Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Following the production of televisions around the
globe gives us insight into the workings of the product life
cycle, the global division of labor, and shifts in production
that occur as goods become standard commodities of trade.
Commercial production of television sets began after
World War II, with a variety of small and medium-sized
fi rms in Europe, Asia, and North America involved in pro-
duction. Firms in the United States, including Zenith,
were the dominant producers of televisions until the 1970s.
During the 1970s and 1980s a dramatic shift occurred, with
a small number of large Asian producers—particularly in
Japan—seizing a much larger percentage of the market and
with a few European fi rms increasing their position as well.
By 1990, ten large fi rms were responsible for 80 percent of
the world's color television sets; eight of them were Japanese
and two European. Only one fi rm in the United States,
Zenith, remained, and its share of the global market was
relatively small.
The television production industry has three key
elements: research and design; manufacture of compo-
nents; and assembly. Research and design was and continues
to be located in the home countries of the major television
manufacturers. During the 1970s, the major fi rms began
to move the manufacture of components and assembly
out of the country. U.S. fi rms moved these functions to
the
maquiladora
of Mexico (discussed in Chapter 10) and
the special economic zones of China (described in
Chapter 9); Japanese fi rms moved component manufac-
turing and assembly to Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, and
South Korea. Because the assembly stage was the most
labor intensive, television manufacturers tapped into
labor pools around the world, locating assembly plants
not just in Mexico, China, and Southeast Asia, but also in
India and Brazil. By the 1990s, television manufacturing
methods had changed to employ greater mechanization in
the production and assembly process. Starting in the
1980s, the major television producers in Japan (by then
dominating the market) moved a number of their offshore
production sites to Europe and the United States, regions
with suitable infrastructure, skilled labor, and accessible
markets. Recently, the process began again, with research
and development in high-defi nition and plasma televi-
sions leading to production of these high-end televisions
in Japan—and more recently into China and South Korea.
products themselves change, production may be moved to
take advantage of infrastructure, skilled labor, and acces-
sible markets.
Geographically, the concept of time-space compres-
sion is the easiest way to capture the dramatic temporal
and spatial changes taking place in the contemporary
global economy. Time-space compression is based on the
idea that developments in communication and transporta-
tion technologies have accelerated the speed with which
things happen and made the distance between places less
signifi cant (see Chapter 4). David Harvey, who coined the
term
time-space compression
, argues that modern capitalism
has so accelerated the pace of life and so changed the
nature of the relationship between places that “the world
seems to collapse inwards upon us.” Fluctuations in the
Tokyo stock market affect New York just hours later.
Overnight, marketing campaigns can turn a product inno-
vation into a fad in far-fl ung corners of the globe. Kiwis
picked in New Zealand yesterday can be in the lunch boxes
of boys and girls in Canada tomorrow. And decisions made
in London can make or break a fast-developing deal over a
transport link between Kenya and Tanzania.
Time-space compression has fundamentally altered
the division of labor. When the world was less intercon-
nected, most goods were produced not just close to raw
materials, but close to the point of consumption. Thus, the
major industrial belt in the United States was in the
Northeast both because of readily available coal and other
raw materials and because the major concentration of the
North American population was there. With
just-in-time
delivery
this has changed. Rather than keeping a large
inventory of components or products, companies keep just
what they need for short-term production and new parts are
shipped quickly when needed. In turn, corporations can
draw from labor around the globe for different components
of production.
Advances in information technologies and shipping
coupled with the global division of labor enable compa-
nies to move production from one site to another based on
calculations of the “new place-based cost advantages” in a
decision process geographer David Harvey has called a
spatial fi x
(Walcott 2011, 7). In choosing a production
site, location is only one consideration. “Distance is nei-
ther determinate nor insignifi cant as a factor in produc-
tion location decisions” today (Walcott 2011, 9).
Major global economic players, including General
Motors, Philips, Union Carbide, and Exxon, take advan-
tage of low transportation costs, favorable governmental
regulations, and expanding information technology to
construct vast economic networks in which different fac-
ets of production are carried out in different places in
order to benefi t from the advantages of specifi c loca-
tions. Publicly traded companies, whose stock you can
buy or sell publicly on the stock exchange, are pressured
by shareholders to grow their profi ts annually. One way
The Global Division of Labor
Tracing the production of televisions throughout the
world over time helps us see how the
global division of
labor
currently works. Under this arrangement, labor is
concentrated in the global economic periphery and semi-
periphery to take advantage of lower labor costs, whereas
research and development is primarily located in the core.
But nothing is fi xed, and as methods of assembly and
