Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
along the west coast of Africa, Timbuktu lost its strategic position and a long
p e riod of decline set in.
Timbuktu's story serves as a reminder that where a place is located in rela-
tion to patterns of economic development and exchange can be as important
as, or even more important than, the commodities found in that place. Indeed,
there are many examples of places where the presence of a valuable commod-
ity does not translate into improved economic lives for those living nearby. The
people working on the oil booms in Gabon or Nigeria or workers chopping down
rare hardwood trees in Thailand or Malaysia, for example, are not the ones who
benefi t from most of the wealth associated with demand for the goods they help
produce. Instead, international corporations or the wealthiest families in a place,
those who own the industry, are the principal benefi c i aries.
To understand how the production of a good creates wealth for some and
not for others, we must understand the concept of a commodity chain and
the role of places in the chain of production. A
commodity chain
is a series of
links connecting the many places of production and distribution and result-
ing in a commodity that is then exchanged on the market. The generation of
wealth differs along the commodity chain. Each link along the chain adds a
certain value to the commodity, producing differing levels of wealth for the
place and the pe o ple where production o c curs.
What Timbuktu had to offer was the ability to coordinate and facilitate trade
based on its geographic site where the Niger River turned north at the edge of the
Sahara Desert. The river was the last major water source for those crossing the
Sahara from south to north across what is now Mali and Algeria. Timbuktu was
a break-of-bulk location, where goods traded on one mode of transport, camel,
were transported to another mode of transport, boat. The commodity chain the
production of a good follows and the points along the chain where materials and
goods are traded changes over time, directly impacting the economic situation of
places.
Places along a commodity chain do not all benefi t equally from the production
of a good. The generation of wealth depends on how production occurs at each step.
In Chapter 8 we introduced the concepts of core and periphery. Sophisticated
technology, high skill levels, extensive research and development, and high sala-
ries tend to be associated with the segment of global commodity chains located
in the core. The segments located in the periphery, by contrast, tend to be associ-
ated with low technology, less education, little research and development, and
lower wages.
The concept of development is both about being nodes along commod-
ity chains and also about transforming peripheral processes into core ones, or
red i recting the profi t generated through core processes to improve the periph-
ery. As the twenty-fi rst century unfolds, countless governments, academics,
nongovernmental organizations, and international fi nancial institutions offer
ideas about how to lift up the poorer parts of the world. The theories, meth-
ods, and recommendations vary, but they all focus on the illusive concept of
develo p ment.
In this chapter, we review how development is defi ned and measured and
some of the theories of development. We also examine how geography affects
development, considering the structures of the world economy. We look at the
geographical barriers to and costs of development within countries, and we ask
why uneven development occurs not just across the globe, but within states.
