The Chain before the Commodity

Bibliographic Data

ID3631348
AuthorsAmérico Paredes (0000-0001-9975-343X, corresponding author), Alyssa Paredes
Year2025
Volume84
Issue1
Pages81-101
Publication date2025-02-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueThe Journal of Asian Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0021-9118 • E-ISSN: 1752-0401
PublisherDuke University Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1215/00219118-11445271
OpenAlexW4406185516
LanguageEN
Citations received3
References cited24

How do you build supply chain logistics to facilitate a political idea and not merely the movement of goods? This essay offers a historical and ethnographic account of "people-to-people trade" (minshū kōeki) between Japanese and Filipino activists from the 1970s onward. In contrast to a vast majority of transnational chains designed foremost to facilitate the efficient circulation of commodities, people-to-people trade has seen its main thrust as supporting linkage politics against the backdrop of a hacienda- and plantation-dominated economy. Encountering each other on the Philippine sugarcane capital of Negros, a vibrant circuit of activists, laborers, farmers, and housewives came together to build the chain in response to the island's descent into economic and political turmoil. Their trade partnership in a wild banana variety called "Balangon" enabled social relationships, ecological arrangements, and labor conditions distinct from Negros's sugarcane monocultures at the time. Recounting this history offers a prism into a period when transnational concerns over authoritarianism, military counterinsurgency, famine, and pollution export linked the Philippines and Japan, transforming leftist politics in both contexts. Ultimately, this essay aims to show that commodity chains, when placed in the hands of civil society actors, can become meaningful platforms for social change

Commodity · Commodity chain · Economics · Economy · Market economy · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Colonial History and Postcolonial Studies · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact · Southeast Asian Sociopolitical Studies

Tools

Open DOI