This paper assesses the achievements and limitations of commodity chain research as it has evolved over the last decade. The primary objectives are two-fold. First, I highlight an important but generally unacknowledged break between the original world-systemsinspired tradition of commodity chain research and two subsequent chain approaches, the global commodity chain (GCC) and global value chain (GVC) frameworks. Second, I argue that contra the macro and holistic perspective of the world-systems approach, much of the recent chains literature, and particularly the more economistic GVC variant, is increasingly oriented in its analytical approach towards the meso level of sectoral logics and the micro level objective of industrial upgrading. I conclude that closer attention to the larger institutional and structural environments in which commodity chains are embedded is needed in order to more fully inform our understanding of the uneven social and developmental dynamics of contemporary capitalism at the global-local nexus.

Juvenile polyposis (JP; OMIM 174900) is an autosomal dominant gastrointestinal hamartomatous polyposis syndrome in which patients are at risk for developing gastrointestinal cancers. Previous studies have demonstrated a locus for JP mapping to 18q21.1 (ref. 3) and germline mutations in the homolog of the gene for mothers against decapentaplegic, Drosophila, (MADH4, also known as SMAD4) in several JP families. However, mutations in MADH4 are only present in a subset of JP cases, and although mutations in the gene for phosphatase and tensin homolog (PTEN) have been described in a few families, undefined genetic heterogeneity remains. Using a genome-wide screen in four JP kindreds without germline mutations in MADH4 or PTEN, we identified linkage with markers from chromosome 10q22-23 (maximum lod score of 4.74, straight theta=0.00). We found no recombinants using markers developed from the vicinity of the gene for bone morphogenetic protein receptor 1A (BMPR1A), a serine-threonine kinase type I receptor involved in bone morphogenetic protein (BMP) signaling. Genomic sequencing of BMPR1A in each of these JP kindreds disclosed germline nonsense mutations in all affected kindred members but not in normal control individuals. These findings indicate involvement of an additional gene in the transforming growth factor-beta (TGF-beta) superfamily in the genesis of JP, and document an unanticipated function for BMP in colonic epithelial growth control.

No abstract

No abstract

Commodity chains and the uneven geographies of global capitalism: a disarticulations perspective Over the course of the last decade, the commodity chain construct has informed many studies of international trade and production networks in sociology, geography, history, and, more recently, anthropology. The interdisciplinary appeal of the chain heuristic lies in its ability to ground abstract-prone analysis of economic globalization in the everyday practices of firms, workers, households, states, and consumers. The commodity chain concept was developed by Terence Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein in the late 1970s to differentiate their understanding of capitalism's territorial scope from methodologically nationalist approaches to economic change. Instead of understanding economic development as a sequential process whereby national markets evolve in the direction of expanded foreign trade, the authors suggested`[ starting] with a radically different presumption. Let us conceive of something we shall call, for want of a better conventional term,`commodity chains.' What we mean by such chains is the following: take an ultimate consumable item and trace back the set of inputs that culminated in this item, including prior transformations, the raw materials, the transportation mechanisms, the labor input into each of the material processes, the food inputs into the labor. This linked set of processes we call a commodity chain. If the ultimate consumable were, say, clothing, the chain would include the manufacture of the cloth, the yarn, etc, the cultivation of the cotton, as well as the reproduction of the labor forces involved in these productive activities'' (1977, page 128). For Hopkins and Wallerstein a final commodity is the outcome of linked processes connecting actors and activities across space; by studying the processes constituting a particular commodity chain, it is possible to get analytical purchase on the complex and concrete determinations of the global economy.World-systems theorists mobilized the chain construct to reveal the emergence of an international division of labor incorporating core and peripheral countries alike into a global capitalist economy. Later iterations, including Gereffi's global commodity chains (GCC) framework (Gereffi and Korzeniewicz, 1994) and the global value chains (GVC) approach (Gereffi et al, 2005;Gibbon and Ponte, 2005), have shifted from the long-range, macrohistorical perspective of world-systems theory to a more industry-centred and firm-centered model of organizational analysis. (1) In reaction to this recent turn, several scholars sympathetic to the overall thrust of the commodity chain project have called for the need to`embed',`territorialize', or spatialize' studies of transnational commodity production (Bair, 2005;Dussel Peters, 2008). As evident from these disparate terms, these critiques do not represent a coherent theoretical agenda; rather they indicate a shared skepticism about the influence of microsocial network analysis and transaction cost economics on...