Production, lower wages for
the workers
Low Remuneration for Non-Wage Labor
(e.g. household work)
Educational &
cultural costs
Critical individual costs
Conspicuous Consumption
Devaluation of Arts & Humanities
Commodification of Youth, child, women as
Ads, Logo
Health
Civic freedoms
Discrimination: gender & Age
Human rights
Law & Order (prejudice against the poor)
GCC
Peripheries: Labour surplus
Production process:
•
Vertically integrated
•
GCC
Vertically integrated Model: MNCs’ GCC
Foreign subsidiary or Subcontracting local company
Manufacturing factories or Sweatshops
Extract raw materials from resource rich areas
Extract surplus from labour
Household labour of the poor (low/no wage or
slavery): Men, Women, Youth & Children
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Hidden Inputs of the Peripheries’ child & women in the global
Commodity Chain
Typical Production Node of a
Capitalist Commodity Chain
Cheap Labor
Working class
child & women subsidize
the Production Process
Capitalist Costs that are
Externalized to
Households
Inequitable Impacts on children & women
Economic Costs to the Periphery
Surplus extraction from
labour: No-wage, Unpaid &
Low-wage subsidize
commodity production
State Subsidies: in providing societal
Infrastructure of maintaining stable
social order
State Subsidies to Capitalist Enterprises
External costs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yC5R9WPId0s (7.39min)
Inequitable Impacts of global Commodity Chains on Children/youth workers:
in the Periphery: Wilma A. Dunaway,
Economic costs:
• Negative impact of loss of education years on a country’s development
• Country loses skill development in its future population
Health costs
• Children in hazardous work: Life span, health and welfare irrecoverably
affected
Social costs
• Cycle of Poverty – destitution becomes endemic
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