Geographies of global commodity chains and transnational markets
Performing regional (dis-)integration: Transnational markets, mobile commodities and bordered north-south differences
(Christian Berndt and Marc Boeckler)
Being implicated in an ambivalent play of both border crossing and drawing, global commodity chains are an ideal organizational field to analyze the fundamental paradox of global connectivity. Approaching the “contingentization” of borders from a perspective informed by the performativity approach to markets, our research starts from the assumption that this paradox is particularly salient in the context of commodity chains which connect the global south with the global north. Taking the example of selected agro-commodities and two border regions (Morocco/EU and Mexico/USA), we follow the links and heterogeneous associations that stretch from the border to the fields, supermarket shelves and standardization agencies to migrant labor, quality control apparatuses and so forth. By reading commodity chains from their literal limits, that is, from the border and from the margins, we focus on an element of this global assemblage that is normally taken for granted and excluded from academic and public discourse.