The Dictionary of Human Geography

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learning and even ‘acquiring’ the idioms of the

dominant culture, whereastransculturationin-

volves a dialectical relation of combination

and contradiction (seedialectic), a process

of cultural loss as well as gain, that produces

new, original forms (see alsoculture).

Ortiz developed the concept in his master-

work,Cuban counterpoint(1940). As the title

suggests, transculturation has something in

common with studies of contrapuntal

geographies: it is about the interplay between

different cultures situated within a global

force-field. The book was a study of the col-

onization of his native Cuba, where Ortiz

identified a series of remarkably rapid cultural

readjustments forcefully made by different

peoples in a stream of migrants (Spanish, Af-

rican and others), ‘each of them torn from

[their] native moorings, faced with the prob-

lem of disadjustment and readjustment, of

deculturation and acculturation – in a word,

of transculturation’ (1995 [1940], p. 98). This

may not have been a one-sided process of

adjustment and compliance, but it was none

the less a violent one: ‘All, those above and

below, living together in the same atmosphere

of terror and oppression, the oppressed in ter-

ror of punishment, the oppressor in terror of

reprisals, all beside justice, beside adjustment,

beside themselves. And all in the painful pro-

cess of transculturation’ (p. 102). The subtitle

of Ortiz’s text is also critical: Ortiz’s analysis

was a profoundlymaterialistone that fo-

cused on the significance of non-human actors

(what actor-network theory would call

‘actants’). He described tobacco and sugar as

‘the two most important figures in this history

of Cuba’, and showed how different groups of

people exercisedpowerthrough their alliances

with them. The cultural forms and practices of

colonizers and colonized were thus reworked

through their material, practical involvements

with these two commodities. As anthropologist

Fernando Coronil puts it in his introduction to

Ortiz’s text, on this reading commodities are

‘not merely products of human activity, but

active forces which constrain and empower it’

(seecommodity).

If Ortiz’s work is not understood in relation

to Cuba andlatin americamore generally, it

becomes atravelling theorythat runs the

risk of losing its political force (Lund, 2001).

That said, transculturation has acquired con-

siderable significance in post-colonialism

and studies oftravel-writing, where it has

allowed more subtle analyses of the consider-

able cultural traffic that constituted the ‘con-

tact zone’ between colonizer and colonized

(Pratt, 1992). But little of this work has seized

upon the materialist dimensions of Ortiz’s

work (cf. Coronil, 2000). dg

Suggested reading

Coronil (1995).

transfer pricing The setting of transfer

prices for products (goods and services)

moving between semi-autonomous divisions

(cost- or profit-centres) within large organiza-

tions. The practice is most often associated with

transnational corporations(tncs), which

respond to variable corporate tax regimes, to

tariffand other barriers totrade, and to dif-

ferential exchange rates by setting prices for

internaltransactionsbetween establishments lo-

cated in different national jurisdictions in ways

that minimize costs or maximize gains. For ex-

ample, firms may charge high prices for semi-

finished products shipped for further processing

to plants located in jurisdictions with high rates

of tax, so that they reduce the tax take on profits

generated by finishing processes.

As theglobalizationofinvestment, pro-

duction and trade proceeds, both the possibil-

ities for and the extent of transfer pricing are

likely to increase. Dicken (2007, p. 239)

points out that ‘in general, the greater the

differences in levels of corporate taxes, tariffs,

duties, exchange rates, the greater will be the

incentive for the TNC to manipulate its trans-

fer prices’. TNCs have a strong incentive to

engage in transfer pricing and the very large,

highly centralized, global TNC has the great-

est potential for doing so. The problem, as

Dicken recognizes, is that it is exceptionally

difficult for governments (or researchers) to

obtain evidence about its extent.

Transfer prices are set by and within firms

and, at one level, are purely managerial, in-

volving the monitoring and control of individ-

ual cost- and profit-centres. But at another

level, the judicious use of internal transfer pri-

cing facilitates the avoidance of tax and min-

imizes the cost-of-trade barriers. Firms can

optimize their financial relations with the jur-

isdictions in which they are located and so

minimize payment oftariffs, for example, or

shift accounted profits from locations within

high-tax regimes to locations with low rates

of corporate taxation. TNCs can also get

around difficulties associated with fluctuating

exchange rates which, on the openmarket,

might tend to over- or under-pricing of prod-

ucts in transactions taking place between units

of the same TNC located in different currency

spaces. By disembedding themselves in such

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_T Final Proof page 769 31.3.2009 9:40pm Compositor Name: ARaju

TRANSFER PRICINGTRANSFER PRICING