https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.2307%2F3343168.pdf

Development as Freedom

This article builds a theoretical framework to help explain governance patterns in global value chains It draws on three streams of literature ‐ transaction costs economics, production networks, and technological capability and firm-level learning ‐ to identify three variables that play a large role in determining how global value chains are governed and change These are: (1) the complexity of transactions, (2) the ability to codify transactions, and (3) the capabilities in the supply-base The theory generates five types of global value chain governance ‐ hierarchy, captive, relational, modular, and market ‐ which range from high to low levels of explicit coordination and power asymmetry The article highlights the dynamic and overlapping nature of global value chain governance through four brief industry case studies: bicycles, apparel, horticulture and electronics

/pdf/the-governance-of-global-value-chains-3dmchifo7i.pdf

The governance of global value chains

A Treatise on the Family. G. S. Becker. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1981. Gary Becker is one of the most famous and influential economists of the second half of the 20th century, a fervent contributor to and expounder of the University of Chicago free-market philosophy, and winner of the 1992 Nobel Prize in economics. Although any book with the word "treatise" in its title is clearly intended to have an impact, one coming from someone as brilliant and controversial as Becker certainly had such a lofty goal. It has received many article-length reviews in several disciplines (Ben-Porath, 1982; Bergmann, 1995; Foster, 1993; Hannan, 1982), which is one measure of its scholarly importance, and yet its impact is, I think, less than it may have initially appeared, especially for scholars with substantive interests in the family. This book is, its title notwithstanding, more about economics and the economic approach to behavior than about the family. In the first sentence of the preface, Becker writes "In this book, I develop an economic or rational choice approach to the family." Lest anyone accuse him of focusing on traditional (i.e., material) economics topics, such as family income, poverty, and labor supply, he immediately emphasizes that those topics are not his focus. "My intent is more ambitious: to analyze marriage, births, divorce, division of labor in households, prestige, and other non-material behavior with the tools and framework developed for material behavior." Indeed, the book includes chapters on many of these issues. One chapter examines the principles of the efficient division of labor in households, three analyze marriage and divorce, three analyze various child-related issues (fertility and intergenerational mobility), and others focus on broader family issues, such as intrafamily resource allocation. His analysis is not, he believes, constrained by time or place. His intention is "to present a comprehensive analysis that is applicable, at least in part, to families in the past as well as the present, in primitive as well as modern societies, and in Eastern as well as Western cultures." His tone is profoundly conservative and utterly skeptical of any constructive role for government programs. There is a clear sense of how much better things were in the old days of a genderbased division of labor and low market-work rates for married women. Indeed, Becker is ready and able to show in Chapter 2 that such a state of affairs was efficient and induced not by market or societal discrimination (although he allows that it might exist) but by small underlying household productivity differences that arise primarily from what he refers to as "complementarities" between caring for young children while carrying another to term. Most family scholars would probably find that an unconvincingly simple explanation for a profound and complex phenomenon. What, then, is the salient contribution of Treatise on the Family? It is not literally the idea that economics could be applied to the nonmarket sector and to family life because Becker had already established that with considerable success and influence. At its core, microeconomics is simple, characterized by a belief in the importance of prices and markets, the role of self-interested or rational behavior, and, somewhat less centrally, the stability of preferences. It was Becker's singular and invaluable contribution to appreciate that the behaviors potentially amenable to the economic approach were not limited to phenomenon with explicit monetary prices and formal markets. Indeed, during the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, he did undeniably important and pioneering work extending the domain of economics to such topics as labor market discrimination, fertility, crime, human capital, household production, and the allocation of time. Nor is Becker's contribution the detailed analyses themselves. Many of them are, frankly, odd, idiosyncratic, and off-putting. …

A Treatise on the Family

World Investment Report

Humphrey J. and Schmitz H. (2002) How does insertion in global value chains affect upgrading in industrial clusters?, Reg. Studies 36, 1017–1027. What is the scope for local upgrading strategies where producers operate in global value chains? The literature on industrial clusters emphasizes the role of inter-firm co-operation and local institutions in enabling upgrading. The value chain literature focuses on the role of global buyers and chain governance in defining upgrading opportunities. This paper argues that clusters are inserted into global value chains in different ways, and that this has consequences for enabling or disabling local-level upgrading efforts. It pays particular attention to the position of developing country firms selling to large, global buyers.

How does insertion in global value chains affect upgrading in industrial clusters

This article examines the social effects of contract farming of export horticulture among smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. During the 1980s and 1990s, contracting was popularized by donors and governments alike as a way to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for self–employment in rural areas. Considerable research has documented the tensions in social relations that emerge in such cases, giving rise to gendered struggles over land, labour, and income in the face of new commodity systems. This article highlights similar tendencies. It suggests that men’s failure to compensate their wives for horticulture production has given rise to a string of witchcraft allegations and acts, as the wealth engendered by horticultural commodities comes up against cultural norms of marital obligation. While witchcraft accusations can expose women to risks of social alienation and financial deprivation, witchcraft nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through which women can level intra–household disparities and, more broadly, challenge the legitimacy of social practice. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, and through which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition: The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

It was not so long ago that mangoes, papaya and snow peas evoked images of tropical climes and exotic peoples. Recently, however, the consumption of so-called luxury fruits and vegetables has elicited a different sort of imagery. Far from the lure of seductive landscapes, today’s consumer is confronted with haunting images of toxic fields, child slavery and the African poor. Such images are part of a new morality of consumption, where consumers, NGOs, trade unions and global supermarkets aspire to ‘save’ the African worker from the downside of globalization. This article explores the ways in which Kenya’s highly valuable vegetable trade has become the field on which notions of justice, economic rights and African development are played out. Based on archival research and consumer interviews, it focusses specifically on how the ethical turn of UK consumers (and the retailers’ branding of this sensibility) is rooted in an older legacy, whereby 19th-century liberal considerations of duty, morality and progress inhabited the agenda of the late colonial state. The article suggests that, in both cases, African labor is an arena in which discourses of justice are played out, as a consuming public (re)constitute the African worker as an object of their duty and obligation.

Fields of Obligation: Rooting ethical sourcing in Kenyan horticulture

Cut flower production is now a major part of the Kenyan economy, but the country's success in supplying European markets has brought with it increased attention to the industry's social and environmental impacts. Driven by the various concerns of consumers, retailers, European regulators and civil society organisations, flower growers have to comply with a number of codes of conduct. This report examines how such codes address employment conditions in the industry, particularly as this relates to the experiences of women who comprise the majority of the workforce. Particular issues raised by women workers include: employment insecurity; sexual harassment; intimidating complaints procedures; lack of access to adequate maternity leave; and limited awareness of rights and codes. However, there are various actions that different stakeholders can take to improve the situation of women in the industry. In particular, it is crucial to consider the gender-specific impacts of the industry and gender-sensitive solutions, both of which require not only capacity building amongst employers and workers, but also an understanding of how improving labour conditions relates to productivity and quality.

Gender, Rights and Participation in the Kenya Cut Flower Industry (Natural Resources Institute Working Paper No. 2768)

In recent years bottom-of-the-pyramid (BoP) models have emerged as a popular strategy for offering poor women the opportunity to earn an income by distributing goods and services door-to-door. In this article, we explore one recent example of BoP entrepreneurship: the CARE Bangladesh Rural Sales Program (RSP). The RSP is a partnership between CARE and several multinational and domestic companies that seeks to provide poor women with an opportunity to participate in new forms of economic activity, offering them a prospect to earn an independent income and provide a better future for their family by selling a mix of multinational and locally produced consumer goods across rural Bangladesh. Our research found that the RSP has opened up new pathways of empowerment for some marginalised women in a context of considerable socioeconomic and cultural constraints, yet whether such schemes will have traction as a model for economic empowerment over the long term remains an open question.

Catherine Dolan

Papers

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition: The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

Fields of Obligation: Rooting ethical sourcing in Kenyan horticulture

Gender, Rights and Participation in the Kenya Cut Flower Industry (Natural Resources Institute Working Paper No. 2768)

Shampoo, saris, and SIM Cards: Seeking Entrepreneurial Futures at the Bottom of the Pyramid

Equatorial Rose: The Kenyan-European Cut Flower Supply Chain