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Global value chains (GVCs) are a key feature of the global economy in the 21st century. They show how international investment and trade create cross-border production networks that link countries, firms and workers around the globe. This Handbook describes how GVCs arise and vary across industries and countries, and how they have evolved over time in response to economic and political forces. With chapters written by leading interdisciplinary scholars, the Handbook unpacks the key concepts of GVC governance and upgrading, and explores policy implications for advanced and developing economies alike. p.p1 {margin: 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px 0.0px; font: 10.0px Arial}
The interaction of sustainability governance and global value chains has crucial implications the world over. When it comes to sustainability the last decade has witnessed the birth of hybrid forms of governance where business, civil society and public actors interact at different levels, leading to a focus on concepts of legitimacy within multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). Based in over 15 years of theoretical engagement and field research, Business, Power and Sustainability draws from both labour-intensive value chains, such as in the agro-food sector (coffee, wine, fish, biofuels, palm oil), and from capital-intensive value chains such as in shipping and aviation, to discuss how sustai...
Can developing countries trade their way out of poverty? International trade has grown dramatically in the last two decades in the global economy, and trade is an important source of revenue in developing countries. Yet, many low-income countries have been producing and exporting tropical commodities for a long time. They are still poor. This book is a major analytical contribution to understanding commodity production and trade, as well as putting forward policy-relevant suggestions for ‘solving’ the commodity problem. Through the study of the global value chain for coffee, the authors recast the ‘development problem’ for countries relying on commodity exports in entirely new ways. ...
Africa's role in the global economy is evolving as a result of new corporate strategies, changing trade regulations, and innovative ways of overseeing the globalized production and distribution of goods both within Africa and internationally. African participants in the global economy, now faced with demands for higher levels of performance and quality, have generated occasional successes but also many failures. Peter Gibbon and Stefano Ponte describe the central processes that are integrating some African firms into the global economy while at the same time marginalizing others. They show the effects of these processes on African countries, and the farms and firms within them. The authors use an innovative combination of global value chain analysis—which links production, trade, and consumption—and convention theory, an approach to understanding the conduct of business. In doing so, Gibbon and Ponte present a timely overview of the economic challenges that lay ahead in Africa, and point to ways to best address them.
“Has there ever been a better reason to shop?” asks an ad for the Product RED American Express card, telling members who use the card that buying “cappuccinos or cashmere” will help to fight AIDS in Africa. Cofounded in 2006 by the rock star Bono, Product RED has been a particularly successful example of a new trend in celebrity-driven international aid and development, one explicitly linked to commerce, not philanthropy. In Brand Aid, Lisa Ann Richey and Stefano Ponte offer a deeply informed and stinging critique of “compassionate consumption.” Campaigns like Product RED and its precursors, such as Lance Armstrong’s Livestrong and the pink-ribbon project in support of breast c...
The interaction of sustainability governance and global value chains has crucial implications the world over. When it comes to sustainability the last decade has witnessed the birth of hybrid forms of governance where business, civil society and public actors interact at different levels, leading to a focus on concepts of legitimacy within multi-stakeholder initiatives (MSIs). Based in over 15 years of theoretical engagement and field research, Business, Power and Sustainability draws from both labour-intensive value chains, such as in the agro-food sector (coffee, wine, fish, biofuels, palm oil), and from capital-intensive value chains such as in shipping and aviation, to discuss how sustai...
In this open access book, Stefano Ponte offers a theoretically ambitious, empirically rich interrogation of the notions of value at play in global value chains, using the international wine industry as an exemplar, that ultimately amounts to a new and fundamental critique contemporary capitalism and the inequalities it engenders. Unlike existing work that takes the “value” in “global value chains” for granted, this study explicitly engages with processes of value creation, appropriation and redistribution and the different forms of power that underpin them. These dynamics take place through a variety of material, symbolic and experiential undertakings that combine tangible and intang...
Taking South Africa as an important case study of the challenges of structural transformation, Structural Transformation in South Africa offers a new micro-meso level framework and evidence linking country-specific and global dynamics of change, with a focus on the current challenges and opportunities faced by middle-income countries. Detailed analyses of industry groupings and interests in South Africa reveal the complex set of interlocking country-specific factors which have hampered structural transformation over several decades, but also the emerging productive areas and opportunities for structural change. The structural transformation trajectory of South Africa presents a unique countr...
What global shifts in markets and power mean for the politics and governance of sustainability. In recent years, major shifts in global markets from North to South have created a new geography of trade and consumption, particularly in the agricultural sector. How this shift affects the governance of sustainability, and thus the future of the planet, is the pressing topic Philip Schleifer takes up in this book. The processes of twenty-first-century globalization are fundamentally changing the politics and governance of commodity production, Schleifer argues, with profound implications for the environment in the food-producing countries of the Global South. At the center of Schleifer's study a...
EPUB and EPDF available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. Today, production processes have become fragmented with a range of activities divided among firms and workers across borders. These global value chains are being strongly promoted by international organisations, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, but social and political backlash is mounting in a growing variety of forms. This ambitious volume brings together academics and activists from Europe to address the social and environmental imbalances of global production. Thinking creatively about how to reform the current economic system, this book will be essential reading for those interested in building sustainable alternatives at local, regional and global levels.