Sale Of Commodities Research Articles

World Turned Upside Down? Rise of the global South and the contemporary global financial turbulence

By focusing on the consequences of the dismantling of regulations over the financial sector, the current debate on the causes of the global economic meltdown obscures the cyclical occurrence of speculation in capitalism, as the accumulation of more capital than can be profitably invested in the production and sale of commodities results in financial expansion. Historically financial expansion has signalled the end of one world-scale system of accumulation and the transition to a new system as capital flows from declining powers to rising powers. However, the contemporary period is distinguished by capital flows from rising powers to declining ones. An analysis of the current crisis suggests a reversal of this anomaly as it reduces the ability of China and other East Asian states to support the US dollar. At the same time ‘emerging market economies’ have begun to forge new relationships that could provide the framework for a new system of partnership between states and enterprises to reconstruct a new cycle of accumulation if two hurdles are overcome: 1) absorption of labour that is being displaced because of the high organic composition of capital and 2) dampening of the growing inequalities in income which has not only restricted the growth of markets but is also fuelling increasing social conflict.

Factor markets in Nieboer conditions: pre-colonial West Africa, c.1500–c.1900

ABSTRACTThis article reviews the history of factor markets in pre-colonial West Africa, both during and after the Atlantic slave trade. The forms and volume of these markets strongly reflected the natural and technological environment, and a horizontally and vertically uneven distribution of coercive and purchasing power. The general abundance of land and absence of economies of scale in production militated against contracting for land and free labour. Hence the most widespread and large-scale factor market was in slaves. Capital and credit were transacted mostly within networks of trust and/or on the security of human pawns. With considerable social costs, variously reinforced and restricted by states, pawning and (especially) the intra-West-African slave trade channelled labour into the production of commodities for sale, contributing to the nineteenth-century growth of certain coastal and interior economies. It was only in the latter era that land rights began to be commercialized. This was not a response to a general shift in factor ratios, but rather to demand for specific kinds of land in specific places, stimulated by the growth of export markets for agricultural commodities.

Biofuels and indirect land use change effects: the debate continues

AbstractWhile debate on biofuels and bioenergy generally has sparked controversy over claimed greenhouse gas emissions benefits available with a switch to biomass, these claims have generally not taken into account indirect land use changes. Carbon emissions from land that is newly planted with biocrops, after land use changes such as deforestation, are certainly real – but efforts to measure them have been presented subject to severe qualifi cations. No such qualifications accompanied the paper by Searchinger et al. published in Science in February 2008, where the claim was made that a spike of ethanol consumption in the USA up to the year 2016 would divert corn grown in the USA and lead to new plantings of grain crops around the world to make up the shortfall, resulting in land use changes covering 10.8 million hectares and leading to the release of 3.8 billion tons of greenhouse gas emissions in terms of CO2 equivalent. These emissions, the paper argued, would more than offset any savings in emissions by growing biofuels in the first place; in fact they would create a ‘carbon debt’ that would take 160 years to repay. Such criticism would be devastating, if it were valid. The aim of this perspective is to probe the assumptions and models used in the Searchinger et al. paper, to evaluate their validity and plausibility, and contrast them with other approaches taken or available to be taken. It is argued that indirect land use change effects are too diffuse and subject to too many arbitrary assumptions to be useful for rule‐making, and that the use of direct and controllable measures, such as building statements of origin of biofuels into the contracts that regulate the sale of such commodities, would secure better results. © 2009 Society of Chemical Industry and John Wiley & Sons, Ltd

Jovens produzindo identidades sexuais

Nesse artigo analisamos a formação das identidades sexuais de jovens, a partir de uma série de exemplos retirados de trabalhos de campo, no decorrer de vários anos e em diferentes projetos de pesquisa. Argumentamos que os jovens se produzem como atores generificados e sexualizados em e por meio de certas relações centrais. Seus contextos mais imediatos são suas próprias culturas sexuais, formadas em relação a espaços institucionais como escolas, cultura popular comercial e relações domésticas e familiares. Sugerimos que as identidades são poderosamente formadas por meio do que Connell chama de "práticas reflexivas do corpo" - ou seja, o circuito de efeitos entre experiências corporais, vida emocional e explicações culturais. É importante observar, no entanto, que essas experiências e entendimentos são desenvolvidos no contexto de relações sociais de poder. As diferenças sexuais, por exemplo, são sempre acompanhadas e mutuamente moldadas por outras "diferenças que fazem diferença" na vida cotidiana das pessoas, tais como raça, gênero ou corporificação. Interações imediatas, face a face, estão sempre imbuídas de formações culturais mais amplas em torno do sexual, que são reproduzidas e às vezes modificadas em práticas como representação na mídia, processos políticos e legais, venda e consumo de bens, educação e conhecimentos científicos, profissionais e especializados. Sugerimos que tais entendimentos têm implicações consideráveis para práticas profissionais, pois indicam que os praticantes - por exemplo de profissões de cuidado, ensino ou assistência médica - estão direta e ativamente envolvidos na construção da identidade de seus jovens clientes, alunos ou pacientes, ao mesmo tempo em que constroem suas próprias identidades profissionais. Finalizamos argumentando que a prática ética com jovens em relação às suas identidades sexuais emergentes somente é alcançável quando os profissionais são autorreflexivos no que diz respeito às limitações de seus próprios horizontes e cientes de sua parcialidade.

The social lives of handmade things: configuring value in post‐apartheid South Africa

Taking Arjun Appadurai’s suggestive argument about the ‘social lives’ of things as its starting point, this paper traces the pathways of two commodities for sale in South Africa: a pottery bowl and a resin spoon. Both these objects acquire their value in part from the quality of being handmade. The aim of this paper is not to demystify the claim to value made by either the pottery bowl or the resin spoon, nor to judge one or the other as the more ‘authentic’ expression of a resistance to the contemporary reifications of the everyday. Instead, it explores a family resemblance between these two objects and traces the way in which, within contemporary global ‘regimes of value’, what is handmade acquires value. If, as Jean and John Comaroff suggest, neo‐liberalism ideologically constructs a world of increasing abstraction, the trajectories of these two objects reveal how both locality and work return in an attenuated form as attributes of commodities.

Becoming Rafinesque: Market Society and Academic Reputation in the Early American Republic

This article focuses on how knowledge came to be valued in conflicting ways in the American Republic during the 1820s and 1830s – one based on a market model that considered knowledge to be a commodity for sale, and another that produced cultural value through social connections created in new academic institutions. Constantine Rafinesque, who taught at Transylvania University in Kentucky, and his research in the natural sciences serve as an example of the first sort of scholarship. His life also illustrates how a market society could lead to dandies, like Rafinesque himself, even in academia, and how that threatened both new middle class social proprieties and a system of clubby social relations that had come to dominate America’s colleges and universities in the early nineteenth century.

Organisation corporative et production d'œuvres d'art à Bruges à la fin du Moyen Âge et au début des Temps modernes

P. STABEL, Guild organisation and artistic production in Bruges at the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Early Modern Period The production of works of art in late medieval cities was characterized by important shifts. Despite the so-called rigidity of guild regulation, Bruges entrepreneurs were often capable of developing new products and organise their markets in fl exible ways. Artisan’s careers can be explained in this logic of fl exibility and adaptation. Geographic and social mobility and the relative open character of guilds do not exclude in any way patterns of social exclusion and polarisation within the structures of the guild of Saint Luke. Painters and other artisans involved in the production and sale of luxury commodities do not differ that much from those employed in the textile or service industries. Regulation was relatively fl exible and open and aimed a defi ning rules of conduct on matters of social hierarchy, product quality and modes of payment, rather than on contracts of apprenticeship, relations between entrepreneurs and their employees, between masters and their families, between artisans and merchant or between retailers and their customers, which all were defined by individual negotiation, for which the guild provided a forum.

Commentary: issues in ‘economic transformation’

‘Economic transformation’ implies a desire to effect significant change in the form or character of the economy. I have lived through several economic transformations, and policies designed to transform the economy, in New Zealand. The most significant transformation was probably the large-scale transfer of manpower and other resources after 1939 from peacetime production to military purposes and the provision of food for armed forces in Europe, the Middle East and the Pacific, and then the return to a very regulated, insulated and corporatised economy, highly dependent on resuming the sale of pastoral commodities to what remained for some years a reasonably assured and profitable market in the United Kingdom. This facilitated the pursuit of policies giving priority to full employment, import substitution, the maintenance of ‘fair shares’ among the dominant interest groups and the improvement of health, education and welfare.

Understanding the genetics of regulation of aflatoxin production and Aspergillus flavus development

Aflatoxins are polyketide-derived, toxic, and carcinogenic secondary metabolites produced primarily by two fungal species, Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus, on crops such as corn, peanuts, cottonseed, and treenuts. Regulatory guidelines issued by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) prevent sale of commodities if contamination by these toxins exceeds certain levels. The biosynthesis of these toxins has been extensively studied. About 15 stable precursors have been identified. The genes involved in encoding the proteins required for the oxidative and regulatory steps in the biosynthesis are clustered in a 70 kb portion of chromosome 3 in the A. flavus genome. With the characterization of the gene cluster, new insights into the cellular processes that govern the genes involved in aflatoxin biosynthesis have been revealed, but the signaling processes that turn on aflatoxin biosynthesis during fungal contamination of crops are still not well understood. New molecular technologies, such as gene microarray analyses, quantitative polymerase chain reaction (PCR), and chromatin immunoprecipitation are being used to understand how physiological stress, environmental and soil conditions, receptivity of the plant, and fungal virulence lead to episodic outbreaks of aflatoxin contamination in certain commercially important crops. With this fundamental understanding, we will be better able to design improved non-aflatoxigenic biocompetitive Aspergillus strains and develop inhibitors of aflatoxin production (native to affected crops or otherwise) amenable to agricultural application for enhancing host-resistance against fungal invasion or toxin production. Comparisons of aflatoxin-producing species with other fungal species that retain some of the genes required for aflatoxin formation is expected to provide insight into the evolution of the aflatoxin gene cluster, and its role in fungal physiology. Therefore, information on how and why the fungus makes the toxin will be valuable for developing an effective and lasting strategy for control of aflatoxin contamination.

Uniform Private Law Conventions and the Law of Treaties

The international unification of private law avails itself of several types of legal instruments. In some areas we find uniform commercial terms drafted by private institutions like the International Chamber of Commerce; examples are the International Commercial Terms or Incoterms relating to sales of goods and commodities or the Uniform Customs and Practices for Letters of Credit. In more recent years model laws such as the Uncitral Model Law on International Commercial Arbitration have been submitted to the global business community. Yet another type of unification instrument is the catalogue of Principles for International Commercial Contracts drafted by the Unidroit Institute for the International Unification of Private Law. But the international treaty is by far the most important vehicle for the unification of private and commercial law. At first sight this observation is surprising since treaties essentially provide for rights and obligations between states and other subjects of international law while private law deals with legal relations between individuals and undertakings. It may be questioned whether a treaty is an appropriate instrument for this purpose. The unbiased observer may get the impression that the international community has used a wrong tool for more than a century.

Professional Knowledge Formation in the Australian Educational Market Place: Changing the Perspective

This article, in its consideration of knowledge formation in the market place, will focus primarily on the notion of the Agora, but will also consider the implications for the marketing of schooling itself. It will explore the field of practice as the site for the development of educational and educative knowledge that is crafted by those who well understand the purpose to which it is to be put. It positions the discussion in the context of current Australian practice, in particular in New South Wales, by attending to two locations where such knowledge has been generated: The Coalition of Knowledge Building Schools and the Priority Action Schools Program. In its conclusion it cautions against the showy market place of ideas where the gaudy and unwanted are the commodities for sale.

The Expansion of a Pineapple Plantation in Ghana

Agriculture plays a greater role in the affairs of any state or economy. It is one of the key economic sectors of a nation of which contributions made to a nation's well-being are of great importance. Agriculture, as it is well known, is basically of utmost importance to developing nations wherein the masses or the bulk of the population, particularly those in the rural areas, make ends meet by either engaging in subsistence or commercial agricultural activities. The Ghanaian government adoption of a private sector export-led growth strategy that encompasses the development and promotion of non-traditional export commodities, envisaged a surge in production, marketing and sale of many of the nation's non-traditional produce, notably pineapples, mangoes, bananas, to name but a few. This increase in production, marketing and sale of non-traditional commodities is contributing a large share to revenues from agriculture and making the sector to account for almost half of the country's gross domestic product and export earnings. In addition, it partly helps solve the unemployment problem that was once an endemic phenomenon in rural areas. This study examines the feasibility of the expansion drive by the Princess Cold Stores Limited of its pineapple plantation to include the possibility of exporting a substantial percentage of the produce to the European market. An assessment on the project viability is taken from the perspectives of different stakeholders and the results show that the incremental benefits to derive from undertaking the project exceeds its related incremental costs. This excess benefit, therefore, translates the project feasibility to its respective stakeholders and as such was found viable and also having the capacity to contribute immensely to the financial net cash flow and economic benefit of the project and to the economy at large.

Scratching Out Authorship: Representations of the Electronic Music DJ at the Turn of the 21st Century

This article argues that the DJ is represented by the electronic music industry as the creative author of his or her music. I examine commercial discourse aimed at the consumer of DJ-mixed music, such as rave flyers and electronic music CDs, as well as discourse aimed at the DJ-consumer, such as trade magazines and gear catalogues. In all of this discourse, the DJ is presented as the culmination of creative musical technology, a musical author-god who carries on a long tradition of patriarchal authorship. In light of these observations, I argue that the DJ's authorship comes not from what he or she does but how those practices get represented in a capitalist system. Further, I argue that the industry instilled the DJ with authorship to fill a vacuum left by the increasing anonymity of dance music producers. The DJ becomes a tool for generating social capital within a music scene, and this social capital is turned into monetary capital via the sale of DJ-related commodities.

Contracts, Markets, and Prices: Organizing the Production and Use of Agricultural Commodities

Production and marketing contracts govern 36 percent of the value of U.S. agricultural production, up from 12 percent in 1969. Contracts are now the primary method of handling sales of many livestock commodities, including milk, hogs, and broilers, and of major crops such as sugar beets, fruit, and processing tomatoes. Use of contracts is closely related to farm size; farms with $1 million or more in sales have nearly half their production under contract. For producers, contracting can reduce income risks of price and production variability, ensure market access, and provide higher returns for differentiated farm products. For processors and other buyers, vertical coordination through contracting is a way to ensure the flow of products and to obtain differentiated products, ensure traceability for health concerns, and guarantee certain methods of production. The traditional spot market-though it still governs nearly 60 percent of the value of agricultural production has difficulty providing accurate price signals for products geared to new consumer demands (such as produce raised and certified as organic or identity-preserved crops modified for special attributes). We are likely to see a continuing shift to more explicit forms of vertical coordination, through contracts and processor ownership, as a means to ensure more consistent product quantity and quality.

The Economics of Authorship: Online Paper Mills, Student Writers, and First-Year Composition

Using sample student analyses of online paper mill Web sites, student survey responses, and existing scholarship on plagiarism, authorship, and intellectual property, this article examines how the consumerist rhetoric of the online paper mills construes academic writing as a commodity for sale, and why such rhetoric appeals to students in first-year composition, whose cultural disconnect from the academic system of authorship increasingly leads them to patronize these sites.

A review of women, poverty and informal trade issues in East and Southern Africa

The paper conducts a review of various issues of women's poverty and participation in informal sector trade in Eastern and Southern Africa. Poverty is endemic in the region, where an estimated half of the population lives on less than one dollar per day. This situation is more pronounced for women and has added significance in the subregion where nearly half of the households are headed by women. Women's deprivation is manifold and ranges across the economic, social and political arenas.Women are heavily involved in the informal sector and cross‐border trade. These activities are generally low‐paying, tedious and erratic. They also tend to be survivalist in nature and unsophisticated, involving the sale of cheap perishable commodities. These have now expanded to involve trade in biological and forest resources in a region that is being devastated by HIV‐AIDS.

Contracts, Markets, and Prices: Organizing the Production and Use of Agricultural Commodities

Production and marketing contracts govern 36 percent of the value of U.S. agricultural production, up from 12 percent in 1969. Contracts are now the primary method of handling sales of many livestock commodities, including milk, hogs, and broilers, and of major crops such as sugar beets, fruit, and processing tomatoes. Use of contracts is closely related to farm size; farms with $1 million or more in sales have nearly half their production under contract. For producers, contracting can reduce income risks of price and production variability, ensure market access, and provide higher returns for differentiated farm products. For processors and other buyers, vertical coordination through contracting is a way to ensure the flow of products and to obtain differentiated products, ensure traceability for health concerns, and guarantee certain methods of production. The traditional spot market-though it still governs nearly 60 percent of the value of agricultural production- has difficulty providing accurate price signals for products geared to new consumer demands (such as produce raised and certified as organic or identity-preserved crops modified for special attributes). We are likely to see a continuing shift to more explicit forms of vertical coordination, through contracts and processor ownership, as a means to ensure more consistent product quantity and quality.

Back to the Future? Reflections on past reforms and future prospects for health services in New Zealand

In 1991 the New Zealand health system began to experience what has been termed the `turbulent decade'. Without health sector consultation or public mandate, an era of imposed market oriented reforms began. These changed the overall culture of health care delivery and the expectations of New Zealanders regarding the role of the state in the provision of welfare. In retrospect the ideologically driven imposition of the market-oriented reforms was not an exercise of bold leadership but one of political arrogance and rejection of established community values. Within the community, the neoliberal experiment heightened income and health inequalities, created a loss of social cohesion and generally provoked feelings of powerlessness. In the health sector, the reforms polarised clinical and commercial cultures and changed the geography of health care delivery. This occurred not only because place was de-emphasised, but also because decentralisation of purchasing created four health systems with widely divergent contracting arrangements and standards of care. The lessons of the health reforms have been painful, and must not be lost. A fundamental lesson is that market approaches to the delivery of health care have major limitations and that the ultimate goal of a health system should be the equitable, effective and efficient provision of care, not the profitable sale of commodities. Since 1997 there has been a retreat from the market, although it is not clear whether recent policy developments represent a new or distinctive `third way' or a pragmatic `pick and mix', combining the best from the market and the managerialism first introduced by Labour in the 1980s. Quite clearly, the experiment with the market was not sustainable. Whether this will also be true of the more recent and pragmatic `pick and mix' approach of the `third way' to health care reform is uncertain.

Metropolitan Proximity and U.S. Agricultural Productivity, 1978–1997*

Abstract Metropolitan encroachment into surrounding countrysides has had noticeable consequences on American agriculture. This research examines gross farm sales in five categories of crops and five categories of livestock and poultry by county proximity to metropolitan areas. A seven‐category classification of counties was derived from the 1983 and 1993 Economic Research Service/Beale rural‐urban codes and used in the analysis. Our findings showed a significant metropolitan influence on agricultural sales of crop and livestock commodities, particularly those commodities that can be intensively produced on few numbers of acres. Some of this influence is attributed to the rapid growth of the urban areas during the past quarter century. Our results challenge widely‐held traditional perceptions about the spatial organization of agricultural production in the United States.

Bid Functions in Auctions and Fair Division Games: Experimental Evidence

Abstract In auctions a seller offers a commodity for sale and collects the revenue. In fair division games the object is collectively owned by the group of bidders who equally share the revenue. We run an experiment in which the participants face four types of allocation games (auctions and fair division game under two price rules, first- versus second-price rule). We collect entire bid functions rather than bids for single values and investigate price and efficiency of the different trading institutions. We find that the first-price auction is more efficient than the second-price auction, whereas economic rationality assuming heterogeneous bidders suggests the opposite. Furthermore, we study the structure of individual bid functions.