Global Value Chains and Uneven Development

An empirical examination of the development pitfalls involving global value chains.

In institutions such as the World Bank, global value chains (GWK) are thought to offer opportunities for economic and social upgrading all over the world. However, according to Christin Bernhold, this assumption is neither theoretically nor empirically tenable.

Global Value Chains and Uneven Development presents an ideology-critical discussion of GWK research that is supported by in-depth empirical research into upgrading strategies in Argentinian grain and oilseed value chains, their class and power dynamics, and the ensuing unequal socioeconomic outcomes.

In Argentina, business associations organise themselves along agricultural value chains in order to assert particular interests, and while conditions of exploitation and the unequal geographies of capitalism may be reshaped for the benefit of a few, they are far from abolished.