一個半邊陲的浮現與隱藏：國際鞋類市場網絡重組下的生產外移

The Invisible Elbow: Semiperiphery and the Restructuring of International Footwear Market

鄭陸霖(Lu-Lin Cheng)

《台灣社會研究季刊》 35期 (1999/09) Pp. 1-46

https://doi.org/10.29816/TARQSS.199909.0001

摘要

資本主義乃是一個歷史性的全球經濟現象，具體展現在以組織與技術為基礎所支撐起來的跨國勞動等級體系。本研究處理台灣鞋廠自八○年代末期開始的海外投資，強調：生產基地的外移可以而且必須被視為國際鞋類供應／採購市場網絡調整的一部份來理解。換言之，生產基地的區域移動是個包括國際買主、成鞋製造廠、中間貿易商、材料供應商等眾多廠商，在高度不確定的市場環境中多邊協調的過程。本文的論點可以分底下三個層次說明，首先，在80年代以降國際鞋業供應市場的全球重構中，台灣弔詭地一方面隱藏其份量，卻也同時浮現了它半邊陲的軸心角色：彈性地調節核心跨國買主的佈局與邊陲廉價勞力的供應。其次，本文藉經驗地檢視鞋類國際市場，這個與主流經濟學市場模型最接近的現實個案，以突出「價格中介」市場模型的侷限性，以及它在論述上掩飾「半邊陲」的虛假。最後，本文援引經濟社會學為助力，批判「抽象市場的全球主義」外，同時對於將「社會鑲嵌」侷限於「在地空間」的「社會學式的謬誤」也提出反省。

關鍵字

鞋 ； 貿易 ； 採購 ； 半邊陲

並列摘要

This article studies the offshore investments of Taiwanese footwear producers since the late 1980s. I argue that the production reallocation is and has to be studied as only a part of the network restructuring of the international footwear supply/sourcing market. In other words, the production site transition involves multilateral adjustments of and among footwear producers, trading companies, international buyers, and material suppliers in the market. The task requires us to conceive markets as socially embedded in trust-mediated transactions, instead of an asocial price mechanism matching atomic economic actors. On the supplier's side, I show that the Taiwanese footwear industrial district was implanted in China in the form of an internationally linked but locally enclave economy, which was buffered from disturbance by an institutional arrangement of ”pseudo OEM.” On the buyer's side, I demonstrate the difficult efforts of buyers in coordinating network restructuring. In the early 1980s, buyers of different kinds rushed to place orders directly to China. They failed and then adjusted to participate in the readjustments of the existing sourcing networks. The rise of Taiwan's semiperipheral status in the restructured networks of international footwear supply urges us to rethink the ”third world industrialization” in the new order of global capitalism, which is often masked with the ”free market.”

並列關鍵字

footwear ； sourcing ； market ； semiperiphery

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