Читать книгу Sociology - Anthony Giddens - Страница 197

Is global Barbie an example of the positive potential of globalization to provide work and a wage to those outside the rich, developed world? Consider which social groups, organizations and countries stand to benefit most from the operation of the doll’s global commodity chain.

The argument that manufacturing industry is increasingly globalized is often expressed in terms of global commodity chains – worldwide networks of labour and production processes yielding a finished product. Such networks consist of production activities that form a tightly interlocked ‘chain’ from raw materials to the final consumer (Appelbaum and Christerson 1997). China, for instance, has moved from the position of a low- to a middle-income country because of its role as an exporter of manufactured goods. By 2018, China and India provided the largest shares of total commodity chain employment, at 43.4 per cent and 15.8 per cent respectively, with the USA being the main export destination (Suwandi et al. 2019). Yet the most profitable activities in the commodity chain – engineering, design and advertising – remain mainly in high-income countries, while the least profitable aspects, such as factory production, occur in low-income ones, thus reproducing rather than challenging global inequality.