> On Fri, 2009-10-09 at 12:43 -0400, Matthias Wasser wrote:
>
> The paradigmatic post-Fordist company isn't
> Microsoft, it's Walmart, which directs the production and distribution
> of material goods from all around the world.
>
> That may be the case, and it might even be H&N's argument - though I don't
recall it being so, but that is absolutely NOT what the theorists of
post-Fordism argued during the first twenty or so years of post-Fordist
theorizing... at least in part because, for most of that time, big box
stores were still semi-experimental and Walmart was (and a raft of other
supermarkets, perhaps most importantly in Europe, were) still working to
concentrate their power at the point of sale so that they could overpower
producers. Almost all the stuff on third party certification based on
internationally-imposed retail grades and standards doesn't arrive until
significantly after 1989 and isn't really a central element of international
supply chains for retail goods until the late 90s.