New Directions in Commodity Chain Analysis of Global Development Processes

Abstract

While some researchers have considered commodity chain analysis to be a tool or method that is “innocent of theory,” or can be combined with any theory, this paper argues that it has a specific set of theoretical investments. It argues that commodity chain analysis emerged in response to criticisms of the determinism, economism, and western bias in earlier development paradigms. Drawing on recent scholarship, it argues that researchers have turned to the study of commodity chains to provide situated and contingent accounts of global political economy that are historically specific, sensitive to culture and meaning, and attentive to subaltern perspectives.

Citation

Collins, J.L. (2005), "New Directions in Commodity Chain Analysis of Global Development Processes", Buttel, F.H. and McMichael, P. (Ed.) New Directions in the Sociology of Global Development (Research in Rural Sociology and Development, Vol. 11), Emerald Group Publishing Limited, Leeds, pp. 3-17. https://doi.org/10.1016/S1057-1922(05)11001-4