Asia and the Changing Circuits of Global Production and Consumption

Session Submission Type: Organized Panel

Abstract

In the recent decades, the manufacturing platforms of Asia have developed into thriving consumer economies in their own right. This transition to consumer economies in Asia happened alongside larger global capitalist developments to which Asian market actors have become ever more responsive. For example, global retailers and brand-name merchandisers that initially sourced goods for Western consumption are now expanding their physical presence to sell to Asian customers. In response, Asian retailers and merchandisers are reconfiguring their strategies to compete and coordinate with these Western actors. Contract manufacturers that primarily depended upon orders from Western-buyers are now responding to the rising local markets. What new configurations, paradoxes, and power structures emerged within these changing market orders?

This panel brings together papers that take seriously the inter-relationships between global production and consumption landscapes, and Asia’s changing role within this nexus. Tsaiman Ho studies the evolutionary paths of Hong Kong and Taiwanese contract manufacturers and their growth and dependence vis-à-vis Western buyers. Solee Shin and Tommy Tse examines the ascendance of Korean fashion in the absence of an individual-designer-based creative system. Eileen Otis examines the distinctive work regimes in Wal-Mart, China and their local and multinational origins. Christina Moon examines the everyday work of Korean fast fashion families and their connections to the ever-shifting production landscape in Asia. Together, these papers capture the competitive and cooperative workings of various local and Western market actors – retailers, merchandisers, and manufacturers - in defining the marketplace for consumption and production in Asia and beyond.

Area of Study

• Interarea-Border Crossing

Session Organizer

• Solee Shin, National University of Singapore

Chair

• Carolyn Hsu, Colgate University

Individual Presentations

• Growth and Dependence: Comparison and Analysis of Two Cases - Tsai-man Clare Ho, Chung Yuan Christian University

• Global Fashion in the Absence of Global Designers: A Study on Korea’s Emergent Fashion System - Solee Shin, National University of Singapore; Tommy Ho Lun Tse, University of Hong Kong

• Worlds of Work in Wal-Mart, China - Eileen Otis, University of Oregon

• Slow Road to Fast Fashion - Christina Moon, The New School

Discussant

• Carolyn Hsu, Colgate University