The Coffee Network Lecture JS Critical Review February 2015 [Compatibiliteitsmodus]

The coffee network

The coffee networkOn the relationship between (local and global) social, economic and

spatial structures

Joris Scheers

Research objectiveHow do social, economic and political processes of production, trade and consumption of a global good

interrelate with

spatial structuresglobally as well as locally

Objective of this session Complexity and how to decompose it Elaboration of a conceptual framework,

that is taking complexity into account Framework containing tools, suitable for

spatial analysis Some research results

ACTOR

SPACE

PLACEor GENIUS

LOCI

TIME

Conceptual framework

Just a tool for understanding complex (spatial) realities

Conceptual framework based on regulation theory

Analysis of capitalist market systems (1970s)

Boyer, Lipietz, Aglietta: regulating mechanisms overcome tensions and crises

Regulation theory

Accumulation regime(s) searching new possibilities within production-reproduction (offer-demand) proces (capital-labour)

Regulation mode: code of conduct with the objective to obtain stability, containing routines, norms, agreements,

Regulation modes=

a set of codes and norms which regulates both the continuation and the transformation assuring the reproduction and the social relationships, despite inherent conflict

Accumulation regime and regulation modes resulting in a specific geographically situated

DEVELOPMENT MODE = temporarily, spatial-historically located

Adapted Regulation theory

- Too structuralist approach - Individual actor has its rights (Weber)- Continuous interaction between (set of)

individual actions and (spatial and social) structures

Bourdieu

Theory of social practice:Field as a structured space of positions and their interrelations determined by the distribution of different kinds of resources

- Habitus A set of structures and habitual ways of understanding which are characteristic and constitutive of a society or group

Individual actor

Society Space

Importance of material nd non-material aspects

Individual as a day-to-day actor

Space and society presume each other due to societal and spatial structuration processes

Social structuration processes

The process of generating structures. Practices (individual and institutional)

always come first. Structures and individual actions act in a

dialectical relationship to each other They both need and presuppose each other. Structures have a generative force, they

both facilitate and limit possible actions

Spatial structuration processes

Giddens. The degree and form of materialization becomes important

Institutions ~ hardened spatial structures (rail, waterways, urban structures, )

Not always visible or readable as such: digital flows of money and knowledge, goods and passengers

Importance of nodes !

Scale Sensitivity !What activity, decision,

infrastructure touches which scale? Scale as a social construction

19th century concept of the nation state vs Europe Relativating scale (Jessop 1999)

Individual actor

Society Space

Conceptual frameworkSociety

individual actions

structures

Space

Three key dimensions

Material ( the tangible ) Ideas, feelings, ( the non tangible ) Time

TIME Is essentially a Social Category

Unifying individuals in space and place. Is diverse, heterogenic and collective.

Times (cfr railways, greenwich, time-zones)BRAUDEL

- Dure (daily practices, now, moment)- Dasein (H- Geworfenheit, accident, destiny)

The freedom to respond to (a) condition(s)- Longue Dure (structures)

S

Human activities are located = moment of generation

Material/fysicsIdea/non-material

society

indiv. actions

structures

space

Time

Research objective Coffee NetworkUnderstand spatial phenomena

Rapid urbanisation Rural decline (massive migration)

Central question: What kind of planning or development policy needed?

Spatial planning and urban design too often merely symptom control, too much focused on genius loci

Understand whats behind!

Central coast of Ecuador

The coffee networkOn the relationship between (local and global)

social, economic and spatial structures

Understand spatial processes central coast area of Ecuador

More than genius loci

What kind of research method ?

Global Commodity Chain Analysis

Sum of organised (production-, commercialization-, service-, profit-,) networks grouped around different stages of the treatment of a specific good, linking families, companies and the state within a world economy (Gereffi and Korzeniewics, 1994).

The GCCA makes it possible to work on different economic, territorial and time scales at once.

Advantages of this tool of analysis:- cross cutting of traditional geographical

delimitations of a research field, - the possibility to detect accompanying

changes within differentiated stages of treatment

- specific attention to development aspects.

linking

Empirical research on rural-urban patterns in a coffee producing area as a first research. Based on original field research data, the interaction between local coffee production and trade and the changing spatial relationsbetween rural and urban areas is studied.

Analysis of each participating actor in the coffee producing/comercialization process in the rural context of South-Manab : the local producer, the transport operator, the intermediate merchant, the exporter and the industrial processor.

A specific time-space organisation has become clear within an accumulation regime forming part of a broader regulation and development mode, surpassing traditionally used rural-urban dichotomies.

A second analysis tries to examine the global context: spatial consequences of the actual and historical driving economic and political forces of the coffee business.

1st part of the coffee chain

The coffee production and commercialization in the central coastal area of Ecuador has, embedded in a capitalist (re-) production system, generated an historically specific social and spatial organization (Scheers, 2002). Changing rural-urban relations

Accumulation opportunities

Research based on 5 parameters: 1. dominance of the labour (85-99 %) vs. capital input, 2. (poor) technological context, 3. productivity and production volumes, 4. access to capital/credit and 5. locational advantages within the national market structure. (export/end-of-pipe)

Administrative and legal barriers and high rates prohibit access to capital.

Due to age, lack of property titles and scale, fixed capital in terms of land and coffee plants has little value.

Highly labour intensive coffee production process is filled up by traditional local kinship systems

Regulation matters (price setting?)Only in times of stable world market prices and national export quota (e.g. 1981-1985), the exporters position was somewhat controlled. Existing commercial structures remain always remained unaltered, though. Even the 1970s petroleum boom was not taken as an opportunity by the national coffee sector (contradictory to e.g. Venezuela) to modernize.

As a consequence, economic opportunities were spatially located in the two most important urban areas (Guayaquil and Quito), attracting labour force from entre alli coffee producing areas.

The dominant pyramidal commercial structure and the absence of effective governmental control and regulation measures, attributes accumulation opportunities to intermediate merchants and exporters. (Scheers, 2002).

The massive migration of coffee producing families tot the urban area of Guayaquil is the only opportunity for capital owners to compensate limitations in growth potential within the existing accumulation regimes. As a consequence, the rural area and the coffee production structure reach even lower production and quality levels whereas the urban area has to cope with a high labour force surplus and strong spatial pressures.

The impact of the sum of all the individual (migration-) decisions has to be placed within the right space/time context. The settlement of coffee migrants in vast urban invasion areas and the related creation of new urban (re-)production structures generate in less than two generations entire new spatial and social structures.

Individual decisions within the existing accumulation and regulation context become the effective executers of a spatial and social process.Translated to the coastal area of Ecuador: shift from rural to urban (re-)production structures, generating new accumulation regimes. Existing rural ones are, given urban influences, adapted to the new spatial context.

Following our research data, accumulation opportunities remain low to absent in both situations. So in terms of accumulation regimes (and subsequently related regulation mechanisms) we notice no structural changes but only a spatial shift along the adaptation process. Adapted accumulation regimes and regulation modes will generate in their turn, also due to their specific spatial location, new social structures.

2nd part of the coffee chain

The international producing, commercialization and consumption activities: organisation, regulation, accumulation, spatial differences, structures, .

Inter-American Coffee Agreement (IACA)

The war had created the conditions for a US-Latin American coffee agreement: European markets were closed off, the price of coffee was in decline and the United States feared that the declining price could drive Latin American countriesespecially Braziltowards Nazi or Communist sympathies.

Spatial consequences of driving economic and political forces

International Coffee Agreements (ICA) regulation with minimum price levels and quotas for producing countries. 1968, 1976, 1983, abolished in 1989. Any idea why ?

GeopoliticsGlobalization adagio

So Swyngedouws (1998) warning on the ideological power of the actual globalization hype is correct: an academically based and politically interesting instrument was created, which uttered the need for a radical change of existing nationally dominated economic structures.

On every level, changes were put forward in order to be able to fit into the new global economic order. The national elites, both left and right of the traditional political spectre saw in these arguments an excuse to explain away their inadequacy to link political programmes with an increasingly disenfranchised and disempowered civil society.

Concentration in supply and demand side and virtual price-setting

supply side demand side

trade supply price trade demand price

export import

local wholesaler/exporter roasters/coffee industry

intermediates distribution

small and medium sized large scale production production consumption

FuturesFinancial contract to buy/sell coffeeFutures exchange: not only hedgers (producers/consumers of the commodity), but also speculators with a proper logic of making money. Nothing new !?Future use of olive presses by Thales (Aristotle) Tulip mania (1637) 1 tulip= 10 years income skilled craftsman

The regulation context, which deals with the possibility of several actors and institutions to intervene in the functioning of the global chain, forms a crucial dimension.

Despite the often extreme pressure on market liberalization, governments in the south do have opportunities to help coffee production in their countries.

Policies like a more strict control on private and public

credit systems, basic trade rules, facilities for producers market agreements can lead to a better chain

management.

Conclusions Given the historical structural differences, the

replacement of market regulatory instruments by the dominance of but a few actors on strategic positions, makes the actual global coffee market clearly spatially structured.

In this context, the globalization discourse has a spatial bias.

Existing traditional global economic networks not only seem stronger than often presented, their spatial structuring capacity appears to be unaltered.

Therefore, the spatial impact of so called new global networking processes vis vis historically existing spatially differentiated production-consumption structures seems too often overestimated.

Questions : As a spatial planner and given a spatial planning

policy with a set of instruments, what % would you attribute the spatial planning activity in determining the actual spatial reality of your hometown? (degree of malleability)

A. The actual globalization and free-trade credo result in a continuation of existing socio-economic and spatial differences.

B. Traditional structures continue to change at supersonic speed. As a consequence, new spatial (urban) structures are appearing and ask for new approaches and solutions.

In a nutshell

Decompose complexityMethod is just a tool, objective is the kind of policy neededInteraction Individual-Society-SpaceInclude time aspectStructuring Space and SocietyThe globalization discourse has a spatial bias/existing structures remain strong

The coffee networkThank you !

Joris Scheers