Commodity Chain of the iPod

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What does the iPod represent? A close relationship with Celine Dion and Barry White? Or maybe even with Apple Inc.? Take a peek inside and discover a whole world of economic geographical processes hiding behind your iTunes. ?Laid out in silicon is a road map for the world economy: globalized, outsourced, offshored, interconnected and complex (Leonard).? When we consume a commodity we often do not realize that not only are we engaging in a relationship with that particular commodity, but inadvertently, we become entrenched in a series of social, economic, and geographical relationships around the globe. These relationships can be traced backwards from the point of consumption to a marketing agency, a supplier, a producer, an exporter, and location of the raw materials which compose the product. This is known as the commodity chain. The iPod commodity chain is no exception to this. From an initial idea in the Silicon Valley, to mining for raw materials such as Bauxite and Carbon in Guinea and the Republic of Congo, processing plants in Kazakhstand, engineers in India, global high-tech headquarters on nearly every continent, manufacturers in China, marketing firms in the USA, and eventually to the consumer. In fact, it exemplifies such a grand series of relationships that for the purposes of this paper I will focus on only a small portion of this commodity chain?that which mainly involves the interactions of a third party. Though the singular term ?third party? is slightly misleading. In the case of the iPod, the third party actually consists of many ?parties,? in fact, the myriad of human and geographical interactions which take place between these parties is so extensive that they essentially create an economy within themselve... ... middle of paper ... ... transacted in the marketplace?and of course by Apple in California and a factory in China. But that is all it is. Apparently. The ultimate result of a commodity chain is a relationship between the commodity and the consumer. Due to a lack of readily available information and a fetishism which ?attaches itself to the products of labour (Marx),? people are often unaware of the social, economic, geographic, and cultural processes which are involved in the production of a good. Each and every relationship which is formed, and every interaction which takes place within the commodity chain exemplifies these processes, and becomes a part of the commodity. An examination and understanding of the commodity chain can help us de-fetishise commodities and realize them for what they truly are?social and material crystallizations (Marx) of economic geography and capitalism.

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