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Small Product, Big Issues: Value Contestations and Cultural Identities in Cross‐border Commodity Networks
Author(s) -
Long Norman,
Villarreal Magdalena
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
development and change
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.267
H-Index - 93
eISSN - 1467-7660
pISSN - 0012-155X
DOI - 10.1111/1467-7660.00097
Subject(s) - commodity , product (mathematics) , value (mathematics) , political economy , economics , sociology , political science , market economy , computer science , mathematics , geometry , machine learning
This article follows the trajectory of maize husks from their production sites in rural Western Mexico to diverse consumption and commercialization locales both within the country and in the United States, showing how the uses and meanings of specific products are continuously reassembled and transformed within the livelihoods and social networks of Mexicans living in a transnational world. By highlighting the multiplicities and ambiguities of social value and cultural identities implicit in the workings of commodity chains and globalization processes, the study leads to a questioning of commodity‐chain analysis. It also challenges theories of cultural production and circulation based on a unified and hierarchical system of value.