Are Your Clothes Part of the Global Commodity Chain
From The Real World:
Are Your Clothes Part of the Global Commodity Chain?
You probably own and consume a large number of products that originated in faraway countries, including your car, clothing, or shoes. These items have traveled widely during the process from production to consumption. Food, pharmaceuticals, and electronics are other examples of globally made products. Social scientists call such international movements of goods “global commodity chains” (Dunaway 2014; Gereffi and Korzeniewicz 1994).
Global commodity chains are networks of corporations, product designers and engineers, manufacturing firms, distribution channels (such as ocean freightliners, railroads, and trucking firms), and consumer outlets (such as Walmart). Global commodity chains start with a product design and brand name and end with the consumer making a purchase. But between start and finish is often a complex global process involving many different people, in many different nations, all contributing to the final product. The manufacturing of goods, from garments to electronics to automobiles, used to happen primarily in the United States and other Western nations; today’s manufacturing centers are located primarily in poorer nations, such as the Philippines, China, Indonesia, and many Latin American countries. American corporations such as Nike, Gap, and Levi-Strauss have closed all their U.S. manufacturing plants and hired contractors and subcontractors from East Asia and Latin America to make their products at substantially lower prices. Now these companies focus large amounts of financial resources on “branding” their products (Klein 2000). Branding is the process, usually accomplished through advertising, by which companies gain consumers’ attention and loyalty. Much of the money you pay for some products goes toward financing these branding campaigns, while a much smaller sum pays the workers who actually make the products.
Pick 5 to 10 items of clothing from your closet or drawers or pick them up off the floor or from under your bed or wherever else you keep your clothes. Check the labels and make a list of the nations represented. On what continents do you find the majority of nations represented? Are nations represented from across the globe or are you clothes from very specific places? Is there a difference noted between where an item is made and where it is assembled? Does the label indicate where the fabric originated?
Now, think about your favorite brands of clothing, shoes, or other fashion accessories. Research one brand (I have some sources you can use below and you can search company information online, be sure to note in your submission which sources you used to learn more about your brands). Discuss how your brand approaches sweatshop labor, child labor, and general corporate social responsibility (Links to an external site.) (CSR). From what you can learn, do workers across the planet working for the company or in the supply chain earn a living wage?
Finally, what are your thoughts on fashion, free trade, and globalization (Links to an external site.)? Or, perhaps as sociologist George Ritzer suggests, you ascribe to the idea that the concepts of glocalization and grobalization (Links to an external site.) have become more prominent features of economic growth.
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