Geography homework help. REQUIREMENTS
As we discovered in our lesson on sugar, producing commodities can involve complex transnational relationships. Many times, those relationships produce and reproduce massive inequalities–between plantation owners and slaves, manufacturers and workers, producers and consumers.
Your job is to take the commodity you have been assigned and create a map of the domestic and international relationships it creates. YOUR COMMODITY IS TEA.
You can create a map of a modern commodity chain, or a historical one. You can use the printed map I gave you for your final project.
With your map, you should write a short (max 4 pp) description of the commodity chain. Explain where your commodity is grown, where it is packed and shipped, who the middlemen are, and how it is sold to consumers. As you do, pay special attention to relationships of inequality. Who takes the most value in this commodity chain? Who gets the least? How are unequal relationships defined and how are they reproduced?
Be sure and make a bibliography of your sources. At least TWO of your sources should be scholarly journal articles. You will be evaluated on the quality of your cartography, the quality of your bibliography, and the degree to which you write a coherent, well-written description of the commodity chain.
