| This dissertation examines alcohol's evolving role in developing and rapidly changing societies. Using commodity chain analysis, the dissertation compares globalized alcohol to earlier historical forms of alcohol production, and also to other global commodities. The latter comparison leads to the creation of a new ideal type of type commodity chain, the marketing-driven commodity chain. Descriptive in particular of globalized beer and spirits, and also possibly applicable to other relatively inexpensive globalized consumer goods, the marketing-driven commodity chain is distinguished by the primacy of product design and marketing over the other stages of production and distribution. After a description of the global alcohol industry and trade, the dissertation draws on field research and interviews in three very different case study countries---a successful developmental state (Malaysia), a less successful developmental state (Zimbabwe), and a market in transition (Estonia)---to find what is common in the structure of production of globalized alcohol. The case studies confirm that the two segments of the alcohol industry which are growing globally, beer and distilled spirits, conform most closely to the ideal type of the marketing-driven commodity. Monopoly rents are extracted by the global alcohol companies in the critical design/recipe and marketing/advertising nodes of the commodity chain. The implications of these findings are explored in three contexts that together define drinking patterns: global networks of production, state policies and local cultures. Global alcohol production networks are increasingly oriented less toward production of products and more towards the creation of brands, which are intended to permeate the lifestyles and daily practices of potential consumers. Branding is thus an intentional process of cultural change, although this change is always refracted through local cultures. State policies continue to be oriented to regulation of alcohol as a product rather than as a brand, and thus a strong argument is made for regulation of advertising, promotions, sponsorships and other marketing activities associated with global alcohol brands, if governments are to effectively govern the role of alcohol and alcohol industries in national development, and to limit the harmful effects of drinking on development and on public health. |
