On the commodity trail : the journey of a bargain store product from East to West /
Alison Hulme.
Bok Engelsk 2020 · Electronic books.
| Omfang | 1 online resource (173 p.)
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| Opplysninger | "First published 2015 by Bloomsbury Academic.". - Title Page; Copyright Page; Contents; List of Illustrations; Glossary; Acknowledgements; Preface; Introduction: Eight Bargain Store Commodities and their Journeys; Chapter 1 The Dump - Shanghai and Tianjin as Graveyards and Birthplaces of Commodities; i) The Waste Pedlars of Shanghai; ii) The 'Failed' Spaces of the City - The Key to Success; iii) The Market for Waste: From Pedlar to Factory; Chapter 2 The 'Commodity City': Yiwu, the World's Factory of Bargains; i) The 'China Price' Deal: A Day in the Life of an International Wholesale Buyer. - ii) The Freedom to Buy: A New Kind of Democratic Right?iii) The Buddha, the Bonsai and the Chinoiserie Vase: Taste and Kitsch in a World of Bargains; iv) Births, Deaths and Marriages: Bargains from Cradle to Grave ; Conclusion ... and Back to the Dump?; Notes; Introduction; Chapter 1; Chapter 2; Chapter 3; Chapter 4; Conclusion; References; Web sources; Visual sources; Index. - ii) Yiwu - World-famous 'Commodity City': History and Non-place in the Paradise of Thingsiii) Reciprocity, Risk and the Denial of Copyright Culture in Yiwu; iv) Yiwu versus alibaba.com: The Power of the Anti-inventory; Chapter 3 The Container Port: The Overflowing Spaces of Felixstowe and Los Angeles; i) Defetishizing 'whizzy capitalism'- The Slow Foundations of Hyper-speed; ii) Strike! The Dockside Politics of Abundance; Chapter 4 The Bargain Store: Buying and Selling in the West's Spaces of 'Cheap' ; i) Shopping for Kicks: The Immediacy of Bargain Store Shopping. - Following the journey of eight bargain store objects, Alison Hulme reveals the complex story behind society's simplest and cheapest commodities. Inspired by Walter Benjamin's Arcades Project, On the Commodity Trail explores the colourful and fascinating histories of everyday objects.Along the way, we observe raw materials on municipal rubbish dumps in China, newly re-made products in the world's largest wholesale market, and take a journey across the seas, to bargain stores in Europe and North America, arriving finally in the homes of consumers. Weaving together narratives from the people we meet at different parts of the commodity chain - waste peddlers, wholesalers, store owners, and shoppers - the book examines the places and people at the heart of these localized yet immense global networks.Unlike other investigations of commodity chains, this study does not chart a straightforward trajectory from production to consumption. Instead, it demonstrates that the low-end commodity chain is one of constant rupture in which products are made and re-made, blurring the dividing line between producing and consuming.An ethnography of material culture as well as an examination of commodity culture at a time of economic downturn, this deeply-engrossing book makes a unique contribution to our understanding of commodity chains and consumer culture.
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| ISBN | 1-000-18310-6. - 1-000-18973-2. - 1-003-08621-7. - 1-4725-7286-6. - 1-4725-7287-4. - 1-4742-1991-8
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