lobal Commodity Chains & Negative Externalities

• The worldwide network of social relations and labor activities involved in the creation, distribution, consumption, and disposal of a commodity (as defined in Appadurai, p. 3)
  • Social relations: labor, capitalists, nation-states, and consumers; society/nature
  • Labor activities: product design and financing; capture/extraction/cultivation of raw materials; processing; transportation; distribution/sale; purchase/consumption; and disposal
  • Impacts: socioeconomic, political, environmental
  • Questions
    • Culture of capitalism/global commodity chains
    • Karl Polanyi’s Paradox (as defined in GPCC)
    • Negative externalities
    • Internalizing negative externalities
  • Example: “The coffee commodity chainis the linked sequence of activities involved in growing coffee, processing it, shipping it, roasting it, … selling it to consumers” (John Talbot) and disposing it.
  • Video example: Coffee https://u.osu.edu/commoditychain2015/ (Links to an external site.)

Assignment

• Choose either a specific commodity or some aspect of a commodity chain (such as its labor and/or ownership/control conditions; social, economic, environmental, and/or health consequences; political violence/wars; etc.).
• Emphasize relationships and activities of labor, capitalists, nation-states, consumers, and the natural environment.
  • Global culture of capitalism
  • Global commodity chains
  • Negative externalities
  • Karl Polanyi’s Paradox (as defined in GPCC; not Michael Polanyi’s Paradox)
  • Challenges of internalizing externalities (more or less = “sustainability”)
• 1000 or more words of narrative text (no maximum word count); college standards of writing; 
• single spaced 11 or 12-point Times New Roman font; in-text citations; references section; Chicago, MLA, or APA format.

• If you want to focus on Covid-19 (or any other “signature” disease):Covid-19
  
  • Briefly describe and explain the principal relationships within the global culture of capitalism, including global commodity chains.
  • What are “negative externalities”?
  • What is “Karl Polanyi’s Paradox” (as defined in GPCC; not Michael Polanyi’s Paradox)?
  • What are the basic questions to ask about patterns of disease at any point in time and space?
  • What defines a “signature disease” of a specific historical time and pattern of geographic connections?
  • Describe the possible cause and transmission of Covid-19 in terms of the relationships between (1) culture and disease; (2) cities and disease; (3) environmental change and disease; and (4) human ecology and disease.
    • Within this framework, how is Covid-19 a “signature disease”? And how does it reflect negative externalities and Karl Polanyi’s Paradox?
  • What are arguments for healthcare as a global public good (and as a human right), as opposed to healthcare as an individual, commodified choice?