Global value chains and human development: a class-relational framework

Benjamin Selwyn

Third World Quarterly, 2016, vol. 37, issue 10, 1768-1786

Abstract: Global Value Chain (GVC) proponents argue that regional and human development can be achieved through ‘strategic coupling’ with transnational corporations. This argument is misleading for two reasons. First, GVC abstracts firm–firm and firm–state relations from their class-relational basis, obscuring fundamental developmental processes. Second, much GVC analysis promotes linear conceptions of development. This article provides a class-relational framework for GVC analysis. The formation and functioning of GVCs and the developmental effects associated with them are products of histories of evolving, and often conflictive, class relations. A study of export fruiticulture in Northeast Brazil provides empirical support for these arguments.

Date: 2016
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DOI: 10.1080/01436597.2016.1156484

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