Poverty chains and global capitalism

Abstract

The proliferation of global value chains (GVCs) 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 GVCs generate new forms of worker poverty. Based on these findings the article proposes the new Global Poverty Chain (GP) approach. The study critiques and reformulates principal concepts associated with the GVC approach-of value-added, rent and chain governanceand challenges a core assumption prevalent within GVC analysis: that workers' low wages are a function of their employment in low productivity sectors. Instead it shows that 1) many supplier firms in the global south are as, or more, productive than their equivalent's in the global north; 2) that (often predominantly female) workers in these industries are super exploited (paid wages below their subsistence requirements); and that 3) chain governance represents a lead firm value-capturing strategy, which intensifies worker exploitation.

What Are the Implications of Globalization on Sustainability?—A Comprehensive Study

“…In the present scenario, globalization's outreach has encompassed more and more nations and people, making it untamable. For example, due to production globalization many millions of Chinese obtained jobs, but there was a less than expected trickle-down effect in their well-being due to uneven distribution of income which continued to be extremely concentrated [14][15][16].…”

Big tech, knowledge predation and the implications for development

“…Mobilizing this concept in the intellectual monopoly context, Rikap (2020) reconceived predation as a direct production relation of spoliation where a corporation exercises its superiority by planning the activities of other organizations. Different authors have provided evidence of leader corporations' capacity to appropriate value within production networks (Selwyn 2019;Smith 2016;Bergvall-Kareborn and Howcroft 2013;Kraemer, Linden, and Dedrick 2011). What has been overlooked, and we contribute to uncovering, is that leader corporations also predate knowledge from the innovation networks they dominate.…”

Female labor activists in the German anarcho-syndicalist union (FAU) and the women's strike movement: Class mobilization against exploitation

“…As an analytical category, this concept has never acquired the central role in academia that it has in the reality of the capitalist mode of production. Foreseeing its academic marginality, I will draw on philosophical and social theory works on exploitation (Buchanan, ; Crocker, ; Haubner, ; Marx & Engels, ; Roberts, ; Selwyn, ; Smith, ; Wertheimer, ; Wood, ) to analyze the motivations for resistance and labor activism of contemporary female activists and other groups in contemporary capitalist societies. Before understanding how the feminist social movement actors use exploitation as a mobilization category, I try to discuss the definition of the term in a broader sense.…”

“…This relationship often rests upon and/or gives rise to the physical degradation of the worker . (Selwyn, : p. 3)This is a very precise definition of exploitation under capitalism and clearly focuses on the economic dimension of value production and extraction. For being able to use the term of exploitation to describe the unequal relationships in society, I want to propose a broader perspective by drawing on the definition of Tine Haubner.…”

“…This relationship often rests upon and/or gives rise to the physical degradation of the worker . (Selwyn, : p. 3)…”