Ethnographic Project: Commodity Chain

This entails a short fieldwork on a commodity. Commodities are the product of social labor. Your task is to decipher a social labor that goes into the production of a particular thing. You can pick any commodity such as sugar, tea, mobile phone, mango, cosmetics, t-shirt, money, etc. in order to trace a social process hidden behind a thing. For instance if you choose a cosmetic product, such as a skin care item, you will need to outline a chain, for instance, people who produce/mine raw material, identify a manufacturer and advertiser, interview a sales person in a departmental store, talk to end user, etc. Identify if there are forms of labor exploitation that are hidden underneath the surface gloss of a thing.