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Spaces and Operations of the £1 Commodity Chain Within the Context of Contemporary Capitalism

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Spaces and Operations of the £1 Commodity Chain Within the Context of Contemporary Capitalism The Tactics of the Trinket: Spaces and Operations of the £1 Commodity Chain Within the Context of Contemporary Capitalism Alison Hulme Centre for Cultural Studies Goldsmiths College University of London 2010 Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of PhD in Cultural Studies 1 This thesis is the result of my own investigations. Sources are acknowledged by footnotes and a bibliography. Signed …………………………………. Date …………………………………… 2 Abstract The Tactics of the Trinket presents a material geography of the £1 commodity, following the trinket‟s journey from its beginning as raw material on a Chinese rubbish dump, to factories, international trade hubs, state-of-the-art distribution networks, over-flowing high street stores, and finally the homes of the consumer. This trajectory is used to uncover the places and operations of the typical £1 commodity and the ways in which it utilizes and creates a complicated array of tactics. Each of these tactics is explored in turn; from the embedding of a culture of immediacy, to the intrinsic necessity of disposability, to the creation of agglomerative logic, to the over-powering presence of abundance. Immediacy is explored in relation to the consumer and traditional notions of desire and mystification unpicked. Disposability is questioned in the context of the possibilities of entanglement with objects rather than possession of them. Agglomeration is analysed as a practice both contributing to, but in some ways hors de, capitalism, as well as a phenomenon carving out new types of spaces. Abundance is picked apart as one half of a double- edged relationship with scarcity and a way of understanding current rhetoric on fast capitalism. The trinket is considered as part of both micro situations (for example, the solidarity of manufacturers in China‟s „commodity city‟ of Yiwu) and macro geo-political movements (the impact of China‟s growth on the relationship between China and the EU). Its tactics are considered in the light of current capitalism and some initial principles for a new material manifesto are discussed. 3 Table of Contents Page Title Page 1 Declaration 2 Abstract 3 Table of Contents 4-5 Acknowledgements 6 Introduction 7-24 i) Trajectories ii) Influences iii) Tactics iv) A Brief Note on the Fieldwork and Methodology v) Synopsis Chapter One. A Manifesto of the Mundane: Things in a Levebvrian framework 25-56 i) Lefebvre and Tactics ii) Lefebvre the Uncelebrated Material Culturalist iii) The Everyday, Alienation and Mystification iv) Surrealism, Adventure and Romantic Revolution v) Rhythms, Moments and Situations vi) Commodities, Property and Entanglement Chapter Two. The tactic of Immediacy: Shopping for the Ubiquitous to the Exotic in 57-95 Deptford‟s £1 stores i) „Impatience is a Virtue‟ ii) Bargaining for the Bargain iii) Mystification and the Bouleversement of the Real iv) The Pound Store as Trinketorium v) Frippery and its Discontents vi) Conclusion Chapter Three. The Tactic of Disposability: Poaching in Cracks in Shanghai‟s Spaces 96-121 of Waste i) Finding Cracks to Poach in ii) The Function of Failures iii) Consumptive Thrift: Saving to Spend and Spending to Save iv) Conclusion 4 Chapter Four. The tactic of agglomeration: solidarity, reciprocity and transportability 122-157 in Yiwu i) Yiwu as Historical Space ii) Yiwu as Transportable Model iii) Yiwu as Reciprocal Space iv) Tactical Reciprocity v) Agglomeration as a „Chinese characteristic‟ – counter-hegemonic tactics? vi) Conclusion Chapter Five. The Tactic of Abundance: Felixstowe‟s Fullness of Time in Space and 158-198 the Virtual Anti-Inventory i) „Pleine comme un oeuf‟: The Fullness of Time and Space ii) The double-edged sword of abundance iii) Lefebvre: Master of the Spatial Turn? iv) Moments and Rhythms v) Rhythms versus Speed – defetishizing whizzy capitalism vi) Quantitative (Pl)easing vii) Assessing quantitative versus qualitative growth in post-revolution China viii) Conclusion Conclusion: Tactics and Counter-Tactics. 199-207 i) Immediacy and the Negation of Entanglement ii) Disposability, Bricolage and Thrift iii) Agglomeration and the Ascension of the Image-Space iv) Abundance and the Inertia of the Rhetoric on Speed v) Towards a Manifesto for Entanglement Illustrations 208-213 Appendices i) Photo montage of £1 trinkets 214 Bibliography 215-225 5 Acknowledgements First and foremost my thanks must go to Professor John Hutnyk for his relentless championing of this project. His support and suggestions over the last few years have been invaluable. To friends and family, thank you for your encouragement, belief and interest. Thanks must also go to all those who allowed me in to their daily lives as part of this research, especially those who were nervous or sceptical about doing so – consumers, peddlers, wholesale buyers, dock-workers. Finally, my thanks go to the Arts and Humanities Research Council, without whose financial support I simply could not have undertaken this. 6 Introduction i) Trajectories. The story of the £1 trinket is the story of how the simplest and cheapest of commodities creates and changes cultures, enforces specific ways of surviving, and affects geo-political relations across the globe. Its journey uncovers places ranging from global show-pieces of capitalism to the hidden raw edges of it; players ranging from global entrepreneurs to dump-dwellers. Uncovering these places and people brings to light new ways of operating and surviving through new tactical maneuvers. What defines the £1 trinket? It is frequently ornamental, although sometimes combines this with a functional everyday use in way that tends to play down the original gravity of any attached symbolism (e.g. Jesus‟ face on a clock). Often, it is an inexpensive version of a well-known cultural „treasure‟ and this usually requires it to be a miniaturization of that treasure (e.g. the £1 Buddhas). If not an attempt to exactly recreate famous effigies, it tends to pick up on well- established symbolism, traditions and legends (e.g. pirates, „tribal‟ Africans, Rastafarians), often turning these into caricatures. Most crucially, it is united with its sibling „one pound items‟ and its myth lies in the cultural potency of its price. It is part of a system of objects that is at one and the same time democratic and totalitarian - it can be anything on the planet as long as it can retail for £1. Yet, within this system, there are of course distinctions between £1 commodities, which cause some to be considered better purchases than others. Georg Simmel describes these differences within a sameness, as levelling and uniformity due to the environment of the same on one hand, and the accentuation of the individual as an independent whole on the other (1991: 122). As Ben Highmore points out, Simmel uses this description to describe not only commodities, but also the modern individual in society (2002: 41). It is the „how‟ of the £1 commodity‟s genus, its ability to exist for the necessary price, is what is at stake here, and this involves a journey crucial to understanding new modes of capitalist relations. Briefly, and by way of grounding what is to come, this journey of the £1 commodity is as follows. It begins, and indeed often ends, in places of waste. Places such as the peddlers quarters within large Chinese cities, or the so-called „dump towns‟ which have emerged along the main manufacturing areas of the Pearl and Yangtze River deltas. It is here that private individuals or small recycling „factories‟ collect and sort through mountains of rubbish, 7 separating according to material and classifying according to value, in preparation for sale to manufacturers. This waste is melted down and formed into small pellets, which in their turn, and in a moment conjured well by Roland Barthes, are melted and molded to form the basis of the commodity: „..plastic… is in essence the stuff of alchemy. ..the magical operation par excellence: the transmutation of matter. An ideally-shaped machine, tubulated and oblong… effortlessly draws…. At one end, raw telluric matter, at the other, the finished, human object; and between these two extremes, nothing…‟ (1973[1957]:97) From here, the journey takes us into the heart of the Yangtze River delta, to Yiwu – a „commodities city‟ and the place with the highest concentration of the world‟s small commodities on the planet. Our trinket is displayed alongside others in a two metre square stall, situated on an aisle of identical stalls on the second floor of an immense wholesale market. Sometimes its virtual counterpart is simultaneously being displayed on alibaba.com - a business- to-business website which directly connects wholesale buyers to Chinese manufacturers and which is the highly successful brain-child of celebrity businessman Jack Ma. These techniques of display lead to the purchase of the £1 trinket and the long journey from Yiwu to the port of Felixstowe, UK, begins. It will involve the implementation of highly sophisticated software to plan packing, loading, unloading and storing, as well as the risks (still) associated with container shipping. Eventually, the trinket will arrive in a pound store and quickly be purchased by a consumer. Its life once consumed may be long, but most probably will not be. It will find itself temporarily enjoyed before being jettisoned. It may even find itself on a ship full of waste heading back to China to begin its process all over again. Along its journey the £1 commodity has typically left the factory in China at the price of 22p, travelled 'free-on-board' a shipping container (with shipping, customs duty, insurance, and unloading paid for by the buyer), so has a gained a 'cost landed' price in the UK of around 31.5p. The wholesaler who bought it from the factory has sold it to a retailer for 45p, making a profit of around 15p per unit.
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