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Following things of rubbish value: end-of-life ships, ‘chock-chocky’ furniture and the Bangladeshi middle class consumer

Gregson, N.; Crang, M.; Ahamed, F.; Akhtar, N.; Ferdous, R.

Following things of rubbish value: end-of-life ships, ‘chock-chocky’ furniture and the Bangladeshi middle class consumer Thumbnail


Authors

F. Ahamed

N. Akhtar



Abstract

There has been an upsurge of geographical work tracing globalised flows of commodities in the wake of Appadurai’s (1986) call to ‘follow the things’. This paper engages with calls to follow the thing but argues that work thus far has been concentrated, first, on global flows from developing world producers to developed world consumers, and, second, on things that remain stable as they circulate. This paper instead argues that ‘follow the thing’ research needs to also attend to flows ’down’ the value chain, from developed to less developed worlds, and to things that are either coming apart or being disassembled. The case presented here is end-of-life ships, sent to be broken in less developed countries, as most are, in this case in Bangladesh. It looks at how the arts of transience re-work materials from rubbish value ships into new forms and objects in the household furnishing sector, which are then appropriated by Bangladeshi middle class consumers. Far from being a minor feature this is shown to be empirically a significant component of the Bangladeshi economy. Theoretically the paper challenges many habitual assumptions about global flows of commodities and urges ‘follow the thing’ research to rethink the thing. Paying attention to the back-end of the value chain shows that things are but temporary configurations of material. At best partially stable, things are argued to be endlessly being assembled, always becoming something else somewhere else.

Citation

Gregson, N., Crang, M., Ahamed, F., Akhtar, N., & Ferdous, R. (2010). Following things of rubbish value: end-of-life ships, ‘chock-chocky’ furniture and the Bangladeshi middle class consumer. Geoforum, 41(6), 846-854. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.05.007

Journal Article Type Article
Publication Date Nov 1, 2010
Deposit Date May 27, 2010
Publicly Available Date Mar 28, 2024
Journal Geoforum
Print ISSN 0016-7185
Publisher Elsevier
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 41
Issue 6
Pages 846-854
DOI https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.05.007
Keywords ‘follow the thing’, Waste, Value chains, Ships, Furniture, Consumption, Bangladesh.

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Copyright Statement
NOTICE: this is the author’s version of a work that was accepted for publication in Geoforum. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. A definitive version was subsequently published in Geoforum, 41, 6, November 2010, 10.1016/j.geoforum.2010.05.007.





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