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T2 lec2 23 Mar 09
Framework on Children and on women:
Production and consumption interlinks
Core & Peripheries:
Global Commodity Chain
Integration of Households
Children/youth
Women
•Single division of labor, multiple global locations & profit extraction from households
•WST & Global Commodity Chain (GCC):
Core:Capital rich
Head Office:
R&D
Product design
Customization
Market distribution
Products
Retail
Ads
Producing Levi Jeans in the Apparel Global Value Chain To produce a line of garments such as jeans, a global brand such as Levi might purchase South Korean yarn; have it woven and dyed in Taiwan by a subsidiary; send the fabric to be cut in Bangladesh by a subcontractor; ship the pieces for final assembly to affiliates in Cambodia and Thailand, where the garments would be matched with Japanese zippers, and deliver the finished product to geographically dispersed affiliated retailers in North America and Europe. In practice, global brands such as Levi increasingly do not manage the production process of jeans themselves. These activities are likely to be coordinated for Levi by a first-tier global supplier, such as Hong Kong-based Li & Fung. This particular set of firm-specific linkages, within the broader framework of the global apparel value chain constitutes a particular—in this case Levi’s—international production network for jeans. Source: Based on Magretta, J., “Fast, Global, and Entrepreneurial: Supply Chain Management, Hong Kong Style”. Harvard Business Review, September-October 1998.
GCC (contd.)
Peripheries: Labour surplus
Production process:
Vertically integrated
GCC
Household in the Global Commodity Chain
(World System Theory):
•Core or Peripheral states:
• Households (non indigenous)
• Classes: Upper & middle income, Low income & the Poor
• Indigenous households: (Canada or LDCs)
Fourth World status
Canada and the Developing World -A comparative framework
Thesis on children/youth:
• Increasing global corporatization has integrated children/ youth in the Core and Peripheral countries into a global commodity chain.
• Child/youth in the Core have been transformed into conspicuous consumersor service sector commodities and those in the Periphery, into comprador consumers or labour commodities.
•Thesis (cont’d)
•Most children/youth in the Core help extract a major share of surpluses (corporate profits) for their consumption within a stable political economy.
•In contrast, children/youth labour in the Peripheries is exploited for the surplus extraction transferred to the Core. The surplus is extracted through poorly paid or unpaid household labour
Topic 2: Framework on Women and development :
WST & Commodity Chain:
• Financial Crisis: Neoliberal deregulation policies
(Canadian Women)
• Global Commodity chain (GCC)
(Third World Women)
Why & how Canadian women workers are disadvantaged?
Canadian neoliberal policies/practices legitimize the extraction of surplus from temps & low waged women workers
Concepts & arguments:
•Caragata (2003): gendered and differential benefits; labour force changes; marginalization; retrenching welfare state; commodification of social roles.
Quintero-Ramirez (2002): capital mobility; flexible work & vulnerable for firing; feminization of labour.Canadian Women: Neoliberal policies
•Liberalization: Free trade
•Austerity: Financial cutbacks
•Privatization: For profit services replace public services and dismantling of unions
•Deregulation of: Financial procedures and securities of lending, borrowing and insurance; Flow of foreign investment
• Globalization of production & expansion of market
What is Feminization (Canadian Women workers)
• Women’s high labour force participation and employment rates
• Gendered rise of insecure or temp jobs
•Capital extracts surplus:
• From:
•Canada: lower cost of production
•Mexico: cheap labour - Export Promoting Zones (EPZ) or border industrialization, e.g., maquiladora
Canada:
women’s problems are not related to basic needs (as in poorer countries)
• 61 percent of single parents cannot
afford a computer (1998)
•among single parents % women are
90%(1998)
Source: Caragata (2003).
Core countries:
Indigenous women:
•education and life expectancy
world's lowest rates
•illiteracy, infant and maternal mortality and death from preventable disease
world’s highest rates
Framework on Women and development :
WST & Global Commodity Chain:
• Financial Crisis: Neoliberal deregulation policies
(Canadian Women)
• Global Commodity chain
(Third World Women)
Arguments (DW# 46 to 49)Peripheral countries:
GCC: Reasons why women are marginalized:
Women are treated as commodities/property by:
- Traditions (DW # 47)
- Religious fundamentalism (DW # 46, 48 & 49)
- Market (Women in GCC)