Jennifer Bair

Global Capitalism and Commodity Chains: Looking Back, Going Forward

This paper assesses the achievements and limitations of commodity chain research as it has evolved over the last decade. The primary objectives are two-fold. First, I highlight an important but generally unacknowledged break between the original world-systems-inspired tradition of commodity chain research and two subsequent chain approaches, the global commodity chain (GCC) and global value chain (GVC) frameworks. Second, I argue that contra the macro and holistic perspective of the world-systems approach, much of the recent chains literature, and particularly the more economistic GVC variant, is increasingly oriented in its analytical approach towards the meso level of sectoral logics and the micro level objective of industrial upgrading. I conclude that closer attention to the larger institutional and structural environments in which commodity chains are embedded is needed in order to more fully inform our understanding of the uneven social and developmental dynamics of contemporary capitalism at the global-local nexus.

Local Clusters in Global Chains: The Causes and Consequences of Export Dynamism in Torreon's Blue Jeans Industry

Abstract Using a case study of the export-oriented blue jeans industry in Torreon, Mexico, the authors discuss the role of US buyers in promoting full-package apparel production. While the networks associated with this model yield better development outcomes for firms and workers than those typical of the maquila industry, the Torreon cluster is not adequately described as a “high road” industrial district. The global commodity chains framework is used to assess the developmental implications of the apparel industrys growth in Torreon. By emphasizing the relationship between producers and foreign buyers, this approach provides a useful way to bridge the global–local divide in the literature on industrial clusters in developing countries.

Upgrading, uneven development, and jobs in the North American apparel industry

Globalization is changing the nature of work and business in the contemporary world economy. Debate today revolves around the implications of globalization’s transformative influence for firms and workers, particularly in the developing world. While capital is increasingly mobile, workers remain relatively place bound, and this tension between the global and the local demands new tools for policymakers studying labor issues, as well as new strategies for labor activists. The International Labor Office has focused on the relationship between globalization and employment in numerous studies, which explore a range of issues from working conditions in maquiladoras to the impact of information and communication technologies on the quantity, quality, and location of jobs (see ILO, 2001). Many of these studies have focused on the cross-border production and trade networks that are at the heart of economic globalization, asking about the impact of these networks in the communities where they touch down. The consensus that emerges from this literature is that cross-border networks can have positive as well as negative developmental consequences: “Globalization in a regional framework can boost development opportunities, but it may also undermine established local networks of backward and forward linkages” (ILO, 1996: 120).

The Place of Disarticulations: Global Commodity Production in La Laguna, Mexico

Studies of the shifting social organization and geography of global garment production have been critical to the development of the commodity chains framework as an important field of study for scholars of political economy in various disciplines. Our paper intervenes in this literature by proposing what we call a ‘disarticulations’ perspective, an approach attentive to historical and spatial processes of accumulation, disinvestment and dispossession that produce the uneven geographies generative of transnational production networks. We make the case for disarticulations as an approach to commodity chains via a case study of a region in north-central Mexico called La Laguna—a celebrated center of export dynamism in the 1990s, following the implementation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), and of rapid decline in the 2000s. Rather than offer a conventional commodity chain analysis of the boom to bust cycle in La Laguna, which would look to the dynamics of the contemporary apparel chain to explain the causes and consequences of La Lagunas NAFTA-era trajectory, we instead follow La Lagunas ‘travels’ through the cotton, textile, and garment industries over 150 years. We show how the recent NAFTA-era boom was premised on this layered history of engagements with the cotton–textile–apparel commodity chain. The disarticulations approach to commodity chains that we develop here foregrounds the processes of dispossession, accumulation and disinvestment through which not only commodity chains, but the uneven geographies that are their conditions of possibility, are reproduced.

On difference and capital: gender and the globalization of production.

This article is both a review of, and an intervention in, the literature on gender and the globalization of production. Via a discussion of six key texts analyzing export‐oriented manufacturing, ranging from Maria Mies’s Lace Makers of Narsapur to Melissa Wright’s Disposable Women and Other Myths of Global Capitalism, I show that, over time, the focus has shifted from an emphasis on the feminization of manufacturing as a defining feature of globalization to an appreciation of the diverse and contingent ways in which gender matters for offshore production. While this recent scholarship highlights variability in gendered labor regimes at the global‐local nexus, I argue that it is also critically important to ask what is similar about the many locations on the global assembly line that have been studied. Specifically, we must look to how gender, as a set of context‐specific meanings and practices, works within the macrostructure of the global economy and its systemic logic of capital accumulation. In other words, while capitalism does not determine the concrete modalities of gender that exist in a given locale, it is essential for explaining the gendered dimension of transnational production as a patterned regularity of contemporary globalization.

Regional trade and production blocs in a global industry: towards a comparative framework for research

While apparel manufacturing is often considered the quintessential global industry, the regional dimension of trade and production in the textile and clothing sector is less widely noted. In this paper I discuss two macroregional production blocs: North America (defined as the United States, Mexico, and the Caribbean Basin countries) and Greater Europe [which includes the European Union (EU), Central and Eastern Europe, Turkey, and North Africa]. Analyzing what opportunities regionalization might provide is particularly relevant given Chinas increasing dominance of both the EU and US import markets in the post-Multifibre Arrangement period. Drawing on the global commodity chains literature, I discuss three dimensions around which cross-regional comparative research on the European and North American apparel sectors can be organized: (1) production model; (2) institutional context; and (3) development outcomes. Several similarities between these production blocs are noted, particularly with regard to the intraregional division of labor expressed by networks connecting firms in higher-wage and lower-wage countries and the coexistence of assembly subcontracting and full-package manufacturing in both regions, but differences include the existence in Europe of a stronger textile base and a more expansive regionalization strategy (as suggested by the Euro–Mediterranean Partnership), which may strengthen the competitiveness of the Greater European bloc vis-à-vis its North American counterpart.

Beyond the Maquila Model? Nafta and the Mexican Apparel Industry

This paper uses a comparative case study approach to explore the inter-organizational dynamics of the Mexican apparel industrys post-NAFTA export dynamism, and assesses the upgrading prospects that this dynamism entails for exporters in Mexico. The results of fieldwork conducted in three apparel-producing clusters in north, central, and southern Mexico are discussed. The key finding to emerge from this commodity chain analysis of linkages between US clients and local producers is that NAFTA-inspired full-package networks provide opportunities for some apparel-manufacturing clusters to upgrade their operations beyond the assembly-export role traditionally associated with Mexicos maquiladora plants. Evidence of industrial upgrading includes expanded employment opportunities in activities such as textile production, the generation of linkages to local suppliers, and improved working conditions in plants producing for brand-name clients. However, the upgrading process is profoundly uneven across the Mexican landscape. The extent to which national firms and workers benefit as a result of their participation in these networks is contingent on the way in which local clusters become incorporated into the apparel commodity chain, and in particular, on the type of governance exercised by the lead firms that control the organization of Mexicos export-oriented apparel industry.

Surveying the Post-MFA Landscape: What Prospects for the Global South Post-quota?

The editors introduction to a special issue on the post-MFA apparel industry, this paper reviews the extant literature on the industry, especially with regard to upgrading and development implications for firms and workers in the global South, before summarizing the main contributions of the collection. The five papers comprising the special issue use a global commodity/global value chain approach to analyze the situation of apparel exporters and garment workers, including in Mexico, sub-Saharan Africa, India and China. These papers share a conceptualization of the global apparel industry as a single organizational field in which the experiences and trajectories of individual firms, countries and regions are tied to the dynamics of international trade and production networks. Taking as its point of departure the phase-out of the Multi-Fiber Arrangement, the collection demonstrates how regulatory shifts affect the governance structure of a global commodity/global value chain, how they shape prospects for developing-country firms and regions, and how multilateral liberalization at the global level articulates with regional trade regimes.

From the Politics of Development to the Challenges of Globalization

Abstract During the 1970s, the United Nations was the central front in the G-77s struggle to realize a ‘New International Economic Order’ (NIEO). A key plank in the NIEO platform was the regulation of multinational corporations; this objective was pursued via a draft Code of Conduct on Transnational Enterprises, formulated by a UN Commission created largely for that purpose. Although the Code was abandoned in 1992 after 14 years of negotiations, multinationals were back on the UN agenda later that same decade. As then Secretary-General Kofi Annan observed when announcing this new initiative between the United Nations and corporate partners, the Global Compact recognizes that a fundamental shift has occurred in recent years in the attitude of the UN towards the private sector. This paper explores the rehabilitation of the multinational corporation implied in the journey from Code to Compact as a way to understand the transformation of development discourse that occurred during the last quarter of the twentieth century. Focusing on the history of contestation that lies beneath the current orthodoxy, I emphasize that the Code of Conduct, and the broader NIEO agenda of which it was part, represented an effort by the G-77 countries to define development as a struggle for recognition of the ‘sovereign equality’ of Southern and Northern states, and as a demand for redistribution via structural reform of the existing order and the creation of a more equitable international regime. Durante los años setenta, las Naciones Unidas era el frente central de las luchas del G-77 para realizar un Nuevo Orden Económico Internacional (NIEO, por sus siglas en inglés). Uno de los elementos en la plataforma del NIEO, fue la regulación de corporaciones multinacionales; se buscó este objetivo por medio de la elaboración de un Código de conducta en las empresas transnacionales. A pesar de que el Código fue abandonado en 1992 después de catorce años de negociaciones, las multinacionales volvieron más tarde, a finales de la misma década, a estar dentro de la agenda de las Naciones Unidas. Como lo observó el entonces Secretario general Kofi Annan al anunciar la nueva iniciativa, el Pacto Mundial reconoce que ‘en años recientes, ha ocurrido un cambio fundamental en la actitud de la ONU hacia el sector privado’. Este artículo explora la rehabilitación de la corporación multinacional implícita en el recorrido del Código al Pacto como una manera de comprender la transformación del tema del desarrollo ocurrido durante el último cuarto del siglo 20. Con un enfoque en la historia de la disputa que yace bajo la actual ortodoxia, yo hago hincapié en que el Código de conducta y la más amplia agenda del NIEO de la cual era parte, representó un esfuerzo por el grupo de los países en desarrollo G-77 para definir el desarrollo como 1) una lucha por el reconocimiento de una ‘igualdad soberana’ en los países del sur y del norte y 2) una demanda por la redistribución mediante una reforma estructural del orden existente y de la creación de un régimen internacional más equitativo y justo.

Towards Better Work in Central America: Nicaragua and the CAFTA Context

Like many other low-income industrializing economies, Nicaragua’s export sector relies heavily on apparel manufacturing for revenues and employment. However, at least among the major garment-producing countries in the Western hemisphere, Nicaragua is unique: unlike the majority of its neighbours in Latin America, its apparel industry has expanded since 2005. In this sense, Nicaragua’s experience counters a general trend in the global garment industry towards greater concentration in Asia, and particularly China, the world’s largest clothing exporter.