Economic Geography Spring 2011 Due Wednesday March 30
The goal of this project is to think critically about how you are connected to people throughout the world through global trade flows, transnational corporations, and commodity chains. There are three “experiments” in this project, one of which would be ideal to do if you are going home for Easter. Your findings will be aggregated and discussed in class on the day this project is due.
End Product
Each “experiment” below has a data collection component and an analysis component. Therefore, the end product of this exercise will be a three to five page report with your analysis of each experiment and an Appendix with data from each part of the exercise. Use section headings in the analysis section to separate each experiment. Label your appendices and refer to them as needed in the text of the analysis section.
Experiment 1: Visit Wal-Mart
Wal-Mart is a giant retailer that drives a significant portion of trade between the US and other countries. You probably have a general sense that many if not most of the products that one buys in Wal-Mart and other stores like it come from outside of the United States. For this part of the project you will visit a Wal-Mart store and together as a class we will map out our collective results to discover patterns in where Wal-Mart’s suppliers are located. Your professor has his own guess about what we’ll find when we compile the data. What do you think we’ll find?
Instructions:
- Visit a Wal-Mart (it needs to be a Wal-Mart for this to work—there should be one in your neighborhood!). Please be discrete. Sometimes retailers can be suspicious of people walking around with notebooks writing things down.
- Pick at least six non-food products of three different kinds. Try to include products produced in both developed and developing countries. (For example you could pick two items of clothing, two consumer electronics products, and two pieces of furniture. Alternatively you could examine three different clothing items, one home and garden product, and two automotive products).
- Examine the packaging or labeling and note the following information
1. The
product
2. The
brand name or manufacturer
3. Information
about where the product was manufactured along with any other clues
about the geography of its production.
Data: Include your Data in table form in Appendix A
Analysis: In the main body of your report under the heading “Experiment 1: Wall-Mart” analyze your findings using the following questions as prompts for issues to address: Were most of the products you found produced in the U.S. or other developed countries or were they produced in developing countries? Can you make generalizations about the characteristics of the products produced in different types of places? Were products in the same category produced in the same or different locations or the same or different type of location (developing countries for example)? Were there specific countries that seem to dominate the selection of products you found? What do you think we’ll find when we aggregate all of our results together as a class? What other observations can you make?
Experiment 2: One Day’s Consumption
Pick one or two days (depending upon your level of consumption) and keep a log of everything you buy, consume, or use on that day. (clothes, shampoo, food, videos, cars, gasoline, music, etc.) Try to be comprehensive, but don’t worry too much if you miss a few. Ideally you will do this when you are home for Easter and in maximum holiday consumption mode, but any day will work. You may even want to do Easter itself! Where do those chocolate bunnies come from anyway? Note down the following in a table:
1. The product
2. Where it was manufactured
3. Where it was assembled (if different from where it was manufactured)
Data: Include your data in table form in Appendix B
Analysis: Once you have your list, under the section heading “Experiment 2: One Day’s Consumption” write an analysis of the geography of your consumption. At what scale did you consume on that day? Is your consumption geography local, national, international, or mixed? Are there any locational concentrations in the location of production of the products you consume or is your consumption dispersed? Did the location of production have an impact on your decision to buy the product? What other observations to you have about your consumption?
Experiment 3: Researching a Transnational Product
Finally, pick one product from either of the two experiments above that you think was made by a transnational corporation and using the World Wide Web do your best to find out as much about the organization of the firm that produced it and the production of the product. What transnational and/or local firms produced the product? How is production configured and coordinated within the corporation? (Does it have concentrated or dispersed production? Is coordination centralized or decentralized?) Did production occur within the TNC or was subcontracting involved? How and where the product was produced, by whom, and under what conditions? Where did the raw materials come from, where was it manufactured, who were the laborers, how did it get to the store where you bought it? You may not be able to find out all this information but go as far along the commodity chain and find out as much about the TNC’s organization as you can and find out as much as you can in a reasonable amount of time. Write a short summary of what you found out. Be sure to cite the sources where you found your information.
Data: Include a list of your sources in Appendix C. If you have print outs of sources you want to share, or potentially maps that you have found, these can be included here if you’d like, but it is not mandatory.
Analysis: Include a narrative summary of your research on the product in the main body of your report under a section heading titled “Experiment 3: Researching a Product.”
