ABSTRACT
Although we often hear a great deal about globalising networks in the current economic geography and agri-food literatures, the intellectual work of globalising agri-food networks seems to have somehow slipped below the horizon. This book explores the globalising connectivities implied in the notion of globalising networks with a view to drawing out some of the complexities and contradictions evident when the conception is harnessed with that of commodity chain. By opening up space to engage with the constitutive processes that produce networks that might be labelled globalising the collection prioritises an examination of what it has meant to produce food and fibre in emerging capitalist societies. Instead of considering globalising networks as an exclusively contemporary phenomenon, the collection illustrates from research into both the past and present agri-food commodity chains some intriguingly similar dimensions in the constitution of responses to the challenges of securing value circulation and exchange across great and short distances.
