Objects, Consumption, and Desire

April 9, 2006

More than something to ride...

Though we haven’t spoken specifically of food as an object, Harvey’s chapter got me thinking of Vidalia onions, Satsuma oranges, the Coney Island knish, cheese (mostly French) like Boucheron (also a perfume, weirdly enough), camembert, and Calvados brandy. I saw “Paper Moon” recently with Tatum O’Neal (a movie set in the twenties) and for lunch she was served a Coney Island, this is what the Ryan O’Neal character kept calling a hot dog. It is a trend, perhaps a “place tradition (163),” to name certain foods after the area where they are grown, the French do hold the market on foods and place names, due perhaps to the “superiority of French consumption goods,” but it is also where the epicurean was designated as a high art (like music, painting or poetry.) (Molotch, 167) And then, I started to wonder … DO THE FRENCH MAKE MOTOCYCLES? Storper’s list on 207 did not elucidate on types of transportation, but did state that France “is a weak specializer at this moment in history; it has few dramatic strong points in international trade.” (Storper, 148) Other than food and fashion it would seem the French do not share the world history of being bikers (most of the French production of motorcycles ended after 1955.)

Motorcycles still seem localized to the geography of their initial production, both in the US and Europe (Japanese motorcycles are newer to the market). Bikes are not yet outsourced to the global economy. The primary nations that still manufacture bikes are England (BSA, Norton, Triumph, Royal Enfield – an export to India), Italy (Ducati, Moto Guzzi. Laverda, not to mention scooters like Aprilla and Vespa), the US, Japan and Germany. But in the past, there were bikes manufactured in Spain, Denmark, Holland, China, Sweden, India, Australia, Czechoslovakia, Canada, Iran, Turkey, Switzerland, Taiwan, Belgium, Russia, Austria, Hungary, Poland, and Korea. The production of motorcycles still seems to reflect Amin’s model of “self-contained, product specialist regional economies.” (572) Particularly in America, the tendency to outsource is prolific, as a recent example, the Winchester rifle (and what could be more American than a gun?) just closed it’s last plant in the US, but even Harley still boasts a claim of being ‘born in the USA.’ Is this because motorcycles signify some vestige to a site?

This loyalty to ‘placement’ is especially marked among bikers. I am sold on the brand of BMW (Munich, 1923), and I’ll fight any Harley rider (Milwaukee, 1903) who tries to tell me different. There are motorcycle clubs for those who ride Japanese, European or Harley, but neither “the gatekeeper” bike, the Indian which was the 1st American motorcycle manufactured in Springfield, MA (1901) (Scott, 1973) or the Excelsior Henderson (Minneapolis, 1905 & 1993) possess the same American selling potential as the HD (of course, HD has a ludicrous amount of Disneyfied spin-off marketing from baby clothes to jewelry to stuffed animals.) And it is not “technological mastery” (Storper, 198) that makes the Harley so popular, because a Harley rider’s best friend is her hammer, needed to bang the starter due to their history of electrical problems in the charging system. Will Harley ever fix this? Why should they, bikers are known to wrench on their own bikes and weekend warriors like doctors and lawyers will take their bike to the HD dealer for those big-ticket repairs.

Though I am no expert on bikes, the naming of motorcycles is also interesting. Honda uses names like Shadow or Hawk (but also models like the CB series, the 4 series), Harley refers to bikes by their cylinder head (the panhead, knucklehead, ironhead and evolution), and BMWs are designated by series and engine size– the R80 or the K100. Bikes are not named after places or people (except brand names like HD).

Motorcycle parts are not immune to fordism, for example German Bosch sparkplugs (Amin, 572) are somewhat universal and can be used in European and Japanese motorcycles, but the gasket for a vintage Honda CB650 rocker box, must be special ordered from Honda (and costs close to $150, an amount more than the worth of some of these bikes.) In the case of the Excelsior Henderson, the desire (at the Sturgis, SD rally) for more American motorcycles resurrected this company from Minnesota in 1996, where “the mode of production, has in a sense, gone back to the future.” (Amin, 574)

Their “regional development” (Scott, 1980) seems concentrated in the Midwest (like in the cases of similar concentration in the record industry). Does the “spatial structure of the cultural economy” (Scott, 1965) that of the Midwestern factory and farming class populations contribute to their localization in these areas? Do rallys (like Bike Week, Stugis and hundreds of others worldwide) act as “centres of authority” (Amin, 576) and sites for “learning and interaction?” (Storper, 107) In the case of the Excelsior, it seems like they do. The appreciation of motorcycles is economic, practical, representative of personal philosophy/lifestyle, and aesthetic – both symbolic and functional – the motorcycle is argueabley, a work of art and a machine.

My last partner rode a Harley, and I had a BMW, it was the Harley that got us into the Iron Horse Saloon in Daytona during Bike Week, but it was the age of my bike (1978 vintage) and the size of my fairing (it could hold a pair of chaps and a leather jacket) that garnered more conversation from other bikers. There is something more than “technologies, organizations, and territories” that influence the geographical stability of the motorcycle market. (Storper, 108)

Does this have something to do with demand, “social cliques,” or elitism? (Amin, 576) Motorcycles are ubiquitous and inexpensive (generally), in the state of Florida, insurance is not required to ride a motorcycle (unless you are riding without a helmet or have previously been in an accident,) so a bike can be much more affordable than a car (not to mention saving money on gas.) Motorcycles are smaller than cars, thus contributing to their popularity in population dense areas like Japan and Europe. And in the states, they still represent a type of outlaw status as reflected in the slogans: born to ride, live free or die.

During Bike Week in Daytona Beach, FL, one will mostly see Japanese bikes in the black neighborhood which is contrasted to the concentration of Harley’s closer to Main Street and the Intracoastal, because these areas have higher concentrations of white bikers. Of course, this is partly economic as the white male market is more able to afford a Harley for 30G versus a Honda for 8G. Though it is the Japanese manufactures that are prone to make the clone (a more affordable version,) at first glance at the Honda Magna might make one think of the Harley, but I’m not sure that with motorcycles “the force of imitation is outrun by the pace of innovation,” (Storper, 107) because bikers are still drawn by branding and its signification towards a lifestyle.

The motorcycle represents a dedicated market (Storper, 110), there is really no generic motorcycle, what would be the point in that? The larger trend is customization (footpegs, handlebars, highway pegs, seats/saddles, gas tanks, paint jobs, and chrome chrome chrome – even sound can be customized!) Motorcycles make a biker distinct from other socializing forces among humans, and while it is possible for a lawyer to be a biker, he or she might want to keep that fact quiet at a rally, though one’s filière (Storper, 152) or brand new HD jacket, boots, bandanna, belt, vest, belt buckle and gloves might give it away. Is this part of the “deepening of their mastery of the essential characteristics of their product?” (Storper, 121) A real biker is more likely to have the HD ‘bar and shield’ tattoo than any item from the HD web-store shopping cart.

Speaking of excess, in the course of doing some research on motorcycles (really an excuse to look at bikes,) I found the following example of American extremism:
Y2K USA, Made by Marine Turbine Technology. Weighs 460 lbs and has an Allison Rolls Royce 250 Gas Turbine that makes 320 hp with 286 hp at the rear wheel and 425 ft lbs of torque. It has an estimated Top Speed of 250 mph, 1/4 Mile: 9.80 @ 160 mph, 0-200 mph in 15.0 seconds. All with a modest price tag of only $150,000.

I think family and geneology are also important to the biker community, in my family there were a few bikers before me: my Grandfather (maternal), my Grandmother (maternal), my Great-Aunt (maternal), my Father, and two of my maternal cousins, one male and one female (her dog even rode along). My Father’s continual admonition, that if he ever caught me on a motorcycle, he’d kill me, didn’t stop my enthusiasm for the ride; at 18 I convinced my best friend to buy a Honda Nighthawk and we rode all over Atlanta on than bike. Years later, I had to refuse my Father’s request to ride my BMW, as his eyesight was failing and I didn’t want him to drop my bike. Who had become possessive about motorcycles then? Though I love riding in FLA, my favorite state to ride in is Kentucky, all those winding back roads are amazing! I have dream rides (not-yet-realized,) like the one my Father took as a young man on his WWII Harley (the mine plates removed): a trip through Utah’s Monument Valley and north into Alaska. Motorcycles symbolize freedom and offer a connection to the past, they are something more than two wheels and an engine.

Posted by Pilou Miller at 5:48 PM | Comments (1788)

Place: “The rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.”

Coming from a geography/urban planning background, I suppose that issues surrounding ‘place’ and ‘space’ have become internalized in my thinking. This means that when I read an abstract piece about the importance of geography or place, I try treating it as a tool for placing real places in a larger context. However, I also think it's difficult to navigate between places as 'objects' and places as spaces where things just happen to play out. They are interconnected - a perceived business culture or lifestyle associated with a place can be reinforcing - but not necessarily the same. In other words, 'Place' and 'places' are still relevant.

There are two concepts of place in these readings: one is the perceived abstract space that associates places with some sort of ideal or milieu, and the other is a concrete web of connections and intersections that actually relates to how things happen and why. These two concepts don’t operate in isolation, and relate back and forth to each other dynamically.

A very abstracted sense of place is described in Raymond Williams' ‘The Country and the City’ in which he places the conceptions of urbanity and the countryside in a broader context; i.e. what does the ‘city’ mean and how does that relate to the ‘country’? Somewhat less abstracted is Harvey’s discussion of how certain places get to be associated with certain concepts; such as Chicago being known as the ‘City of Big Shoulders’.

This, in turn, leads to a desire for emulation on the part of those living in certain places. So, while New York is referred to as the ‘Big Apple’, Minneapolis is sometimes referred to as the ‘Minneapple’, and about ten years ago, business leaders in Green Bay, Wisconsin, started a campaign to dub the city the ‘Green Apple’. That moniker didn’t stick.

Another example of this sort of aspirational geographic linkage is the NY Tower development in Toronto, opened a few years ago. As the ad copy states: “One might mistake it for the most compelling features of the New York skyline. Four impressive towers will rise above the city below. One roofline modeled on the Chrysler Building. Another with the pedigree of the Empire State Building.” As an added touch, the website prominently features a close-up of the head of the Statue of Liberty.

However as much as some might wish it to be so, these conceptions of place cannot willed into existence, and change over time. Cities such as Detroit and Rochester were not always referred to as ‘Rust Belt’ cities but were once known as innovative centers of new technologies. What has been central is a sort of institutional ossification where mature corporations are not flexible enough to continue to promote innovation. Geography in a negative sense almost seems relevant here: Silicon Valley is located about as far away from Rochester (and Xerox and its ‘organization man’ culture, in the example cited by Harvey) as one can be and still remain in the continental U.S.

What Scott, Storper, Amin and Thrift bring to the discussion is analyzing the importance both of locality and of larger trends in capitalism. Based on a number of factors, localities may be able to plug successfully into larger trends: the historic importance and governmental support of small industrial cooperatives in Emilia-Romagna meant that a system based on quick turnover and high quality of product could flourish there. The growth of Bentonville, Arkansas around Wal-Mart is another example. But this ability for a locality to define its future is also limited, especially as corporate control and decision-making get more-and-more delinked from actual places. It was only a couple of years ago that the cities of Chicago, Denver, and Dallas fought (using numerous subsidies) for the honor of getting Boeing’s corporate offices.

Joel Garreau (author of Edge Cities) wrote a think-piece a couple of months ago for the Washington Post. It is set in 2030, in which the DC metropolitan region will have shrunk by half due to climate change, the crumbling of federal government, and advances in communications. Even though some face-to-face contact will be important (to find love and establish trust) people will have spread out across the country into village-like concentrations with lots of charm. What’s especially odd about this piece is not its provocative statements as to the declining importance of place, but really, just how old this sort of thinking is. The main difference between this essay and Ebenezer Howard’s Garden City or Wright’s Broadacre City is that Garreau pays a bit more attention to the environment, and a bit less to any intrinsic moral decrepitude of urban living.

All this adds up to a very messy post. Since finishing college, I find that I’ve spent a lot of time attempting to defend ‘geography’ as a concept and discipline (Yes, I’ve made maps. No, that’s not all there is to it), but also attempting to avoid the trap of ascribing everything to geography. It’s an easy trap to fall into, and it’s made even more difficult by the complications inherent in seeing places as objects. Even in this post, I described Chicago, Denver, and Dallas as I would three people.

Posted by Mark Treskon at 3:55 PM | Comments (1794)

Finding the local in the global network?

Dynamics of globalization are giving economic theory a hard time. After having accepted that universal categories and laws cannot be easily applied to the (post)modern economic world, the theorists were facing two paths: rethink their entire system of economic research or sticking to old methods by admitting that the right formula have not been found yet.

This week’s reading do not simply make up new categories, instead the authors take into account that the complexity of the globalized world is not only common-sense knowledge, but a challenge to academic methods. In consequence, Storper points out how different countries have a different economic ’habitus’, while Amin&Thrift discover locality in the form of neo-marshallian nodes in the global flow of products. Finding the local in the global is not always „counter-global“ as Anikò puts it, but also the hindsight that universal structures fail to explain why some products are successful the way they are and others not. Going back to the place of production means for analytical purposes to reduce space to a point/ a place that can then be described as the point of entry to the global industry. In consequence, many regions have their own specificity and form the global, whereas interdependent relations of regional economies constitute the global network. However, there is a danger in over-estimating the local/regional, because it is somehow the nature of the global that the output of production, means the good, which is distributing all over the world, has not a regional inscription. It is one of the achievements of globalization, that socks, made out of wool from Iceland’s sheep, do not have to be knitted in Iceland but can be produced somewhere in South Asia. Even the wool could be reduced to a label, while the sheep graze in the north of Poland.

Emphasizing the importance of the local, can also be understand as a reaction to the global discourse which is now very fashionable in economic theory. ‚Fashionable’ should not be mistaken as an unsubstantial trend in economics; there have been major shifts, not only in the production process, but in creation and distribution of knowledge and in the organizational structure of firms. But the Amin&Shift argumentation sticks to the localization in a way, which disregards the global span of all regional production sites. London, for example, is for not only a node in the global system but a site, which establishes global networks.

In contrast, the notion of the ‘creative field” by Scott includes the symbolics of the produced product, which is here music and culture. The application of Bourdieu’s ‘field’ points to the high accumulation of cultural and economic capital in places where music is produced and consumed as well. Nevertheless, I wonder how Becker’s world can be applied here. Especially Storper’s text, which talks a lot about conventions shaping the production of knowledge and determining innovations, made me think of the BBB (Bourdieu-Becker-Battle). How does the class think about that? And how do we link the symbolic attributes of goods and objects back to the “material” where they are produced? I think, that Storper talks a lot about it, when he describes how decisions of innovation and design are embedded in the structure and organization of the production sites. However, the linking point escapes me: how does this affect not only the material shape of the goods but also their symbolic meaning for the consumer? Is there as kind of interaction going on?

Posted by Teresa Reiber at 3:48 PM | Comments (1)

the dichotomy between design locality and production locality

it seems that in the modern globalized economy the localization of design and production in the type of "centres" described by amin, with the "industrial atmosphere" he takes from marshall, may only apply to high end craft type of goods. similarly, the localized design and production of goods described by molotch, also seems that they might only apply to high end craft goods. items like the italian leather goods produced in san croce or the LA furniture designed and produced in LA are indeed, conceptually, products of the cultural atmosphere of a specific location. they are also produced in these locations, but i have to question if this system applies to other goods as well. goods that are produced for global consumption may originate in certain local environments in terms of their ceoncepts, innovations and designs, but for the most part are actually produced halfway around the globe in places like east asia or india.

tennis shoes are a prime example. while california's sporting culture may have made the wearing of sneakers commonplace, the design of sneakers remains very localized and immersed in local cultures, even within the same brand and model of shoe. for example, the nike air force 1, a popular sneaker, is designed differently by designers in LA and NY. the LA version are designed for LA consumers in a chicano "cholo" culture, with use of colors popular in LA like brown and dodger blue. designs are emboidered in olde english font, popular in "cholo" gang culture, which is very connected to LA.

in contrast, the same nike air force 1's are designed differently for new york consumers with different ethnic and cultural backgrounds. shoes designed for the new york market are made with colors indicating these backgrounds such as puerto rican red white and blue, or jamaican black red yellow and green, both with each nations national flag embroidered on the outside. or other versions aimed at consumers from the hip hop culture popular in new york, with hip hop graffiti writing embroidered on the outside.

however even though these shoes are designed in a culturally specific locations with specific location specific consumers in mind, all of these shoes are produced in china, probably in the same economic zones if not all in the same sweat shop factory. and the hip hop designs intended for new york consumers might be just as popular in france or japan, just like fine italian leather.

it seems that in the current global economy with internet communication and globalized production, design and innovation may still be site specific, but the production of goods is not necessarily tied to localities where goods are designed.
i wonder if this doesnt mean that the notion of centers of production for certain goods might not be valid for most goods, and only apply to the very high brow fine artisan crafted goods that are still associated with specific locations, such as leather, wine or perfume.

Posted by Robert Weide at 2:27 PM | Comments (1)

Same analysis on different levels

A big chunk of this course was about lash-ups, networks, constellations, and this perspective is also dominating the relations between places and objects. I have so far encountered idea of fractals a few times (forgot where it originates) but it refers to each element in a constellation being composed of those same elements that constitute a constellation, constellations within constellations, networks within networks, lash-ups within lash-ups.

In our readings we have global networks consisting of regional centers, these are interdependent and are different in how material, human, social, cultural, capitals are combined together in order to give them their unique character. In the same sense Harvey talks about cities, regions, and nations having their characters and are again a specific combination of above-mentioned capitals. We could extend this to a particular firm/organization and even to people, where with latter we are actually most used to attributing ‘character.’ Of course when it comes to empirical analysis we will find that each of the levels of analysis have their own particular actors, humans, organizations, cities, etc and material, human, cultural, and social capitals will be embodied in different things but at a reasonable level of abstraction it is about the same stuff. What makes an employee successful in a company, a business successful in a city, is the same what makes a city successful on a national and global levels, and what makes a nation successful on a global level. Therefore, analyses are similar.
One task is to find people and objects in these constellations that connect different levels and therefore transmit influences from bottom-up and from top-down. When can a constellation have its way despite unfavorable constellation at a higher level? Probably until it uses up its resources unless it can change a certain part of a higher constellation, re-classify itself as a part of a different constellation, or carve out its own little niche. Finally, what big part of this course is about, how do constellations come together?

Posted by Miodrag Stojnic at 1:48 PM | Comments (1)

Putting Art in its Place

I couldn’t help thinking about my own profession while doing the reading for today’s class, and am wondering how it might fit into this discussion of product and its relation to place. Harvey mentions in his book the shortage of oil paints during the depression, and the subsequent rise in water color schools in California soon thereafter. He also mentions LA artist Mike Kelley’s work as perhaps being signature Los Angeles – “hot-rodding, anti-intellectual, surfer-boy high jinks.” Kelley’s recent show at Gagosian Gallery, “Day is Done,” was the first time I had actually seen any of his works in person, and actually, in a remote way, got me to thinking about the way that place can produce or articulate a product.

I don’t know if it’s because I am a dance artist, or it just so happened to turn out this way, but the first work I noticed at the “Day is Done” show was a video of three girls dancing in bad leotards in a high school hallway – jazz dancing, to be specific, the kind you only really see in small town talent contests, or I suppose, Mike Kelley shows. I was fascinated and watched them for at least a half an hour. It brought up the most amazing memories for me – learning how to dance in a small, one floor studio located in a parking lot between two trailer parks in rural New Hampshire. Since that time, my dancing has drastically changed – while some of my old classmates are trying out for the Rockettes, I am making conceptual works and showing them at big NYC dance institutions. I had always thought of this as a big “step up,” but while watching Kelley’s video, I realized that I missed this kind of dancing, and that it was an important kind of dancing, and I wanted to do it again – perhaps just not in the same “place” as where I learned it.

My point, maybe, is this – there is a difference between dancing and other art forms – in their “objectlessness.” While dance is ephemeral, like it’s performance siblings theater and music, it is not fixed in a manner that can be understood as object – like the script, for example, or the sheet of music. While I certainly understand how art objects such as sculpture or paintings are derivative of, informed by, and sometimes even representative of place – can we say the same thing for dance? I would venture to say yes – that there is something inherent in the place of origin of dance that establishes it’s qualities (like 1960’s New York Judson era walking-across-the-stage dancing, or LA originating late 1990’s krumping – two kinds of dancing very obviously linked to place). Is there something about space that compels Kelley to include this kind of dancing in his works, while it is in a way shunned by the highbrow art world of New York? I’m sure there is - but how is this argument different when there is no object to stand is as testimony? In fact, the only “object” we have to work with would be the medium – the body – which certainly is not different across the coastlines. If it’s not the medium, or the instrument, is it solely a combination of space and time that distinguishes dance trends and their place of origin? Perhaps, which I think may get at a new way of thinking about the way place is involved with trends and taste, as well as objects.

Posted by Kimberly Brandt at 1:08 PM | Comments (1)

Unlimited regional worlds

What I really enjoyed about this week’s readings is that they made me realize that I had got stuck somewhere in the ‘globalization discourse.’ I was unaware of the recent counter-globalization discourses, which is why I found it very interesting to read articles which actually explore how globalization is experienced / performed differently in different regional contexts. What I did not like about these articles is that they all focused (perhaps with the exception of Harvey’s article) on production and products, so they did not demonstrate how regional differences are materialized in the end.

Many of these articles, implicitly or explicitly, share Becker’s idea of the ‘world.’ In my reading, the reason why regional industry districts succeed is because their ‘worlds’ are so strong and stabile and serve local (and global) needs so successfully, that not even the forces of global market can contest their legitimacy. For instance, the case study in Amin and Nigel’s article on Tuscany demonstrates how the traditional institutionalization and labor division in this region of Italy remains dominant despite the effects of globalization. At the same time, the same article provides another example, the City of London, where the historically established industrial district could not triumph over the challenges the city faced in the era of globalization.

Looking at Scott’s article on US recorded music industry within this context is very interesting. Scott not only demonstrates how the ‘music industry world’ has developed its agglomerations in L.A., N.Y., and Nashville by providing all the necessary “ingredients” at one place, but he also argues that the interaction between corporate music worlds and independent music worlds is inevitable for the ever-changing dynamics of music industry. (Here, I refer to the cyclical process Scott describes on page 1976.)

Storper analyses the regional worlds in Northeast Italy, Paris and in California. What I really enjoyed as I was reading the chapter “Regional Worlds of Production” was that in his descriptions of how the selected industries operated in different countries, he not only introduced different modes of productions, but also demonstrated how the ‘habitus’ of different nations had an impact on their modes of production. For example, the fact that the most successful manufacturing structure for Northeast Italy is the small firm, relying on family connections and interpersonal relations, or that in France, it is still a few prestigious elite designers who dictate the fashion world reveals a lot about Italian and French habitus and mentalité.

I also found Storper’s distinction between generic / dedicated and standardized / specialized products very interesting, but I was disappointed that in the chapters we read Storper did not demonstrate how these categorizations are different in different regional districts. Storper only considered products in general, but did not demonstrate his theory with concrete examples of objects.

Of course for the concrete objects we always need Harvey. I find the cup holder in American cars such an excellent example for how objects produced for different regions may differ from each other. These days more and more cars come with cup holders in Europe as well, but for example cup holder was simply unknown for Eastern European cars in the 1970s and 1980s. This again, relates to the habitus and lifestyle of people in certain regions, and also how we ‘consume milieu.’ A Hungarian friend of mine just asked me recently, if now that I live in New York, I also always walk with a cup of coffee in my hand. Weirdly enough, I realized that I do have a cup of coffee in my hands most of the times. At first I did not understand where her question came from, but then I remembered that in Hollywood movies Americans always have a large cup of coffee in their hands when they walk on the street or drive their cars. This is again something that Harvey explores; how movie industry in L.A. influences consumption.

The one thing that I think is really missing from this week’s readings on globalization vs. localization is how multinational corporate companies operate differently in different regions. As long as we examine traditional local manufactures, such as the Northern Italian leather industry or French fashion design, regional differences are inevitable to a certain extent. However, I believe it would be very exciting to look at how for example Coca-Cola operates differently in the U.S., in Hungary and perhaps in an African country. When multinational corporate companies entered the Eastern European market after the fall of Communism, they all had to adjust their global practices to the local ‘habitus.’ However, I do not know whether those adjustments were only temporary for the time of the transition, or whether Coca-Cola does operate differently in different regions even today.

Posted by Aniko Szucs at 1:07 PM | Comments (1)

Space and the Folly of Network Analysis

It was economic sociology's big discovery decades ago that markets are social. This week's readings throw in locality as being another factor, but not without some hesitations.

I’m skeptical of the centrality of place over a broader concept like space. Throughout the articles, there is a focus on “face to face” interaction, shared “air” and the confluence of “flesh and trust.” But given new forms of sociability over the phone or the Web, I wonder if Marshallian nodes can be built on listserves or over blogs (wink wink). Can’t innovation, interaction, and representation be collectively worked out online? Despite decentralization, the need for centers remains, claim Amin, Ash and Thrift. Can (or will) these be e-centers?

With the forces of globalization, increasing demand uncertainty, and decentralization, these readings imply an increasing necessity of sociability in markets. Is there a suggestion here that markets are by necessity becoming more social in the post-Fordist era? This makes sense, for after all, it takes a greater deal of “social work” to pull off flexible, non-hierarchal organization – sounds like a neo-liberal imposition on collective action.

On a lighter note, I was most interested in counterfactuals to Harvey’s discussions of place, like for which products does place not matter? One thought experiment is to ask what happens to a good when it’s homestead is uprooted, as in what do you get when you make Disney dreams come true in Hong Kong? Perhaps some products are more dependent on place than others, for not all such “dislocated goods” are examples of the wrong place at the wrong time?

Finally, these readings come together in telling us that geographic location matters in production, but just how remains an open question. This leads me to a critique of social network analysis that I felt creeping up particularly by the end of the Scott piece: you can map out the social network of a productive activity, draw the webs of interdependence and association that make up a creative field, connect the nodes with lines and argue successfully that markets are the result of social activity and that networks constrain innovation. Add to that, as this week’s readings have done, that where the networks are located also matters. But in the end, you still don’t know just how they matter or how the content of various social ties shape the product. To this end, richer qualitative methods can get at the relevance of place and social ties in markets.

Posted by Ashley Mears at 12:48 PM | Comments (1)

I thought I got it, but I don’t get it.

I have to echo Laura and Owen: some of the readings for this week just don’t make their point (and with that in mind, I won't repeat what their postings say). Or maybe, I just don’t get it. This week’s readings focus on relationships between place and product, arguing that even in an era of globalization, the local still matters as a site for innovation, production, and consumption. Two points stood out: first, products have places, and second, even with globalization, products have places. So now, I am thinking to myself “I knew this already”. So, I kept on reading, and tried to think even harder. Thrift and Amin discuss the return to localization, as if we had somehow left the local behind in the transition to globalization. What I am confused about is whether this departure from the local is a flaw of scholarship, an empirical reality, or both. Harvey traces places and products, and makes the persuasive case that this phenomena hasn’t went anywhere – Hollyood existed even while Thrift and Amin were writing.

Storper has a slightly different project – his emphasis is on the product more so than the place. For Storper, products drive innovation, which can be conceived of as collective action. He gives four typologies of products that create different “worlds”. Again, I am thinking to myself “I knew this already”. Of course products exist in specific places, require specific methods of production and are consumed in specific ways – and these specificities vary depending on the product and the place. I don’t consume toothpaste the way I do coffee, or shoes like computers. So different products require different networks (which is how I understand worlds – isn’t this what Becker was talking about in Art Worlds?). Is this Storper’s point? Storper, and Thrift and Amin, seem to be saying that economies are global-local – that even in an era of globalization, the local matters, and the local can innovate to negotiate the constraints of a global economy. So what?

Thankfully, Harvey’s chapter makes some new and important points. This chapter does two things that the other two do not: uses rich empirical examples (London and Santa Croce just didn’t do it for me), and takes the role of social actors seriously. Rather than focusing only on products and networks, this selection brings in “character…the mode of lash up in a given place at a given time – the specifically local way people bring it all together” (163), offering us a more nuanced way of understanding why place in product matters. Further, it gives a sense of how people interpret places, and how it is this interpretation that drives consumption of products. Also, and this dovetails on Laura’s point about myspace, places attract certain ideal typical people. So, maybe the reason that the myspace headquarters is in California is because the types of people who make that kind of product are more likely to live in California. There is a literature on the creative class that makes this point quite nicely (see Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class and Richard Lloyd’s NeoBohemia for examples).

Posted by Jane Jones at 12:30 PM | Comments (1)

Excuse me Waiter but There is a Place in my Food

Place in products is fun to think about and based on this weeks readings it is essential when thinking about objects and where they come from. Just the idea of “Where stuff comes from” implies place, that there is a place from which they come not just the lash-up of different circumstances or ideas. I know that in this call we are discussing objects, things that are man-made, produced. But thinking of place I can’t help but think about foodstuffs and how place is important in the production of food.

A large part of discovery and exploration was based around the want of foreign foodstuffs like spices, fruits, and was we have discussed before sugar. Traditionally food has been regional, local. Plants and animals have a natural environment in which they grow and thrive. We even name certain regions based on their products such as the ‘banana republics’. As our knowledge of genetics and breeding has become more refined people have been able to de-localize food and adapt them to regions in which they live. The most extreme example may be implanting proteins from fish into tomato plants to increase their climate range and increase their growing season in more temperate climates. Here, innovation away from the local or native region of the tomato plant has lead to a new product. It is assumed that a tomato adapted for more temperate climates never occurred to people living in the region where tomatoes are native; it was simply not needed. Greenhouses and irrigation systems are two other innovations that have lead to the spread of products outside their native localities. I’m not sure where to place tomatoes or other foods in Storper’s ‘worlds of production’, mainly because I did not understand it.

Maybe it would make more sense to think about a processed food product like catsup instead of a raw product like tomatoes. Though I’m no expert in the catsup industry I imagine that processing plants are located in the regions where tomatoes are grown; this both cuts down on shipping costs and ensure the freshest tomatoes.

Transportation seemed missing from the articles for this week. An issue that I thought would be important when talking about place and products. The only mention of it I remember is in Scott’s article when discussing the relationships between major and independent record companies, where majors will support independents through specialized distribution, shipping several albums and labels together. Take Hershey’s chocolates, the cocoa beans go through some processing in the region they are grown before they are shipped to Pennsylvania where Hershey’s headquarters are located. The cocoa is global, though localized in the jungles it is grown, becomes localized at Hershey for chocolate production, then shipped all over the world. This product seems to be both local and global.

Posted by Jean-Luc Howell at 12:14 PM | Comments (1)

What is a filiere and who is Alfred Marshall?

1. I read of filieres in Amin and Thrift and dutifully went to my Websters and my OED where the word does not appear. Scott mentions filieres on 581. Until I read on page 152 of Storper that a fieleire is a "commmodity chain" I didn't get it. Hope this saves
confusion for others who haven't studied French.

2. Marshall (whose first name is Alfred, as I know from Harvey's book p. 162) is Amin's and Thrift's interlocutor. They don't define his argument. They never give him a first name, nor do they reference him in the bibliography. It is assumed that everyone knows what they're addressing about "industrial atmosphere." I assume everyone did but me. Marshall also appears in a chart in Scott. What is the deal with Marshall? NO ONE mentions him in their bibliography. Anyone? Aside from the fact that he's an "economist"
and "industrial atmosphere" suggests "that the air people breathe
together causes certain productive things to occur and not others" (Molotch 163) I'm at sea here.

3. I loved Harvey's comment about "norms" (p. 192) "some speak in a way I find vague and difficult to follow." (Amen. Pace Durkheim.) And I'm right with the social scientists Harvey cites as thinking "that actual human activity is far too complex, idiosyncratic, and ad hoc for there to be any such guides or norms that could be of much use." But then again I think of a friend who was raised in the Catholic church and how often he rails against it as something he grew up to leave. Certainly some sort of norms can be specific to individual communities. I also think of norm-specific styles of clothing: a young female New Yorker I spoke with explained to me recently that the girls at her high school all wore tight clothes so no one would think they were gay and the boys all wore loose clothes so that no one would think they were gay. Further, she explained, the boy's loose clothes actually come from prison clothes style. Norms? The norm is to dress "not gay" at her high school. It sort of makes me wistful. I remember how delicious the boys looked (please forgive me for objectifying human beings) in my high school in the 1970s in their fitted Levi's 501s. A norm quite possibly borrowed in a leap from James Dean at the cinema, or unconsciously from the gay subculture of the 1970s?

But then again I was at the Salvation Army on Saturday and a dad was outfitting his young son (about 12) in an oversized black down jacket. "That will be good for next winter?" he asked me. I looked at the kid and said, "Yes. It's perfect. He's adorable" (here the kid sort of frowned and beamed at the same time--he was at that wonderful age where adults approval both matters and doesn't matter). So I added, "and tough looking." And then the kid was really happy in the coat.

4. Regarding Amin and Thrift. Hugely useful as I start to think about my possible dissertation and the motion picture industry. I'm fascinated by this idea they cite of "hollowing out" (575) which relates to Klein's argument in No Logo.

5. Place and Region also plays into the Consumption of Goods. When I visit California or Oregon or somewhere not New York, people comment on how much black I wear. When I'm in New York, people comment when I wear something colorful. Veblen's notion of conspicuous consumption can not matter in the same way when you live in the Village, as opposed to when your nearest neighbor is three miles away. Place and Region also mean changes in climate which necessitate different consumptions. Who in New York uses a Swamp Cooler? How big is the Blackberry in Fergus Falls, Minnesota? How many Ghanaians own refrigerators? What percentage of New Yorkers own cars?

Posted by Andrea Siegel at 11:39 AM | Comments (3)

global/local and myspace

Ash/Thrift and Scott write about “agglomeration”, which, as I understand it, is the concentration of production facilities in a particular locality, as though it were something that needs a lot of figuring out. They expend much thought trying to figure out why industries end up looking “local” in a globalized, or at least geographically diverse, world. I was hoping for some sort of counter-example, some description of an industry that is not at all agglomerated, that is spread in such a way as to be “global” rather than “local”. Both articles seemed to take some stand in favor of the idea that it was some collection of factors related to the concept of globalization that has led to this new kind of local industrial concentration in the first place. I can kind of see where Ash/Thrift are coming from when they point to the idea that this agglomeration is in response to globalization (kind of like, even though an industry has the whole world to work with, when it comes right down to it, the production has to happen somewhere), but I was really hoping they could give me a counter-example, an industry that is not agglomerating production anywhere.

I thought back to Naomi Klein and the shoe factories right next to the shirt factories, right next to some factory for something else, and I wondered if that was not also an agglomeration? The important conditions that identified that location as a good one were the vast pools of cheap, exploitable labor, lax environmental laws, and little oversight by nosy government officials generally which is different than the actual reason that Hawken and the Lovins’s give for agglomeration in the recording music industry, but similar in the sense that it makes sense for that industry. Klein’s industries are truly interested in production of objects whereas, as Hawken and the Lovins’s point out, the recorded music industry is in the business cultural production which is a bit different and would necessarily take place in a locality with a different set of features. In the case of recorded music, I think it would be fine to think that the localities themselves have built up some cultural capital over their years as centers for art, design, music, theatre, and creative production in general. So where each industry will be situated in vastly different localities for reasons intrinsic to the type of production they perform, I am struggling to think of an industry that would not thrive in a locality with some set of characteristics amenable to its development, over another locality where those characteristics are missing in whole or in part. So, is there a non-local production site?

Because I study things that get produced online, I can posit for a moment that the production of knowledge for the online community may be truly global (in the sense that the only important locality is a web address not a geographical address). Some pundits refer to the upsurge of websites that are run by a large number of geographically diverse users as Web 2.0. They are talking about sites like myspace and craigslist and wikipedia that are large, decentralized networks of information generated by users all over the place. No need to be localized here. But then, both craigslist and myspace have headquarters and those headquarters are in California. How much are they benefitting from their proximity to Silicon Valley and Hollywood? Is there a synergy there or not? Could these sitese have been started by a couple guys living in Des Moines? I am honestly not so sure. One of the things that gave myspace an initial user base was its focus on the emerging music scene, and as we read, one of the centers for that kind of information is LA. So even though myspace is now totally decentralized, it is in competition with other similar web sites and we might surmise that it’s success IS related to it’s initial (and continuing) ability to “break” new bands which is a result, to some degree, of it’s headquarters being located in Los Angeles. I thought I had come up with an example of an industry, or at least a subsector of an industry, that would be truly global, having no reason to prefer one locality over another in the first place. But it didn’t work. Myspace needed to be in California. It’s likely that craigslist got something out of being in California too, but that one is harder for me to see because I don’t know as much about the history of the site. So in a highly competitive market where small advantages may have big consequences the incalculable value of synergies and locational advantages that acrrue through entrenched local knowledge and the cultural capital of a place are invaluable to any venture and there is likely to be no industry in which locality is irrelevant. So can there ever be globalization without increased localization? Or how does globalization really matter? (not saying it doesn't, just saying I dont' quite get how much it "weighs" in this equation).

Posted by Laura Noren at 8:53 AM | Comments (1)

Exhibitionist Slips

I love puns and often go week at my knees when someone manages to carry out some imaginative play with words. Sometimes I discover I have the linguistic qualities myself to get me a little jelly-kneed, for example when I sit down and re-read something I have written earlier. Then I will sit there and applaud myself for being so talented that I pun unconsciously. How wonderful. Seeing things that are not really there, but rather in your subconscious, is something that runs in my family I think. I remember many years ago, while vacationing in France, we drove past a shop where a sign said “Galerie de Chine”, upon which my teenage sister exclaimed: “How clever! They named a Chinese gallery “Charlie de Sheen”!” Perhaps you had to be there, but the point of it all is that these Freudian slips can make things around you so ambiguously rich. Yes, life is good for the likes of my sister and me.

When, at the ending of last class, BKG proposed the idea of a move from “the exhibitionary complex” to “the expositionary complex”, I found myself to be a little linguistically excited, although I admit to having difficulty in understanding exactly the difference between the two. I understood the whole idea of the architecture of the (post)modern museum accentuating “the seeing and being seen”, thus rendering the museum experience far more intense than the term “exhibitionary” suggests. But I am not sure that “expositionary” does the trick? Or does it? Nevertheless, I realize that BKG was probably being less literal when she suggested this displacement or shift. And I guess this “less literal” part was what I did not quite understand.

First off (and on a slightly different note), why is it that Tony Bennett calls it the “exhibitionary” and not the “exhibitory” complex? Is this some smart pun that I am not getting?

All of the readings seem to emphasize the importance of the spatial/geographical and temporal context in the production and consumption of goods, as well as an unwillingness to propose universalizing theories of regions in the global economy. As Harvey suggests, one needs to take into account the various realms that make up a place, be they aesthetic, social, material, technical, etc. before one can say anything about the stuff they produce (162).

I looked up “exhibition and “exposition” on some encyclopedic websites, and what I gathered is that the act of exhibiting is an act of showing, while "exposition" is linked to an act of setting forth meaning and intent. The expositionary complex, in other words, seems richer that the exhibitionary, the latter perhaps lacking some sort of material as well as immaterial contextualization.

This discursive aspect to the “expositionary”, I find quite interesting in relation to our readings, namely Ash and Thrift’s writings on the significance of the geographical node in the age of indirect communication. Perhaps an urban core like Manhattan, by serving as a nexus point for sociability, representation of discourses, and as a test range for innovation, in some way exemplifies an “expositionary complex” in a state of flows.

I wonder if one could also suggest that the technological changes, which Storper talks about, happen in an expositionary framework? Or perhaps and idea of an expositionary framework is more in tune with his understanding of a territorial economy, so that the technological change (which can perhaps be understood as something as simple as the production of a particular good or something as complex as socio-cultural change) happens in the meeting between the expositionary (=the territorial) and the exhibitionary (=the flowing).

Well, all in all I like this idea of the expositionary complex being more discursive, more materially, aesthetically, socially, and technically fixed than the exhibitionary complex. And not merely in relation to museums and other cultural institutions and department stores, but to something bigger, which I cannot really put my finger on. Harvey said something about museums being interesting because they represent concentrations of - for lack of a bette word - “what’s bigger”.

Posted by Sarah Carlson at 12:09 AM | Comments (2)

April 8, 2006

Why Louisville?

With the exception of Harvey’s chapter, I felt like the other authors just didn’t get the relationship between objects and the place in which they were produced. Or maybe they got it, but only partially. The main thrust of these works, especially the Amin and Thift and the Storper, is to carve a place for localized centers of production within the increasingly global economy. While a laudable endeavor, showing how network nodes and centers can emerge in an era of globalization gets us little closer to actually figuring out the tie between places and things. It does little to explaining the question, “Why this particular place?” Why does Louisville produce baseball bats?

The argument of localized productions centers in a global economy goes something like this. Certain industries face an increasingly precarious and fickle market situation. Storper goes into a belabored classification of what types of industries are most susceptible to these fluctuations and their resulting anxieties. To overcome these problems, localized centers emerge that facilitate the rapid, often informal spread of communication, a concentration of expertise that can be drawn upon to adapt, and some sort of other amorphous thing called “industrial atmosphere”, or in other some sort of catch-all category that points to less concrete cultural factors. While certainly the networks component of these nodes are essential, and the understanding that information and innovation often travels through informal channels that may not be able to travel through various information technologies is interesting (and somewhat comforting). Nevertheless, the network analysis begs for a more cultural, empirical analysis of place to add flesh to its skeleton.

Part of the answer to the “why Louisville” question is a path dependency and self-reinforcing mechanisms argument similar to the one found in the Brian Arthur piece. At some point, for perhaps idiosyncratic reasons, an industry takes up shop in a given area. It becomes institutionalized. Subsequent competitors, complementary industries, and experts wishing to work in these industries are then drawn to the place. For some of the relationships between place and product, this type of story may be correct. The connection between place and object may be less inherent or symbiotic and more accidental. Of course, the path dependency argument still needs to account for the dynamic relationship that may emerge between place and object after place is established. But in terms of origins and answering the “why Louisville” question it may suffice.

However, and this is where Harvey’s chapter comes in, there may be a more intimate initial “fit” between place and object that the path dependency story misses. This would be the black box of “industrial atmosphere”. Maybe certain objects can only emerge in certain places, places with characteristics that facilitate the object. Certainly, Louisville Slugger cannot emerge in a place without access to wood and timber. Perhaps Louisville’s location to the Ohio River plays a key role. But still the question then becomes “why Louisville and not, say, St. Louis?” There must be more than just geography. Maybe there’s a cultural fit. Maybe Kentuckians were fervid baseball fans and baseball had a rich history in the city (I don’t think this is the case. Kentucky is known more for the Derby than anything else). Maybe there was some sort of cultural incentive or encouragement of wood working.

The truth is that I have no idea. The point is that if we really wish to understand the relationship between place and object we have to look deeper than mere accidents or networks. Anyone will tell you that places have a “feel,” an intangibility, a character. And this character may very well be inscribed in the objects that it produces.

Posted by Owen Whooley at 2:19 PM | Comments (1)