1. Global Value Chains or Global Poverty Chains? A new research agenda
- Author:
- Benjamin Selwyn
- Publication Date:
- 06-2016
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre for Global Political Economy, University of Sussex
- Abstract:
- 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.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, International Political Economy, Labor Issues, Inequality, and Global Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Eastern Europe, and Asia