Ben Selwyn
University of Sussex, Department of International Relations, Faculty Member
Can development be decolonised? The dominant form of contemporary development thinking prioritises capital accumulation and economic growth, guided, if necessary, by violent means by national elites and hegemonic states. This article... more
Can development be decolonised? The dominant form of contemporary development thinking prioritises capital accumulation and economic growth, guided, if necessary, by violent means by national elites and hegemonic states. This article recounts an early moment in the struggle over the form and content of development. It argues that in response to post-World War 2 decolonisation, W.W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth represents the modernisation and application to development thinking of supremacist norms rooted in the standard of civilisation (recolonising development). By contrast, Frantz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth proposed a "new humanist" alternative (decolonising development). However, reflecting and reinforcing the dominant ideology of development, the violence inherent in Rostow's notion of development has been whitewashed (development without violence), especially within the sub-discipline of development economics, while within various strands of development thinking Fanon's vision of development has been blackwashed (violence without development). Reclaiming Fanon's humanism requires grappling with his insistence upon revolutionary violence as necessary to overcome supremacist forms of development.
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Global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) approaches (here simply labelled GVC analysis) are part and parcel of mainstream development theory and practice. This chapter introduces and discusses... more
Global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) approaches (here simply labelled GVC analysis) are part and parcel of mainstream development theory and practice. This chapter introduces and discusses critically these approaches. It: (1) describes their utility in understanding globalizing processes; (2) traces their lineage and evolution; (3) highlights and explains their key concepts; (4) illuminates some of their limitations; and (5) identifies ways in which they can be advanced further.
Research Interests: Human Geography, Economics, Economic Geography, World Systems Analysis, Labour Process, and 13 moreInternational Political Economy, Globalisation and Development, Global and Comparative Sociology, Global Production Networks, Production economics, Critical Development Studies, Global value chain, Global Value Chains, Dependency Theory, Global Commodity Chains, Mainstream, Commodity, and Chapters
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The outbreak of Covid-19 has exacerbated many of the system’s worst aspects. In the UK, the birthplace of free wage-labour based capitalist agriculture, the pandemic has exacerbated existing food inequities. The pandemic has stimulated... more
The outbreak of Covid-19 has exacerbated many of the system’s worst aspects. In the UK, the birthplace of free wage-labour based capitalist agriculture, the pandemic has exacerbated existing food inequities. The pandemic has stimulated discussions about how to remedy the world’s corporate-dominated food system. The most popular alternative visions propose shifting production and consumption away from meat increasingly to plant-based diets produced according to agro-ecological principles. Whilst these approaches could be part of a broader solution, so far they have tended to eschew explaining the food system’s inequities in class-relational terms. This essay argues that the root problems of the contemporary food system are three-fold: (1) it is rooted in, and depends upon, the commodification of labour, food, and natural resources (including land); (2) that these commodities are subordinate to capitalism’s endless drive of exploitation-based accumulation; and (3) that the food system itself incorporates, and contributes to reproducing, these dynamics throughout the wider capitalist system. Facilitating healthy, increasingly plant-based diets should be part and parcel of a socialist agenda. What might an emergent alternative food system look like? How could it decommodify food in order to reduce labouring class market dependence while enhancing workers’ health? How could it increase workers’ democratic control over its production, distribution and consumption? How could it reduce race and gender inequalities? How could the construction of such an alternative system facilitate political alliance building amongst oppressed and exploited groups? How could it enable workers’ organizations to encroach upon the power of capital? This essay suggests that community restaurants, serving free and cheap food, represent a socialist demand that can fulfil the above criteria
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We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese... more
We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world’s largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese workers while locating them within the global economy through an assessment of the relationship between Foxconn (the largest electronics manufacturer) and Apple (one of the richest corporations). Eight researchers from Asia, Europe and North America discuss two main questions: How do tech behemoths and the Chinese state shape labor relations in transnational manufacturing? What roles can workers, public sector buyers, non-governmental organizations and consumers play in holding multinational corporations and states accountable for human rights violations and assuring the protection of worker interests? We also reflect on the possibility that national governments, the electronics industry and civil society groups can collaborate to contribute to improved ...
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The World Development Report 2020 (WDR2020) asserts that global value chains raise productivity and incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty, and proposes state policies to facilitate global value chain-based development. We deploy... more
The World Development Report 2020 (WDR2020) asserts that global value chains raise productivity and incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty, and proposes state policies to facilitate global value chain-based development. We deploy an immanent critique of WDR2020 to interrogate its claims regarding wages and working conditions. Using the Report’s own evidence, we identify contradictions in its claims, which stem from its use of comparative advantage trade theory to reconceptualize global value chain relations. This perspective predicts mutual gains between trading partners, but its core assumptions are incompatible with the realities of global value chains, in which (mostly Northern) oligopolistic lead firms capture value from (mostly Southern) suppliers and workers. We show how WDR2020 conceals these contradictions by misconstruing, inverting and ignoring evidence (particularly of labour’s agency), whilst failing to recommend redistributive measures for the unequal outcomes t...
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The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) generate a picture of a world which, despite continuing challenges, is experiencing the benefits of capitalist development. SDG goal no. 1—the ending of poverty in all its forms everywhere by... more
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) generate a picture of a world which, despite continuing challenges, is experiencing the benefits of capitalist development. SDG goal no. 1—the ending of poverty in all its forms everywhere by 2030—is widely proclaimed to be realizable. Global Capitalism is, indeed, an incredibly powerful wealth-generating system, which feeds such optimism. However, capitalism’s exploitative social relations mean that its dynamism will only benefit a minority, while its costs will be borne by the majority. This chapter provides a critical commentary on popular thinking about global development by outlining (a) the unsoundness of the World Bank’s poverty measurement methodology; (b) the processes that have generated a highly exploited and largely poor global labouring class; and (c) the anti-labour sentiments at the core of mainstream theories of development. It concludes by arguing that genuinely progressive development thinking and practice—within and potenti...
Research Interests: Social Movements, Economic Geography, Human Development Theory, Development Studies, Poverty, and 15 morePolitical Science, Poverty Analysis, Globalisation and Development, Capitalism, Labour Studies, Political Economy of Development, Marxist political economy, Global South, Critical Development Studies, Poverty Studies, Dynamism, Critical Sociology, Post Development Theory, Marxist Political Economy, and Mainstream
What might socialist development look like? Mainstream conceptions of development regard capital accumulation as the bedrock upon which to achieve human development. In these conceptions of change, labouring classes are regarded as fuel... more
What might socialist development look like? Mainstream conceptions of development regard capital accumulation as the bedrock upon which to achieve human development. In these conceptions of change, labouring classes are regarded as fuel for the development motor, which in turn justifies their exploitation and oppression. This essay asks, in contrast, how a non-exploitative socialist development strategy might be operationalised. It does so by conducting a thought experiment: Imagine that labouring classes, supported by a small-farmer/peasant sector have conquered political power in a poor country. Imagine too, that there is no immediate prospect of a socialist ascendency elsewhere in the world. What kinds of development strategies, policies and practices would and could a nascent socialist state pursue? This essay discusses the problems such a nascent socialist state would face, notes ways in which wealth distribution, even in very poor countries, can provide the basis of significan...
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How could it be the socialist development? The principal conceptions of the development consider that the accumulation of capital is the ground on which the human development can be reached. In this conceptions of change, the working... more
How could it be the socialist development? The principal conceptions of the development consider that the accumulation of capital is the ground on which the human development can be reached. In this conceptions of change, the working clases are considered fuel for the development engine, which at the same time justifies their exploitation and oppression. In contrast, how to operate a strategy of socialist development without exploitment? This article gives a plan of ten points for the sustainable socialist transformation.
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As the internationalization of monopoly capital grows, particularly through the domination of global value chains, the worldwide rate of exploitation and degree of monopoly increase as well.
Research Interests: Cultural Studies, Economic Geography, Marxism, Political Science, Capitalism, and 11 moreLabour Studies, Global Production Networks, Critical Development Studies, Global Value Chains, Neoclassical Economics, Critical Sociology, World Development, Monopoly, Monopoly Capitalism, Monthly, and GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMICS
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ABSTRACT Covid-19 has highlighted the destructiveness of modern agro-industry upon biosphere and humanity. Its contribution to environmental degradation intertwines with socio-economic inequality and labour exploitation. There are... more
ABSTRACT Covid-19 has highlighted the destructiveness of modern agro-industry upon biosphere and humanity. Its contribution to environmental degradation intertwines with socio-economic inequality and labour exploitation. There are increasing calls for a green new deal (GND) to counter these dangers. This article argues that a GND for agriculture must combat environmental degradation, social inequality and labour exploitation, rather than aim to re-boot capitalist economies. This article identifies a number of areas for discussion and political action - reorientation of state subsidies, workers' rights, agrarian reform, the decommodification of food, agroecology, possibilities for urban agriculture, the application of new technologies, and rewilding.
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This chapter discusses how economic growth is central to most thinking about development. It argues that growth is visualised across much of development studies – ranging from Liberalism, to Statism, to varieties of Marxism – in ways that... more
This chapter discusses how economic growth is central to most thinking about development. It argues that growth is visualised across much of development studies – ranging from Liberalism, to Statism, to varieties of Marxism – in ways that obscure the social (class) relations from whence it springs. These social relations are simultaneously generative of rapid economic growth, and impoverishment and inequality. Mainstream development theories, however, portray poverty as a consequence of a lack of growth, therefore justifying ever more growth, in a vicious cycle. These political economic and ideological dynamics are best explained by Marx’s theory of capitalist accumulation and exploitation. The chapter concludes by discussing alternatives to growth-based development
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Research Interests: Human Geography, Eastern European Studies, Gender Studies, Economics, Economic Geography, and 15 morePolitical Economy, Development Studies, Globalization, Poverty, Political Science, International Political Economy, Critical Geography, Political Economy of Development, Gender and Development, Applied Economics, Global Production Networks, Critical Development Studies, Labour process theory, Global Value Chains, and Critical Sociology
Research Interests: Sociology, Latin American Studies, Political Economy, Development Studies, Marxism, and 14 moreInternational Development, Anarchism, Politics, Ideology, Labour Studies, Political Economy of Development, Multidisciplinary, Sociology of Development, Critical Development Studies, Washington consensus, Latin American development, Oppression, Elite, and Latin Americans
The proliferation of global value chains is portrayed in academic and policy circles as representing new development opportunities for firms and regions in the global south. This article tests these claims by examining original material... more
The proliferation of global value chains is portrayed in academic and policy circles as representing new development opportunities for firms and regions in the global south. This article tests these claims by examining original material from non-governmental organizations’ reports and secondary sources on the garment and electronics chains in Cambodia and China, respectively. This empirical evidence suggests that these global value chains generate new forms of worker poverty. Based on these findings, the article proposes the novel Global Poverty Chain approach. The article critiques and reformulates principal concepts associated with the Global Value Chain approach – of value-added, rent and chain governance – and challenges a core assumption prevalent within Global Value Chain analysis: that workers’ low wages are a function of their employment in low productivity industries. Instead, it shows that (1) many supplier firms in the global south are as, or more, productive than their e...
Research Interests: Industrial Sociology, Human Geography, Economics, Economic Geography, Development Studies, and 15 moreMarxism, Corporate Governance, International Political Economy, Cambodia, Globalisation and Development, Capitalism, Global and Comparative Sociology, China studies, Exploitation, Global Production Networks, Imperialism, Business and Management, Critical Development Studies, Global value chain, and Global Value Chains
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Abstract Much development theory is based upon elite-led conceptions of social change. Elite development theory (EDT) conceptualises ‘the poor’ as human inputs into or, at best, junior partners within elite-led development processes. This... more
Abstract Much development theory is based upon elite-led conceptions of social change. Elite development theory (EDT) conceptualises ‘the poor’ as human inputs into or, at best, junior partners within elite-led development processes. This elitism contributes to the continual (re)framing of the poor as passive beneficiaries of elite policy, and legitimates economic exploitation of the poor. These claims are illustrated by discussing a number of EDT traditions – the Washington/Post-Washington Consensus, statist political economy, modernisation Marxism and varieties of pro-poor growth. As an alternative to EDT the article argues for a conception and practice of ‘labour-centred development’.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Human Geography, Economic Geography, Political Economy, Development Studies, and 12 moreInternational Development, Political Science, International Political Economy, Globalisation and Development, Political Economy of Development, Critical international political economy, Sociology of Development, Critical Development Studies, Class Analysis, Public Administration and Policy, Critical Development Theory, and Music Information Dynamics
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Rapidly expanding world fruiticulture markets provide developing country producers with new income opportunities and much development literature and policy is orientated towards facilitating export production in these countries. However,... more
Rapidly expanding world fruiticulture markets provide developing country producers with new income opportunities and much development literature and policy is orientated towards facilitating export production in these countries. However, it has been widely observed that the global retail revolution is accelerating the exclusion of small producers from export markets and (increasingly) from many domestic retail chains due to rising entry
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Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and... more
Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodification against exploitation, in diagnosing the problems of capitalist expansion. We suggest that by juxtaposing these two moments, Polanyi not only misses out on a crucial arena of capitalist activity (exploitation), but also undermines his own explication of processes of commodification. This has deleterious consequences for his understanding of the prevalence of poverty under capitalism. It also means that his vision of social transformation and of socialism is profoundly different, and potentially antithetical, to that of Marx. We suggest that for Polanyi's conception of de-commodification to gain greater traction it needs to be combined with Marx's analysis of exploitation and class struggle.
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The nature, subject matter and future direction of International Political Economy has been opened up for debate following interventions by Benjamin Cohen, John Hobson and special issues of the Review of International Political Economy... more
The nature, subject matter and future direction of International Political Economy has been opened up for debate following interventions by Benjamin Cohen, John Hobson and special issues of the Review of International Political Economy and New Political Economy. Most contributors to the debate are dissatisfied with the current state of International Political Economy and desire to identify the ‘Big Questions’ of the 21st century. This article argues, however, that all contributors miss the ‘Really Big Question’ of the 21st century: the rise of a planetary labouring class of over 3 billion (and counting), living, for the most part, in poverty or near-poverty. While this class’s existence is not new (although its size is), International Political Economy’s ignorance of it is as old as the discipline’s institutional formation. This article shows that mainstream International Political Economy’s sidelining of class relations disables it from explaining the global systemic transformation...
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Over the last two decades the global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) frameworks have facilitated valuable research into contemporary global capitalism. However, much of this research has... more
Over the last two decades the global commodity chain, global value chain and global production network (GCC/GVC/GPN) frameworks have facilitated valuable research into contemporary global capitalism. However, much of this research has paid insufficient attention to work and workers. Recently, the concept of social upgrading, with a strong emphasis on workers' conditions, has been advanced by leading GCC/GVC/GPN theorists, as a potential remedy to the previous lacunae. This article welcomes this development, but also argues that the social upgrading concept represents an elite comprehension of relations between capital, the state and labour. It is argued that the concept, derived from the International Labour Organization's Decent Work Agenda, denies the reality of labour's exploitation by capital and is therefore only partially equipped to explain the existence of indecent work. The Decent Work Agenda and the social upgrading concept expect improvements in work to be del...
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One of the main effects (I will not say purposes) of orthodox traditional economics was…a plan for explaining to the privileged class that their position was morally right and was necessary for the welfare of society.
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Since the early 2000s, public interest in development, poverty and inequality in the Global South has grown. A whole genre of popular books on Development Studies thus emerged, explaining the pitfalls and promises of various schemes to... more
Since the early 2000s, public interest in development, poverty and inequality in the Global South has grown. A whole genre of popular books on Development Studies thus emerged, explaining the pitfalls and promises of various schemes to the layperson. Lecturers teaching undergraduates about development often find students opinions already shaped by these popular texts and rehearsing the orthodox positions of the discipline. First-year discussions might cite climate and environmental factors outlined in Jared Diamond's (2013) Guns, Germs, and Steel to explain why sub-Saharan Africa remains trapped in poverty. Economically inclined students latch on to James A. Robinson and Daron Acemoglu's (2012) claims that nations without 'open' institutions to reward innovation will fail to develop, no matter what their initial endowments. Those up to date on international development practice will have read Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo's Poor Economics (2011) and argue that individuals living in poverty only need a 'nudge' towards market-supporting behaviours. But since Gilbert Rist's seminal The History of Development: From Western Origins to Global Faith ([1997] 2019), there have been comparatively few heterodox books on development for the non-specialist. Ben Selwyn's The Struggle for Development (2017) addresses this deficit. Selwyn has already made a considerable contribution to the academic literature on development. His early work critically engaged with the Global Commodity Chains (GCC) approach via a study of the export grape sector in Northern Brazil (2012). Selwyn argued that agricultural workers were not passive subjects of capitalist development, but won concessions from employers by organizing for struggle. He later developed this theme into a distinction between 'capital-centred' development aimed at increasing accumulation, and 'labour-centred' development that improved workers' wellbeing (Selwyn, 2016). The Struggle for Development is a readable book of six chapters outlining Marxist contributions to understanding development as a process defined by class struggle. Similar to Poor Economics or Why Nations Fail, the text is not intended to advance a whole new framework of analysis, but to make key ideas accessible to a popular audience. Selwyn begins by dispelling the myth that global poverty has reduced thanks to marketled development under neoliberal globalization. The author describes the formation of an 'anti-poverty consensus' (APC) in the mainstream of development thinking, which sees
The Struggle for Development makes a compelling case for a labour-led development in our crisis-ridden times. Drawing insights from Marxist intellectual traditions and feminist theories, Benjamin Selwyn advances a social relational... more
The Struggle for Development makes a compelling case for a labour-led development in our crisis-ridden times. Drawing insights from Marxist intellectual traditions and feminist theories, Benjamin Selwyn advances a social relational conception of class to analyse the ongoing struggle for human development (p. 14, italics in original). "Class" and "non-class" forces are diverse and intersectional. Going beyond the narrowly defined productivist paradigm, Selwyn highlights that "class relations of exploitation (re)produce themselves via myriad forms of hierarchical and oppressive social relations, such as gender, race and sexuality" (p. 15). The intertwined spaces of production and social reproduction are controlled to drive capitalist development, rather than towards human wellbeing for all, despite fierce challenges from workers and their families as well as supporters in globalised development. The book comprises six chapters. Chapter 1 challenges the assumption of economic and social growth through global economic integration as widely shared by national governments, businesses and transnational institutions such as the World Bank, the United Nations and the International Labour Organization. Fundamentally, capitalism is a dynamic system of exploitation. The pathways to attracting foreign investment and further opening of domestic markets with access to land and workers, particularly in poor developing countries, have turned out to be highly controversial if not deadly destructive. As evidence shows, the premise of neo-liberal development is based on endless capital accumulation and unconstrained market competition at the expense of workers and the environment. The construction of a "win-win" scenario by elites for humankind in the Global North and South is, in the perceptive understanding of Selwyn, a "big lie". Chapter 2 elaborates on the coexistence of immense wealth and massive poverty amid capitalist expansion around the globe. Over the past decades, the World Bank has slightly adjusted the International Poverty Line to US$1.90 (Purchasing Power Parity per day), reflecting a level of consumption that the Bank considers to be the dividing line between extreme poverty (below the line) and poverty (above the line). But this benchmark is inherently flawed and inhumanely low. The economists ignore the context in which low-income workers and their families are desperately making their living, such as engaging in life-threatening casual jobs and cutting their expenditure on food and clothing to barely survive. The line demarcating the "poor" and "non-poor" is simply a monetary figure. If it was linked to an individual's basic needs, then it would be much, much higher than US$1.90 a day. Moreover, women workers are generally undervalued. At home, women take the double shift by supporting their spouses and raising their children (the labourers of the next generation) but their labour is not paid. Gender-blind proponents of mainstream development economics go so far as to claim a rising global "middle class", thus sustaining the myth of capitalist
We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world's largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese... more
We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world's largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese workers while locating them within the global economy through an assessment of the relationship between Foxconn (the largest electronics manufacturer) and Apple (one of the richest corporations). Eight researchers from Asia, Europe and North America discuss two main questions: How do tech behemoths and the Chinese state shape labor relations in transnational manufacturing? What roles can workers, public sector buyers, nongovernmental organizations and consumers play in holding multinational corporations and states accountable for human rights violations and assuring the protection of worker interests? We also reflect on the possibility that national governments, the electronics industry and civil society groups can collaborate to contribute to improved labor rights in China and the world.
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Research Interests: Critical Theory, Political Sociology, International Relations, Political Philosophy, Development Studies, and 15 moreFeminist Theory, Qualitative methodology, Feminist Philosophy, Political Science, Economic Theory, International Political Economy, Securitization, Michel Foucault, Biopolitics, Empire, Agamben, Imperialism, Negri, Public Administration and Policy, and New Political Economy
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This is an excellent book. It combines a critical introduction to key contributors to the political economy of development with an indispensable account and critique of current pro-capitalist global development, and advances a healthy... more
This is an excellent book. It combines a critical introduction to key contributors to the political economy of development with an indispensable account and critique of current pro-capitalist global development, and advances a healthy 'labour-centred' alternative. It is clearly and succinctly written, and based on thorough reading of key historical and current texts in development studies, and a good comparative knowledge of development situations around the world-notably in Asia and Latin America. It is very highly recommended. The book opens with the 'central paradox of the contemporary world': 'the simultaneous presence of wealth on an unprecedented scale, and mass poverty', and takes immediate issue with the liberal ideology of international financial institutions and business and political leaders that presents exclusion from global capitalism as the source of poverty, and inclusion as the source of opportunity for development. Following Marx and Engels, Selwyn argues that "while capitalism's productive dynamism represents a potential source of real human development, capitalism's social relations, in particular the non-democratic ownership of wealth and means of creating wealth by a tiny percentage of the world's population, preclude such possibilities" (4-5). While capitalist states and markets have shown themselves capable of delivering rapid rates of economic growth, technological innovation and wealth generation, they necessarily do so by reinforcing and perpetuating the systemic exploitation and repression of the majority of propertyless workers. Even with the elimination of below-market wages, excessive working hours and demeaning conditions, as sought by the ILO (or, we might add, child labour, forced labour, and the labour of trafficked workers, condemned in the UNDP's Human Development Report 2015: Work for Human Development), the relationship between capital and labour remains inherently unequal, antagonistic and exploitative. It follows that the fluctuating balance of class power (the capacity of workers to resist) is the key variable in development processes (explaining why workers are sometimes able to make 'progressive' gains), albeit one that is hidden from view if capitalism is presented as the solution to impoverishment. Against this background Selwyn draws attention to the acute novelty of the circumstances of the last half century, in which the global labouring class has grown from around 1 billion to over 3 billion (a third of them living on less than US$2 per day), the income gap beween the richest and poorest quintiles (or fifths) of the global population has more than doubled, and global wealth has shifted enormously not just to the top 1 per cent, but to the top 0.01 per cent. Selwyn argues that because exploitation is inbuilt and immiseration is increasingly a requirement of exploitation under contemporary globalization, we should expect resistance to be a feature of relations between globalized capital and labour (and incidentally, the international organizations such as the OECD, the World Bank, the ILO and the UNDP do expect it, and devote their best efforts to keeping it at bay). "Under such circumstances," Selwyn argues, "it behoves progressive social scientists, thinkers and activists to consider the
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Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis is part and parcel of mainstream development discourse and policy. Supplier firms are encouraged, with state support, to ‘link-up’ with trans-national lead firms. Such arrangements, it is argued, will... more
Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis is part and parcel of mainstream
development discourse and policy. Supplier firms are encouraged, with
state support, to ‘link-up’ with trans-national lead firms. Such
arrangements, it is argued, will reduce poverty and contribute to
meaningful socio-economic development. This portrayal of global
political economic relations represents a ‘problem-solving’
interpretation of reality. This article proposes an alternative analytical
approach rooted in ‘critical theory’ which reformulates the GVC
approach to better investigate and explain the reproduction of global
poverty, inequality and divergent forms of national development. It
suggests re-labelling GVC as Global Poverty Chain (GPC) analysis. GPC’s
are examined in the textiles, food, and high-tech sectors. The article
details how workers in these chains are systematically paid less than
their subsistence costs, how trans-national corporations use their global
monopoly power to capture the lion’s share of value created within
these chains, and how these relations generate processes of
immiserating growth. The article concludes by considering how to
extend GPC analysis.
development discourse and policy. Supplier firms are encouraged, with
state support, to ‘link-up’ with trans-national lead firms. Such
arrangements, it is argued, will reduce poverty and contribute to
meaningful socio-economic development. This portrayal of global
political economic relations represents a ‘problem-solving’
interpretation of reality. This article proposes an alternative analytical
approach rooted in ‘critical theory’ which reformulates the GVC
approach to better investigate and explain the reproduction of global
poverty, inequality and divergent forms of national development. It
suggests re-labelling GVC as Global Poverty Chain (GPC) analysis. GPC’s
are examined in the textiles, food, and high-tech sectors. The article
details how workers in these chains are systematically paid less than
their subsistence costs, how trans-national corporations use their global
monopoly power to capture the lion’s share of value created within
these chains, and how these relations generate processes of
immiserating growth. The article concludes by considering how to
extend GPC analysis.