From global production networks to global disassembly networks and back again

Chapter 6 introduces the concept of Global Disassembly Networks (GDNs). Building upon Chapter 2, in this chapter we seek to complete the analytical circle by exploring the life of commodities after they have been thrown away. Whereas analyses of the decomposition of commodities have often focused upon transformations in their physical form, we instead trace the movement of value (in the Marxist sense of congealed labour time) through the life, death, and rebirth of products’ constituent elements, arguing that this provides a superior means for retaining a sense of economic ‘ongoingness’, one that places analysis of the political economy of the capitalist labour process at its centre. In particular, we utilize the concepts of devalorization and devaluation as a way to understand how value is carried forward (or not) in the process of dismantling discarded commodities and re-using their constituent elements as raw materials for new commodities.