The Tactics of the Trinket: Spaces and Operations of the £1 Commodity Chain Within the Context of Contemporary Capitalism
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Hulme, Alison. 2010. The Tactics of the Trinket: Spaces and Operations of the £1 Commodity Chain Within the Context of Contemporary Capitalism. Doctoral thesis, Goldsmiths, University of London [Thesis]
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Text (The Tactics of the Trinket: Spaces and Operations of the £1 Commodity Chain Within the Context of Contemporary Capitalism )
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Abstract or Description
The Tactics of the Trinket presents a material geography of the £1 commodity, following the trinket‟s journey from its beginning as raw material on a Chinese rubbish dump, to factories, international trade hubs, state-of-the-art distribution networks, over-flowing high street stores, and finally the homes of the consumer. This trajectory is used to uncover the places and operations of the typical £1 commodity and the ways in which it utilizes and creates a complicated array of tactics.
Each of these tactics is explored in turn; from the embedding of a culture of immediacy, to the intrinsic necessity of disposability, to the creation of agglomerative logic, to the over-powering presence of abundance. Immediacy is explored in relation to the consumer and traditional notions of desire and mystification unpicked. Disposability is questioned in the context of the possibilities of entanglement with objects rather than possession of them. Agglomeration is analysed as a practice both contributing to, but in some ways hors de, capitalism, as well as a phenomenon carving out new types of spaces. Abundance is picked apart as one half of a double-edged relationship with scarcity and a way of understanding current rhetoric on fast capitalism.
The trinket is considered as part of both micro situations (for example, the solidarity of manufacturers in China‟s „commodity city‟ of Yiwu) and macro geo-political movements (the impact of China‟s growth on the relationship between China and the EU). Its tactics are considered in the light of current capitalism and some initial principles for a new material manifesto are discussed.
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Item Type: |
Thesis (Doctoral) |
| Departments, Centres and Research Units: |
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| Date: |
2010 |
| Item ID: |
6499 |
| Date Deposited: |
17 Feb 2012 14:18 |
| Last Modified: |
08 Sep 2022 13:42 |
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URI: |
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