Geographies of production I: Global production and uneven development

Abstract

Serial crises in the global economy have spurred renewed debate over contemporary transformations in geographies of uneven development. Global production network (GPN) studies have not been inured to this trend; indeed, in both geography and development sociology, a variety of approaches have emerged to grasp the multi-scaled, relational process of uneven development through the lens of global production. This progress report parses three of these: firm-centric scholarship that increasingly incorporates disinvestment and devaluation as an empirical ‘dark side’ to global production network participation; Marxist approaches that explore the evolving relationship between global inequality and global production; and neo-Marxist studies of regional conjunctures that highlight the constraints, contingencies and colonial legacies shaping uneven development in both long-standing and new ways. While their epistemological differences and normative assumptions are mostly incommensurable, more dialogue across these positions is nonetheless warranted if scholars are to grasp the vicissitudes upending received patterns of uneven development and portending uncertain futures.

Rethinking Path Creation: A Geographical Political Economy Approach

“…Whilst GPN research views strategic coupling as occurring solely between such assets and GPN actors, here this relationship is redefined to refer to the dynamic processes by which regional actors seek to harness and match regional and extra-regional assets to multiple mechanisms of path creation, principally, diversification, transplantation and indigenous creation. This broadens the concept of strategic coupling beyond GPNs and transplantation, based on the understanding that path creation depends on the matching of regional assets to a number of mechanisms that connect different actors, including local SMEs and institutions that may not be active within GPNs, to broader processes of uneven economic development.The positioning of regions within wider political and economic relations highlights what might be termed the 'dark side' of path creation(Phelps et al 2018;Werner 2018). There are three principal dimensions of this.…”

Value distribution and markets for social justice in global value chains: Interdependence relationships and government policy

“…Nor is it in tune with a global production system that transcends national borders and operates on multiple geographic scales, whereby the association of value to particular locations is obscured by global ambiguities (Baldwin, 2016 ; Mayer & Gereffi, 2010 ). Such a system requires an approach that encompasses the system as a whole, and is attentive to the fact that amending distortions in one country may accentuate them in others (McGrath, 2018 ; Werner, 2019 ). The framework I develop below reflects on these principles and changes the focus from developmental and social goals of individual countries to a balanced distribution of value in the GVC as a whole.…”

Sonderwirtschaftszonen in der globalen und europäischen politischen Ökonomie – Katalysatoren fragmentierender Entwicklung

“…Problemlagen viertens auch die weitgehend widerlegte Annahme, dass die technologische Modernisierung der Arbeits-und Produktionsprozesse vor Ort (das industrielle "upgrading") systematisch auch ein soziales upgrading nach sich zieht, also zu nachhaltig verbesserten Arbeits-, Lebens und Einkommensbedingungen führt (Milberg & Amengual 2008: 20ff.). Stattdessen wird etwas anderes festgestellt: Einerseits findet durchaus bedeutende technologische Modernisierung statt, viele Produktionsstätten sind auch im Globalen und europäischen Süden auf dem neuesten Stand, allerdings führt dies sozial zu immer neuen, dynamischen Aufspaltungen der Belegschaften, mit eventueller sozialer Besserstellung für einige, aber anhaltend schlechten oder gar noch weiter verschlech-terten Arbeitsbedingungen für das Gros, vor allem der Produktionsarbeiter/innen (Bair & Werner 2015;Werner 2018;Selwyn 2019). Dass bedeutet letztlich, dass die Behauptung einer regionalen und nationalen sozioökonomischen "Entwicklung" durch Kapitalmodernisierung prinzipiell hinterfragt werden muss (McGrath 2017).…”