Suchergebnisse

This paper argues that a "new" international inequality has been superimposed over the "old" international inequality, and that this superimposition can help to explain the increasing degree of inequality in the world economy today. The old international inequality was based on the colonial division of labor, in which the periphery provided raw materials to core-based industries. The new inequality is based on control over ?ows of information and ?nancial capital by core-based transnational corporations (TNCs). This argument is illustrated using the empirical example of the world coffee market, comparing the responses of market participants to twosevere frosts in Brazil, which significantly disrupted the market. Following the first frost, in 1975 under the "old" international inequality, TNCs responded gradually amidst uncertainty over the frost's impacts, allowing coffee-producing countries to reap windfall profits during an extended period of high prices. TNCs responded immediately to the second frost in 1994, due to their access to information about the severity of the frost and their control over financial instruments used to set the world market price of coffee. This quick response enabled them to capture most of the excess profits resulting from a much shorter period of high prices.

As the popularity of coffee and coffee shops has grown worldwide in recent years, so has another trend--globalization--which has greatly affected growers and distributors. This book analyzes changes in the structure of the coffee commodity chain over the period since World War II. It follows the typical consumer dollar spent on coffee in the developed world and shows how this dollar is divided up among the coffee growers, processors, states, and transnational corporations involved in the chain. By tracing how this division of the coffee dollar has changed over time, it demonstrates that the politically regulated world market that prevailed from the 1960s through the 1980s was fairer for coffee growers than is the current, globalized market controlled by the corporations. Grounds for Agreement explains why fair trade and organic coffees, by themselves, are not adequate to insure fairness for all coffee growers, and argues that a return to a politically regulated market is the best way to solve the current crisis among coffee growers and producers.