What's nature got to do with it? A situated historical perspective on socio-natural commodities

Nature(s) have been commodified since the early days of capitalism, but through processes and socio-natural relationships mediated by their times, histories and localities. While the conditions under which nature's commodities are being trademarked today may be new, their potential for commodification is not. Commodifications of nature should not come as a surprise to environmental social scientists and activists. In this article, I argue that commodification of ‘nature's products, places and processes’ produces new sorts of socio-natures. Situated histories of rubber are particularly relevant because, like carbon, ecosystem services and other recently commodified natures, rubber sits comfortably on the line between a fictitious commodity and a commodity produced explicitly for market: the latex alone has almost no use value, and to give it any exchange value, it requires processing. Yet analytically, it is still considered a ‘natural commodity’, different from ‘synthetic rubber’ and other tradable tree latexes in qualities and socio-natural characteristics. However, it is the social relations constituting rubber's production and trade in various rainforest and agro-forestry environments that have given it a positive or negative connotation, rather than its natural properties or the ecological contexts within which it has been produced. By situating rubber in three of its globally important temporal and spatial contexts, I show how it has been subjected to fairy-tale-like stories that masked and naturalized its commodity lives of the moment. Understanding how history is told or remains untold is thus an essential part of the politics of knowledge production, but also of human experience and mobilization for change. It should be part of any political ecology analysis.     

Mapping Value in a ‘Green’ Commodity Frontier: Revisiting Commodity Chain Analysis

Analysis of commodity chains has provided important insights on how power, resource and market access mediate the distribution of benefits and risks. Given this analytical potential, Commodity Chain Analysis (CCA) is now being applied to the study of biofuels and carbon markets to gain systematic insight into the circumstances, relationships and transformations involved in their production and exchange. By building on and adapting this approach to three distinct case studies (biofuels in Madagascar and forest carbon in Cambodia and Laos), this article contributes new insights on the emergence of value within market environmentalism. The analysis highlights methodological challenges in applying CCA to commodified forms of nature, and the significance of knowledge and value negotiations. All three cases illustrate that it remains highly uncertain whether or not market exchange can ultimately be realized. As in the case of traditional commodities, pre‐existing conditions of power and access shape modes of production and network configuration. Parallel and intersecting commodity networks (e.g. for land and timber) also require us to think beyond the traditional single‐commodity focus. Thus, the authors call for an expanded analytical focus in applying CCA to non‐material ‘green’ commodities which places greater emphasis on value negotiations and connections within new ‘commodity frontiers’.     

The Value of Rents: Global Commodity Chains and Small Cocoa Producers in Ecuador

Drawing on the Marxian theory of ground rent, this paper develops an analysis of “global commodity chains” (GCCs) with agrarian roots. There is an acknowledgement that the concentrated downstream governance of primary commodity‐based GCCs has created a set of “asymmetrical” power relations which blocks the transmission of value upstream towards small producers. This paper argues that this research under‐specifies what is meant by value and rent, and in doing so marginalises the analysis of value production before its journey through inter‐firm relations. We demonstrate the importance of theorising the value constitution of commodities produced on the land and the forces that contest the payment of ground rent and thereby shape the geography of GCCs. Based on empirical research conducted around Ecuador's “post‐neoliberal” cocoa re‐activation plan, we identify the class politics and production mechanisms through which value and rent escapes the hands of a stratified network of small owner producers.     

Following the caterpillar fungus: nature,commodity chains,and the place of Tibet in China's uneven geographies

Following caterpillar fungus as it travels from the Tibetan Plateau to wealthy Chinese consumers, this article makes several interventions into geographical studies of commodity chains. First, it argues for an expansion beyond the usual call to connect the political economy of production with cultures of consumption; the cultural politics of production and political economies of consumption must also be considered. Second, it argues for bringing together political economy and more-than-human analytical approaches to commodity chains, showing how nature and the nonhuman play a key role in an assemblage that has allowed Tibetans to navigate livelihoods in a rapidly changing economy. This challenges a tendency to assume a universal figure of ‘the human’ in more-than-human geographies. Third, by connecting the erasure of Tibetans from representations of various natures used to sell caterpillar fungus with the broader politics of Tibetans within the People's Republic of China, we show that commodity fetishism can conceal not just labor relations, but also political struggles not reducible to class. Finally, we show that following a small fungus can shed light on the unevenness of China's capitalist development obscured in monolithic narratives of China's rise, demonstrating the value of expanding commodity chain studies beyond those that end with Western consumers.     

深圳居民购物消费行为的时空间特征

本文以深圳居民消费行为问卷调查的第一手资料为基础,分不同类型商品总结出居民购物消费行为的频率特征、购物时段特征以及空间特征,提出了低等级商品购物的三圈层结构和高等级商品购物的扇形模式。本文还通过购物行为空间与居民属性的相关关系分析对居民购物消费空间予以解释。     

The geographical lives of commodities: problems of analysis and critique

In two programmatic essays, Peter Jackson has reviewed new critical research on the geographical lives of commodities. This paper offers a constructive critique of his particular reading of this research. It is argued that three major issues require urgent attention if critical geographers and fellow‐travellers are to take their commodity research forward. First, there is too much imprecision in the use of the related terms ‘commodities’, ‘commodification’ and ‘commoditization’. This threatens to render all three terms meaningless or at the very least confusing. Secondly, this lack of conceptual clarity is linked to the problem of superficial engagements with normative issues. It is argued that the recent geographical research on commodities has thus far glossed over important questions of both academic and lay judgement. Finally, the paper suggests that the ‘modest’ role for critical academics envisaged by Jackson and other commodity researchers is only defensible if questions of voice, message and audience are addressed systematically. Overall, the paper presents a menu of explanatory and normative issues that require attention if critical commodity analysts like Jackson are to maximize the potential of their research agenda.     

The Use of Gasoline: Value, Oil, and the "American way of life"

Abstract:  While the critical literature has focused on the geography of oil production, the politics of "outrageous" gasoline prices in the United States provide a fertile path toward understanding the wider geography of petro-capitalism. Despite the deepening contradictions of US oil consumption, "pain at the pump" discourse projects a political sense of entitlement to low priced gasoline. I use a value-theoretical perspective to examine this politics as not only about the quantitative spectrum of price, but also the historical sedimentation of qualitative use-values inscribed in the commodity gasoline. Gasoline is analyzed both as a use-value among many within the postwar value of labor power and as a singular use-value fueling broader imaginaries of a national "American way of life." While use-value still represents an open site of cultural and political struggle infused within value itself, the case of gasoline illustrates how use-values are not automatically mobilized toward politically savory ends.     

Beyond exploitation/empowerment: re-imagining Southern producers in commodity stories

One of the most dominant strands of research within cultural geography's ‘materialist turn’ is that of commodity stories. Through everything from phones to flowers, geographers have attempted to reveal the myriad connections between (Northern) consumers and (Southern) producers. Following commodities and tracing their networks, this research tends to privilege consumption as the primary site of social and cultural meaning within the global economy. Where producers are the focus, the theoretical framework for understanding their lives is typically a developmentalist one, foregrounding exploitation and/or empowerment. Thus, we learn little from commodity stories about the ordinary lives of Southern producers and the co-production of the sociocultural and the economic through their everyday practices. This paper argues that deeper sociocultural analysis of the processes of production is necessary to balance the current dominance of consumption-led commodity stories and, more importantly, to open up space for a re-imagining of Southern producers. Through the personal accounts of fourty beadwork producers in Cape Town, I explore how the everyday practices of craft production sustain existing social relations, generate new networks, and help to shape both a sense of belonging and a sense of self. This commodity story reveals Southern producers' lives to be both richer and more mundane than dominant constructions suggest.     

Broken Windows Policing and Constructions of Space and Crime: Flatbush,Brooklyn

While broken windows policing has triggered explosive debates about law enforcement and racism across US cities, it has maintained considerable support by racialized urbanites. Focusing on Flatbush, Brooklyn, this paper seeks to understand the striking resilience of broken windows in inner‐city contexts. It uses Laclau and Mouffe's discourse theory to analyze dialogue at Precinct Community Council meetings and interviews with attendees. The paper makes the case that the New York Police Department normalizes broken windows through discursive constructions of social space and crime that naturalize the precinct scale, produce spatial meanings, and cast social difference in the mold of broken windows theory. The article illustrates beyond the politics of racialized fearmongering, the normalization of broken windows also occurs through this meticulous production of geographic knowledge. It also emphasizes that deconstructing the way the police portray space and crime provides signposts for substantive reform to broken windows.     

圆形城市商品销售的空间受限模型

本文首先提出商品价格空间分布的分形函数,以此为基础导出商品销售的空间受限模型,该模型揭示了人地非线性相关的某些机制,并为企业选择投资区位提供了分析方法。     

CONTRADICTIONS ALONG THE COMMODITY ROAD TO ENVIRONMENTAL STABILIZATION: FORESTING GAMBIAN GARDENS

In the past decade a shift in ecological politics has set off a scramble to “protect” and “defend” putatively pristine ecosystems in Africa, Amazonia and Southeast Asia. This aggressive program bespeaks a new sense of manifest ecological destiny among environmental organizations and donors and has given rise to a “politics of stabilization” characterized by new forms of property and labor relationships. This paper traces the impact of ecological policies on commodity production in Gambia where communal market gardens run by women's groups are being converted into privatized orchards managed by male landholders in a state-directed, donor-funded initiative designed to meet stabilization goals. The zealous pursuit of commercial objectives has come at the expense of critical food entitlement and livelihood strategies which currently form the basis of the rural Gambian political economy. The paper uses this evidence to urge reconsidering the politics of environmental intervention.     

刘少奇对社会主义商品经济的理论探讨及其实践

刘少奇在对社会主义商品经济的理论探讨及其具体实践中 ,提出了许多富有创见的思想观点 :提出两种社会主义公有制都不存在时商品经济还会存在 ;许多生产资料可以作为商品流通 ;从对社会主义劳动力采用了商品形式、不要回避剩余劳动和剩余价值问题的认识出发 ,提出要改革社会主义劳动制度和工资制度 ;他把社会主义公有制、有计划按比例规律与商品经济和价值规律联系起来考察 ,显露出思想深处关于社会主义有计划商品经济的端倪。他的相关论述能够反映出这样的观点 :价值规律是有关发展商品生产、商品交换和分配的规律。他运用价值规律解决实际问题 ,提出用经济办法管理经济、领导自由市场的观点 ;要求遵循价值规律 ,实现企业管理的自主权和独立的经济核算权。     

Liquid passions: bodies,publics and city waters

This article explores water’s capacities as a vibrant matter with specific properties that generates passions, attachments and a sense of belonging, and which enrols bodies in new connections, socialities, alliances and politics in unpredictable ways. Based on research into practices and engagements with water in a large urban public space the paper builds on studies of blue space. It concludes that water has the capacity to enhance a sense of well-being in those that swim in it and to mobilise a very particular sense of embodiment which gives this form of public space its distinctiveness constituting new forms of sociality and connections amongst diverse individuals. It seeks to do this by paying attention to the experiences of things themselves and the active participation of nonhuman forces in events and the ‘vital materiality’ that runs through and across bodies both human and non-human. The article also explores water’s capacity to be constituted and defined by experts as dangerous and risky matter, and to thus engender political associations and connections amongst diverse groups who seek to oppose such expert interventions.     

Brideprice and Prejudice: An Audio-Visual Ethnography on Marriage and Modernity in Mt Hagen,Papua New Guinea

The relationship between bridewealth and women's autonomy is not only discussed amongst anthropologists, development practitioners and other scholars but also amongst brides themselves. Women continue to embrace such marital exchanges, despite their knowledge of ‘modern’ development discourse about the constraints of the practice on women's status and its links to gender-based violence. This paper provides a visual exploration of contemporary brideprice practices and women's autonomy in Mt Hagen. We draw on scenes from our ethnographic film (An Extraordinary Wedding: Marriage and Modernity in Highlands PNG) to explore deliberations and developments that occurred in the case of a particular marriage that took place in 2012. We argue that the institution of brideprice has the potential to enhance the visibility of some women and the importance of their contribution to their own and husbands' kin groups. Despite current tensions regarding brideprice, it can serve as an avenue for the enhancement of women's political participation. The particular brideprice exchange featured in our film, raised concerns for the participants, which we consider in terms of three questions: Does brideprice commodify women? Does it play a role in gender-based violence? Is it inimical to aspirations for modernist individuality? We discuss the importance of bekim (‘return gift’) and suggest that this practice challenges the notion of brideprice as a commodity transaction. We argue that, while there may be an association between brideprice and gender-based violence, brideprice, in and of itself, is not causative of violence. The marriage represented in the film, and discussed in this paper, reveals the creativity of participants in adjusting the values inherent in the customary practice of brideprice to their contemporary aspirations.     

Court politics in a federal polity

This article uses a case study from Queensland to demonstrate the court politics approach's potential to reinvigorate executive studies. Court politics focuses on webs of interdependence within the core executive. It examines the beliefs and practices of elite actors and their fluid and contingent relationships. This article examines the patterns of executive politics that prevailed under Premier Anna Bligh. It seeks to answer three key questions. First, why is court politics a useful approach to studying the Australian core executive? Second, what is the nature and extent of court politics in Australian state governments? Finally, recognising that local traditions shape the beliefs and practices of political elites, how does the court politics approach need to be modified for application in Australia?     

WHAT OBJECT IS FEAR?

This article reviews two edited volumes on fear, important contributions to the newly developing field of the history of emotions. The question at the center of Jan Plamper and Benjamin Lazier's volume is how fear is constituted as an object; this question is investigated in an interdisciplinary dialogue. Focusing on the twentieth century, the editors bring together psychologists, historians of science and of emotions, and specialists in literature studies, politics, and film. Taking the dialogue beyond the social sciences is certainly an exciting and necessary exercise, but it also raises the question whether both sides are really talking about the same object. Michael Laffan and Max Weiss place fear in a global history perspective. They cover a wide scope, from early modernity to the present, and geographically including the Americas and Indonesia. Taken together, both volumes not only give an impressive overview of the field of fear studies, and add to it through a number of case studies, but also raise the question “what object is fear?” in a new way. If this object is as fluid as appears from the two volumes—not only with respect to the different events that trigger fear, the different uses it was put to, and the politics it allowed, but as a felt emotion—this calls for further investigation notably into the words and concepts used to make sense of the experience.     

Packaging of Identity and Identifiable Packages: A study of women–commodity negotiation through product packaging

In the age of post-Fordist flexible production, a consumer realizes her/his identity in part through the act of consumption. The visual aspect of commodity–consumer negotiation acquires importance, as commodities must be visually differentiated to attract the gaze of a particular consuming group. The act of visual differentiation is achieved through symbolic packaging, which creates a cognitive link between commodity and consumer. I draw from Baudrillard, who states that in postmodern consumption the sign value of products becomes more important than their actual usefulness (use value). Baudrillard, however, overlooks the importance of gender, race and space in this visual mediation. Through an empirical study of the packaging of women's skin and hair products in two different stores catering to two different income groups in Worcester, Massachusetts, I indicate how gendered identities that are created are complex, porous and materially rooted in space. The geographic situatedness of the exercise checks overgeneralizations allowing it to be studied as an object–subject mediation in a particular spatial context.     

毛泽东商品经济与社会主义关系思想探微

毛泽东在商品经济与社会主义关系问题上提出了许多闪光的思想观点:商品生产的命运,最终和社会生产力的水平有密切关系;要有计划地大大发展社会主义商品生产;生产资料在我们还有一部分是商品;改革计划经济体制,扩大地方和企业的权限;区分社会主义商品生产和资本主义商品生产;价值法则是一个伟大的学校;所有企业都要利用价值规律作为经济核算的工具,等等。这些弥足珍贵的思想观点,超越了斯大林,为邓小平理论在社会主义市场经济方面的创新积累了丰富的经验。     

Ontological politics of hydrosocial territories in the Salween River basin,Myanmar/Burma

In this paper, we question an often-unchallenged assumption that we all talk about the same ‘thing’ when talking about water. Taking the Salween River in Myanmar as a case study, we draw on a growing body of hydrosocial literature to analyze the multiple ontologies of water. Conceptually, we take each ontology to be constituted of – and enacted within – a human-more-than-human assemblage, the spatiotemporal dimensions of which demarcate a ‘hydrosocial territory.’ We present three illustrations, namely: the role of the Union Government's National Water Resources Committee and how it manifests and is situated within an ontology of ‘modern Water’; a Karen indigenous initiative to establish a Salween Peace Park and an associated revealing of an ‘indigenous’ ontology; and plans for the construction of mainstream hydropower dams and electricity export to neighboring Thailand, where different water ontologies and their hydrosocial territories collide. We examine how multiple ontologies of water are contested through ‘ontological politics’, whereby human actors compete to further their own interests by naturalizing their ontology while marginalizing others. While not downplaying the role violent conflict plays, we argue that in the Salween basin ontological politics are an underappreciated terrain of contestation through which political authority and the power relations that underpin it are (re)produced, with implications for processes of state formation, territorialization and the ongoing peace negotiations.