Gary Gereffi and Miguel Korzeniewicz, eds. COMMODITY CHAINS AND GLOBAL CAPITALISM. Westport, Connecticut: Praeger, 1994. xiv + 334 pp. ISBN 0- 313-28914-X, $59.95 (hardcover); ISBN 0-275-94573-1, $22.95 (paper). Reviewed by Wilma A. Dunaway and Donald A. Clelland, Department of Sociology, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, Tennessee, USA Despite early recognition of its theoretical centrality (Immanuel Wallerstein, HISTORICAL CAPITALISM, 1983, pp. 13-16), the "commodity chain" has been inadequately conceptualized by world-system researchers. This book aims to correct that deficiency by aggregating papers that were presented at the 1992 annual conference of the Political Economy of the World-System Section of the American Sociological Association. The book is organized around four themes: commodity chains in the capitalist world-economy prior to 1800; the economic restructuring of commodity chains; the geographic organization of commodity chains; and the shaping role of core consumption upon shifts in peripheral production and distribution. Each of the articles is rich in empirical details that reflect lengthy and involved research on the part of the writers; the book, as a whole, [Page 2] provides the basis for comparing trends in several different countries and industries. That dense detail is condensed through the use of 21 tables and 34 commodity chain diagrams and maps. When we used this book in a Fall, 1994 graduate seminar, we quickly became aware that the book's preoccupation with the presentation of that empirical detail is also its primary weakness. Most of the articles focus upon documenting the various nodes and linkages that comprise the production and/or distribution processes involved in several different international industries. The editors declare that COMMODITY CHAINS fleshes out, for the first time, the "global commodity chains approach." Theoretically, this volume never achieves that goal. Indeed, we are disappointed to find so little world-system theory in a volume derived from a PEWS Conference. In addition to seven pages by Hopkins and Wallerstein, the index enumerates only seven brief references to "world- system theory," out of 311 pages of substantive content! For our graduate seminar, we repeatedly were forced to demonstrate how the assigned readings contributed to world-system theory, for most of the writers get caught up in a descriptive style or fail to link their explanations with world-system theory. [page 3] Even more fundamentally, we are troubled by the absence of a key world- systems notion. Hidden, only once (p. 49), Hopkins and Wallerstein introduce what they consider to be the pivotal question that should be addressed in commodity chain analysis: "If one thinks of the entire chain as having a total amount of surplus value that has been appropriated, what is the division of this surplus value among the boxes of the chain?" Surprisingly, this central idea is ignored by the other contributors. None of the articles in this volume directly analyzes the extraction of surplus between the nodes of the chains or the exploitation of labor that occurs in the many processes. Instead, the editors contend that the global commodity chains approach "promotes a nuanced analysis of world-economic spatial inequalities in terms of differential access to markets and resources" (p. 2). Without adequate linkage to broader world-system arguments, that line of reasoning sounds more like a disquieting apparition from the work of Rostow than a conceptual extension of world-system theory. What never appears in this book is the key idea that lies at the heart of understanding the international division of labor: unequal exchange. There is little or no attention to the central world-system thesis that [page 4] exploitation and domination are structured at multiple levels of the commodity chains that are so painstakingly depicted. COMMODITY CHAINS makes a needed beginning; but its proposed framework will not be soundly grounded in world-systems theory until it factors in the messy inequities that really result from the neat boxes and lines in the commodity chain diagrams. We will lose sight of the research agenda for social change that Wallerstein (REVIEW, 1 (1-2), 1977) originally proposed for world-system analysis if we get caught up in an approach that "explains the distribution of wealth ... as an outcome of the relative intensity of competition within different nodes" (p. 4). Mainstream economists embrace exactly that kind of "free-market" language to account for the polarization between the First and Third Worlds. The "ghosts of theories past" linger in the verbiage of too many of these articles; and the commodity networks are described with a mechanical coldness that ignores the human exploitation that propels capitalism. Even though Wallerstein (WORLD INEQUALITY, 1975, pp. 9-29) declared it dead twenty years ago, developmentalism leaps off the pages of this book more often than world-system theory. We do not entirely direct that criticism toward the editors, for the shortcomings of this book derive from a [page 5] fundamental flaw in the annual PEWS Conferences. Most of the papers presented at those meetings are atheoretical descriptions of the international arena; moreover, too many of the participants make no pretense of grounding their research within the world-system framework. If this trend continues, these annual volumes will accumulate a body of literature barely distinguishable as world-system analysis. Because there has been inadequate attention to theoretical debates, these conference proceedings have degenerated into hodgepodges of disjointed viewpoints. That strategy does not build an accumulated body of research and knowledge that we should be labelling world-system analysis. It is too late to correct the flaws in COMMODITY CHAINS. However, we would urge a proactive strategy on the part of future editors of the PEWS collections. If the contributed chapters are atheoretical, they should be revised so that their world-system explanations are clearly drawn -- even when that requires summarizing more briefly the descriptive details. When the contributor offers an antagonistic viewpoint (and we are convinced that the writers are often unaware they are leaning those directions), other alternatives should be considered. First, the editor should contemplate [page 6] omitting such an article from a volume that purports to represent the state of the world-system field. Or, the editor might incorporate such a piece by having the writer specify directly his or her debate with world-system explanations.