Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, eds. COMMODITY CHAINS AND GLOBAL
CAPITALISM. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994. xiv + 334 pp. ISBN 0-
313-28914-X, $59.95 (hardcover); ISBN 0-275-94573-1, $22.95 (paper).
Reviewed by
Wilma A. Dunaway and Donald A. Clelland, Department of Sociology, University
of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA
Despite early recognition of its theoretical centrality (Immanuel
Wallerstein, HISTORICAL CAPITALISM, 1983, pp. 13-16), the "commodity chain"
has been inadequately conceptualized by world-system researchers. This book
aims to correct that deficiency by aggregating papers that were presented at
the 1992 annual conference of the Political Economy of the World-System
Section of the American Sociological Association. The book is organized
around four themes: commodity chains in the capitalist world-economy prior to
1800; the economic restructuring of commodity chains; the geographic
organization of commodity chains; and the shaping role of core consumption
upon shifts in peripheral production and distribution.
Each of the articles is rich in empirical details that reflect lengthy
and involved research on the part of the writers; the book, as a whole,
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provides the basis for comparing trends in several different countries and
industries. That dense detail is condensed through the use of 21 tables and
34 commodity chain diagrams and maps. When we used this book in a Fall, 1994
graduate seminar, we quickly became aware that the book's preoccupation with
the presentation of that empirical detail is also its primary weakness. Most
of the articles focus upon documenting the various nodes and linkages that
comprise the production and/or distribution processes involved in several
different international industries. The editors declare that COMMODITY
CHAINS fleshes out, for the first time, the "global commodity chains
approach." Theoretically, this volume never achieves that goal. Indeed, we
are disappointed to find so little world-system theory in a volume derived
from a PEWS Conference. In addition to seven pages by Hopkins and
Wallerstein, the index enumerates only seven brief references to "world-
system theory," out of 311 pages of substantive content! For our graduate
seminar, we repeatedly were forced to demonstrate how the assigned readings
contributed to world-system theory, for most of the writers get caught up in
a descriptive style or fail to link their explanations with world-system
theory.
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Even more fundamentally, we are troubled by the absence of a key world-
systems notion. Hidden, only once (p. 49), Hopkins and Wallerstein introduce
what they consider to be the pivotal question that should be addressed in
commodity chain analysis: "If one thinks of the entire chain as having a
total amount of surplus value that has been appropriated, what is the
division of this surplus value among the boxes of the chain?" Surprisingly,
this central idea is ignored by the other contributors. None of the articles
in this volume directly analyzes the extraction of surplus between the nodes
of the chains or the exploitation of labor that occurs in the many processes.
Instead, the editors contend that the global commodity chains approach
"promotes a nuanced analysis of world-economic spatial inequalities in terms
of differential access to markets and resources" (p. 2). Without adequate
linkage to broader world-system arguments, that line of reasoning sounds more
like a disquieting apparition from the work of Rostow than a conceptual
extension of world-system theory.
What never appears in this book is the key idea that lies at the heart
of understanding the international division of labor: unequal exchange.
There is little or no attention to the central world-system thesis that
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exploitation and domination are structured at multiple levels of the
commodity chains that are so painstakingly depicted. COMMODITY CHAINS makes
a needed beginning; but its proposed framework will not be soundly grounded
in world-systems theory until it factors in the messy inequities that really
result from the neat boxes and lines in the commodity chain diagrams. We
will lose sight of the research agenda for social change that Wallerstein
(REVIEW, 1 (1-2), 1977) originally proposed for world-system analysis if we
get caught up in an approach that "explains the distribution of wealth ... as
an outcome of the relative intensity of competition within different nodes"
(p. 4). Mainstream economists embrace exactly that kind of "free-market"
language to account for the polarization between the First and Third Worlds.
The "ghosts of theories past" linger in the verbiage of too many of these
articles; and the commodity networks are described with a mechanical coldness
that ignores the human exploitation that propels capitalism.
Even though Wallerstein (WORLD INEQUALITY, 1975, pp. 9-29) declared it
dead twenty years ago, developmentalism leaps off the pages of this book more
often than world-system theory. We do not entirely direct that criticism
toward the editors, for the shortcomings of this book derive from a
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fundamental flaw in the annual PEWS Conferences. Most of the papers
presented at those meetings are atheoretical descriptions of the
international arena; moreover, too many of the participants make no pretense
of grounding their research within the world-system framework. If this trend
continues, these annual volumes will accumulate a body of literature barely
distinguishable as world-system analysis. Because there has been inadequate
attention to theoretical debates, these conference proceedings have
degenerated into hodgepodges of disjointed viewpoints. That strategy does
not build an accumulated body of research and knowledge that we should be
labelling world-system analysis.
It is too late to correct the flaws in COMMODITY CHAINS. However, we
would urge a proactive strategy on the part of future editors of the PEWS
collections. If the contributed chapters are atheoretical, they should be
revised so that their world-system explanations are clearly drawn -- even
when that requires summarizing more briefly the descriptive details. When
the contributor offers an antagonistic viewpoint (and we are convinced that
the writers are often unaware they are leaning those directions), other
alternatives should be considered. First, the editor should contemplate
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omitting such an article from a volume that purports to represent the state
of the world-system field. Or, the editor might incorporate such a piece by
having the writer specify directly his or her debate with world-system
explanations.
