Commodity culture

Commodity cultures are usually found in large companies (over 1 B in sales), with the focus on manufacturing and cost control cited earlier. For our purposes, commodities may be conveniently defined as those polymers that are produced in high volumes, such as polyolefins, styrenics, polyesters, and vinyl. Further, the properties of one commodity producer s primary 

Commodity culture companies tend to have flat, lean organizations. Interpersonal relationships and company loyalty are important to the successful operation of such businesses where so much depends on so few people. Unfortxmately, some commodity companies may lack such loyalty if fhey have gone through a number of staff reductions in the course of their existence. Personnel stability over a sustained period of time can help rebuild that loyalty. 

A weakness notable in many commodity company cultures is an inability to capitalize on the value of product differences where they exist. Instead, they view product differences as a sales tool, whereby they can obtain or hold business at the same price as the competitor, instead of using the situation to charge a premium. Often, this results in an inability to pay for R D above product maintenance levels. This weakness obviously works against the development of specialfy producfs. If fhe managemenf of a commodity culture company wishes to diversify info specialfies, it would be well advised to set up such a business as a relatively independent entity or risk almost certain failure. In some companies, fhis approach is known as infrapreneuring.  

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Once perceived, the connection between industrial chemicals and health could not be confined to the factory floor, the corporate laboratory, or professional scientific circles. Workers went home after work and noticed that their houses lay under the plume of the factory that employed them, or that effluent was habitually dumped into the ditch around the comer, or that the new synthetic materials they consumed and which surrounded them were manufactured out of the same potentially hazardous chemicals. After decades of affluent commodity culture, the hazards of chemicals seeped out of factories and into the messy American imaginary. The chemical presence that industrialization had... 

A large part of the US diet is made up of crops which originate outside the USA. Currently, a US tolerance achieved through the submission of data obtained from residue trials run exclusively within the USA permits the importation of commodities grown in Latin America or other countries. Within the past 5 years, the ERA has initiated programs to ensure that residue testing to achieve a US tolerance better reflects the climatic and cultural conditions under which the commodity is grown. 

A market basket survey, however, is unique in that untreated control commodities, as the term is normally used in residue studies, cannot be obtained. In a market basket survey, food commodities are collected at the consumer level and not from controlled field tests. By design, the cultural and treatment details for the collected commodities are expected to differ from sample to sample. This factor enables the collected commodities to represent the spectrum of conditions under which crops are supplied for human consumption. 

Organic substances can be identified both as the main constituents of an artwork or a cultural heritage object, and as secondary components, mixed with inorganic compounds. Organic materials can be found in the finish or decoration of the surfaces, or as residues of commodities, such as in ceramic or glass vessels. Moreover, the majority of restoration products applied as consolidants, adhesives, restoration paints and varnishes are of an organic nature. 

The Romans were the first to discover the vicissitudes of a culture a that derives its power from finance. Gold, like any other commodity, I does not have an absolute value it depends on how much of it there is around. The gold denomination of the Roman Empire was the aureus, which was worth twenty-five silver denarii. But the later emperors were prone to grotesque displays of wealth - Nero constracted a Golden House with jewel-encrusted walls. These excesses removed so much gold and silver from circulation that the coin minters were forced to add other metals to the aureus and the denarius. By the third century ad the denarius was 98 per cent copper. Naturally, a trader will not give as much for a coin that is mostly copper as for one that is pure silver, even if they are called the same thing and bear the same stamp. 

Khat is believed to have been traded as a commodity even before coffee and is used throughout the Middle East countries in much the same way as coffee is used in Western culture. In addition to its use as a mild stimulant, khat use in Africa and the Middle East is more of a social phenomenon. Its intake occurs in moderation, for the most part, and often takes place in special rooms designed for that purpose. 

Production of a consumer product in a form suitable for use and acceptable to the consumer also may be an objective of a crystallization process. For example, sucrose (sugar) can be crystallized in various forms. However, different cultures are accustomed to using sugar that has a particular appearance and, unless the commodity has that appearance, the consumer may consider the sugar to be unacceptable. 

Transgenic plant systems have the potential to produce recombinant proteins on a commodity scale (Kusnadi et al., 1997) due to the low cost of growing plants and because scale-up of production simply requires sewing seeds over a greater field area. As such they offer almost unlimited scalability (Giddings, 2001). It is estimated by Kusnadi et al. (1997) that transgenic plants can produce pharmaceutical proteins at between 10 and 50-fold lower cost than microbial fermentation systems, and 1,000 times lower than mammalian cell culture systems (Hood et al., 2002). 

Art s utopia, the counter-factual yet-to-come , is draped in black.45 Darkness marks the place where possibility holds out against actuality. Black works against the deceitful sensuality of culture s facade. Adorno s insistence on black reacted to what seemed a world of ever-louder colours. In 1959 he observed colour s high-pitched shriek in all too much more intense and conspicuous colours . These new colours turned book jackets into advertisements for themselves, in efforts to shake off all that is bookish, old-fashioned and retrogressive about the book.46 Parodic sheen was too able to be misunderstood. Colour may be life s colourful reflections, but it was also a mechanism for drawing attention to the commodity heaven of the post-war. These new commodity colours were synthetic, and the synthetic came to be a testament to the new improved temper of life itself. 

Of all the communities adversely affected by hazardous cotton pesticides, a substantial proportion are located in India home to more cotton farmers than any other country in the world. Indian cotton production is heavily associated with the intensive use of hazardous pesticides, and is responsible for over half of aU agricultural pesticides applied nationally. Within this figure Indian cotton is associated with some of the most hazardous pesticides used anywhere on earth . Characterized hy a near total lack of safety measures, low quality equipment, and with protective clothing often unavailahle or prohibitively expensive, Indian cotton production represents a highly unsafe environment within which to work f Observational studies reveal a heavy toll exerted on the health of those who work with cotton pesticides and chemical analysis has revealed traces of pesticide residues in blood samples taken from Indian cotton labourers. Cotton undoubtedly represents one of India s most important economic, nutritive and cultural commodities, but its conventional cultivation has become deeply problematic, both for those who grow it and because of the external costs of its impact on health and the en-vironmenP ... 

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