Global commodity chains

The term “Global Commodity Chains” (GCCs) was popularized in the mid-1990s with the publication of Commodity Chains and Global Capitalism, edited by Gary Gereffi and Roberto Korzeniewic. Case studies on GCCs in the Americas have proliferated, adding greater nuance to the existent literature. The GCCs approach, however, shifts the focus of analysis from the state to the role of firms as the organizing agents of capitalism. Gereffi and his colleagues, while indebted to the Marxist tradition of the World System Theory, explained the appeal of the GCCs approach in that it allowed for greater analytical breadth, examining macro-micro links between processes that were otherwise perceived as being distinct units of analysis, be they global, national, or local. The need to place workers and their strategies in the centre of the analysis has been pursued by scholars who began looking at the implications of a GCCs approach for labour movements.