Due to the increasing linkage of global production sites, the concept of commodity chains has become indispensable for the investigation of production at a global scale. Although work is the basis of production in every involved location, it is often being neglected as a research subject without taking interest in the workers, the work processes and the working conditions. This edited volume provides a collection of historical and contemporary commodity chain studies by placing labor at the centre of analysis. A global historical perspective demonstrates that splitting production processes to different, hierarchically connected locations are by no means new phenomena. The book is thus an important and valuable contribution to commodity chain research, but also to the fields of social-economic and global labour history. Contributors are: Andras Pinkasz, Andrea Komlosy, Christin Bernhold, Ernst Langthaler, Franziska Ollendorf, Goran Music, Jan Grumiller, Johanna Sittel, Joerg Nowak, Karin Fischer, Klemens Kaps, Miroslav Lacko, Santosh Hasnu, Stefan Schmalz, Tamas Gerocs, Tibor T. Meszmann, and Uwe Spiekermann.

Responding to the development of a lively hip hop culture in Central and Eastern European countries, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates how a universal model of hip hop serves as a contextually situated platform of cultural exchange and becomes locally inflected. After the Soviet Union fell, hip hop became popular in urban environments in the region, but it has often been stigmatized as inauthentic, due to an apparent lack of connection to African American historical roots and black identity. Originally strongly influenced by aesthetics from the US, hip hop in Central and Eastern Europe has gradually developed unique, local trajectories, a number of which are showcased in this volume. On the one hand, hip hop functions as a marker of Western cosmopolitanism and democratic ideology, but as the contributors show, it is also a malleable genre that has been infused with so much local identity that it has lost most of its previous associations with "the West" in the experiences of local musicians, audiences, and producers. Contextualizing hip hop through the prism of local experiences and regional musical expressions, these valuable case studies reveal the broad spectrum of its impact on popular culture and youth identity in the post-Soviet world.

Responding to the development of a lively hip hop culture in Central and Eastern European countries, this interdisciplinary study demonstrates how a universal model of hip hop serves as a contextually situated platform of cultural exchange and becomes locally inflected. After the Soviet Union fell, hip hop became popular in urban environments in the region, but it has often been stigmatized as inauthentic, due to an apparent lack of connection to African American historical roots and black identity. Originally strongly influenced by aesthetics from the US, hip hop in Central and Eastern Europe has gradually developed unique, local trajectories, a number of which are showcased in this volume. On the one hand, hip hop functions as a marker of Western cosmopolitanism and democratic ideology, but as the contributors show, it is also a malleable genre that has been infused with so much local identity that it has lost most of its previous associations with "the West" in the experiences of local musicians, audiences, and producers. Contextualizing hip hop through the prism of local experiences and regional musical expressions, these valuable case studies reveal the broad spectrum of its impact on popular culture and youth identity in the post-Soviet world.