Grain elevator storage physically disentangled grain from its grower for futures trading
Evidence
As Gronon shows, the processes that made Chicago’s trading in grain futures possible were based on the disentanglement of grain from its grower that took place when transport in railroad cars and storage in steam-powered grain elevators replaced transport and storage in sacks. Sacks kept grain and grower tied together, the sacks remaining the latter’s property, identified as such by a bill of lading in each sack, until they reached the final purchaser. In contrast, grain from different growers was mixed irreversibly in the elevators’ giant bins, and the trace of ownership was now a paper receipt, redeemable for an equivalent quantity of similar grain but not for the original physical substance. — Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not a Camera, 71
Categorization
- QUESTION: Mackenzie says ‘Gronon’ — likely meant Cronon, the secondary source cited in adjacent passages; worth confirming the typo, not chasing substance.
- XREF: connects to: Speculation trades on imaginary goods severed from material production — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 55; Speculative markets displaced providential belief with probabilistic forecasting among farmers. — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities: Living With…, 118; Derivative logic prices and trades assets’ attributes without ownership, applied to texts (+2 more)
Broader Connections
- Speculation trades on imaginary goods severed from material production
#corroborates(0.85) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 55 - Speculative futures trading inflates food prices by valuing crops before they grow.
#corroborates(0.78) — Max Haiven, Cultures of Financialization, 510 - Derivative logic prices and trades assets’ attributes without ownership, applied to texts
#expands(0.75) - Speculative markets displaced providential belief with probabilistic forecasting among farmers.
#expands(0.72) — Aris Komporozos-Athanasiou, Speculative Communities, 118 - Storage-unit content makes visible the human precarity beneath commodity alienation
#corroborates(0.72) — Grant Bollmer, Katherine Guinness, The Influencer Factory, 253