Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations

Erscheinungsjahr 2021
ISBN: 978-90-04-44803-2
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 42, 392 Seiten, Format (B × H): 155 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 805 g

Reihe: Studies in Global Social History

Due to the increasing linkage of global production sites, the concept of commodity chains has become indispensable for the investigation of production at a global scale. Although work is the basis of production in every involved location, it is often being neglected as a research subject without taking interest in the workers, the work processes and the working conditions. This edited volume provides a collection of historical and contemporary commodity chain studies by placing labor at the centre of analysis. A global historical perspective demonstrates that splitting production processes to different, hierarchically connected locations are by no means new phenomena. The book is thus an important and valuable contribution to commodity chain research, but also to the fields of social-economic and global labour history.

Contributors are: András Pinkasz, Andrea Komlosy, Christin Bernhold, Ernst Langthaler, Franziska Ollendorf, Goran Music, Jan Grumiller, Johanna Sittel, Jörg Nowak, Karin Fischer, Klemens Kaps, Miroslav Lacko, Santosh Hasnu, Stefan Schmalz, Tamás Gerocs, Tibor T. Meszmann, and Uwe Spiekermann.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Weitere Mitwirkende

Komlosy, Andrea

Music, Goran

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of Maps, Figures and Tables

Notes on Contributors

1 Chains of Labor

Connecting Global Labor History and the Commodity Chain Paradigm

Andrea Komlosy and Goran Music

PART 1

Theorizing Commodity Chains, Labor Relations and Upgrading

2 Cycles of Global Expansion and Contraction

Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations in Textiles and Garments from 17th to 21st Century

Andrea Komlosy

3 Soy Expansions

China, the USA and Brazil in Comparison

Ernst Langthaler

4 Who’s Upgrading? Class Differentiation and Labor Relations in Argentinian Agribusiness

Christin Bernhold

PART 2

Commodity Chains and Proto-industrialization in Early Modern Central Europe

5 Grain, Flour, Beer, and Liquor

Commodity Chains, Labor Relations and Economic Development in Habsburg Galicia, 1772–1918

Klemens Kaps

6 Global Commodity Chains and Labor Relations in the Distribution of Central European Copper in the Eighteenth Century

Miroslav Lacko

PART 3

Commodity Chains in (Post-)Colonial Settings>/i>

7 Labor as a Bottleneck

Entangled Commodity Chains of Sugar in Hawaii and California in the Late Nineteenth Century

Uwe Spiekermann

8 Coolie Labor, Tea Planters and Transport in Colonial India

Santosh Hasnu

9 Analyzing Structural Change and Labor Relations in Global Commodity Chains

The Ethiopian Leather Industry

Jan Grumiller

PART 4

Production Chains in (Post-)Socialist Eastern Europe

10 Outward Processing Production and the Yugoslav Self-Managed Textile Industry in the 1980s

Goran Music

11 Uneven Development in the European Automotive Industry

Labor Fragmentation and Value- Added Production in the Hungarian Semi-Periphery

Tamás Gerocs, Tibor T. Meszmann and András Pinkasz

PART 5

Trade Union Networks, ngo campaigns, Workers’ Agency

12 Transnational Solidarity Networks between Workers and Global Production Networks

Jörg Nowak

13 Corporate Social Responsibility in the Global Cocoa Chocolate Chain

Insights from sustainability certification in Ghana’s Cocoa Communities

Franziska Ollendorf

14 On the (Re)Production of Informal Work in Argentina’s Auto Industry

Stefan Schmalz and Johanna Sittel

PART 6

Conclusion

15 Global Labor and Labor Studies – Breaking the Chains

Karin Fischer

Index of Places, Persons, Companies and Institutions

Über Autor(innen)

Andrea Komlosy, Ph.D. (1984), University of Vienna, is a professor at the Department for Economic and Social History, University of Vienna, where she is one of the Global History and Global Studies program coordinators. She has published widely on work and labor, migration, borders and uneven development.

Goran Music, Ph.D. (2016), European University Institute, is a postdoctoral associated researcher at the Centre for Southeast European Studies, University of Graz. His fields of interest include global labor history, the comparative history of workers under state socialism, and the everyday history of socialist Yugoslavia.