At the Margins of the Global Market

Contemporary scholars debate the factors driving despotic labour conditions across the world economy. Some emphasize the dominance of global market imperatives and others highlight the market's reliance upon extra-economic coercion and state violence. At the Margins of the Global Market engages in this debate through a comparative and world-historical analysis of the labour regimes of three global commodity-producing subregions of rural Colombia: the coffee region of Viejo Caldas, the banana region of Urabá, and the coca/cocaine region of the Caguán. By drawing upon insights from labour regimes, global commodity chains, and world historical sociology, this book offers a novel understanding of the broad range of factors - local, national, global, and interregional - that shape labour conditions on the ground in Colombia. In doing so, it offers a critical new framework for analysing labour and development dynamics that exist at the margins of the global market.

Seaweed Aquaculture in Indonesia Contributes to Social and Economic Aspects of Livelihoods and Community Wellbeing

Seaweed farming in Indonesia is carried out throughout much of the archipelago and is mainly undertaken by smallholder farmers. Indonesia is the largest global producer of the red seaweeds Kappaphycus and Eucheuma, which are used to produce carrageenan, and is a major producer of Gracilaria, which is used to produce agar. Seaweed farming is attractive to farmers in rural coastal communities because capital and operating costs are low, farming techniques are not technically demanding, labour requirements are relatively low (allowing farmers to engage in other livelihoods), and production cycles are short (30–45 days), providing regular income. Using reported values for seaweed-farming income, we conclude that seaweed farming can, but does not always, lift rural households above the Indonesian poverty line. In addition to direct financial benefits, seaweed farming also contributes to human and social capital within seaweed farming households and communities. Achieving continued economic and social benefits from seaweed farming will require additional policy development, as well as research and development to support improved and more consistent seaweed productivity and improved product quality at the farm level, provision of effective extension and technical support services, and diversification of the existing value chains in order to reduce the impacts of price fluctuations that are associated with limited global commodity chains.

Thinking with the grain

In this short commentary, I consider William Jamieson’s proposal ‘For Granular Geography’. I focus on two parallel arguments at work in his piece: the proposal for a political ecology of sand foregrounding the physical dynamics of sand as a granular system; and second, his programmatic agenda for human geography in which the instability and unpredictability of granular systems become a ‘conceptual grammar’ for the material geographies of value transformation. I am sympathetic to thinking through materials and alive to the poetic possibilities of sand, but ultimately find neither of Jamieson’s arguments persuasive. I suggest a fuller engagement with existing ‘grammars’ – including those of new materialism, elemental geographies, and the role of friction in global commodity chains – could help clarify the contribution that ‘granularity’ might be able to make.

Timber to Timbre

The Gibson Les Paul is one of the most iconic electric guitars ever made. Although there is a vibrant scholarly literature surrounding the Les Paul’s symbolic entanglements with issues of race, gender, and class, few have considered the ecopolitical entanglements involved in producing a key material dimension of that guitar’s signature sound: Honduran mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla). Fiji is one of the main harvesting sites of Honduran mahogany, and this chapter charts the social and environmental transformations that occurred following this wood’s introduction to Fiji in the 1880s, considering especially the increasing demand for mahogany as it has been driven by the popularization of the Les Paul since the mid-twentieth century—an issue that, to this day, continues to define forestry in the region. By examining the global commodity chains and infrastructures underlying Les Paul production, this chapter focuses on the role that Honduran mahogany, or the “White Man’s timber,” as it is called by some locals, has played in reconfiguring Fijian landowners’ definitions of what constitutes a forest, sustainability, and justice. In doing so, the chapter interrogates the power relations and ontological politics in which different actors, species, and things are enmeshed. Ultimately, the chapter shows that the aesthetic investments of musicians in particular timbres are rooted in broader legacies of timber-driven colonialism and plantation capitalism.

Handelsverbindungen zwischen zentraleuropäischem Binnenmarkt, regionalem Warenaustausch und globalen Güterketten

Trade Links between the Central European Domestic Market, Regional Trade and Global Commodity Chains. The integration of Lower Austria’s economy into global interactions intensified in the 18th and early 19th centuries. Vienna and Trieste replaced old centres of trade intermediation such as Krems an der Donau. The purchase of raw materials and luxury goods and the sale of commercial goods in the Mediterranean and Atlantic region were handled via these two metropolises. In addition to the merchants in Trieste and Vienna, trade centres further afield also played a significant role, and local intermediary nodes in Lower Austria itself were also important. Migration processes, the foundation of companies, and investments resulted in a complex process of market consolidation from the local and regional to the global level. Steam shipping, rail connections and the growth of the financial sector transformed the material structure and functioning of the networks in the second half of the 19th century, but not the commercial geography.