This article outlines a framework for the analysis of economic integration and its relation to the asymmetries of economic and social development. Consciously breaking with state-centric forms of social science, it argues for a research agenda that is more adequate to the exigencies and consequences of globalization than has traditionally been the case in 'development studies'. Drawing on earlier attempts to analyse the cross-border activities of firms, their spatial configurations and developmental consequences, the article moves beyond these by proposing the framework of the 'global production network' (GPN). It explores the conceptual elements involved in this framework in some detail and then turns to sketch a stylized example of a GPN. The article concludes with a brief indication of the benefits that could be delivered by research informed by GPN analysis.

/pdf/global-production-networks-and-the-analysis-of-economic-23jorvvms7.pdf

Global production networks and the analysis of economic development

Global production networks (GPN) are organizational platforms through which actors in different regional and national economies compete and cooperate for a greater share of value creation, transformation, and capture through geographically dispersed economic activity. Existing conceptual frameworks on global value chains (GVC) and what we term GPN 1.0 tend to under-theorize the origins and dynamics of these organizational platforms and to overemphasize their governance typologies (e.g., modular, relational, and captive modes in GVC theory) or analytical categories (e.g., power and embeddedness in GPN 1.0). Building on this expanding literature, our article aims to contribute toward the reframing of existing GPN-GVC debates and the development of a more dynamic theory of global production networks that can better explain the emergence of different firm-specific activities, strategic network effects, and territorial outcomes in the global economy. It is part of a wider initiative—GPN 2.0 in short—th...

Toward a Dynamic Theory of Global Production Networks

In this article we analyse the location patterns of firms that provide specialized advanced producer services (APS) to international commodity chains that move through seaports. Such activities can take place in world cities or in port cities. The analysis of APS location patterns in port cities provides a good opportunity to integrate the study of world cities into the framework of Global Production Networks. Based upon our empirical findings, we conclude that while port-related APS activities predominantly follow the world city hierarchy, a number of port cities stand out because they act as nodes in global commodity flows and as centres of advanced services related to shipping and port activities. Based on these empirical findings we address future avenues of research.

/pdf/integrating-world-cities-into-production-networks-the-case-1y9om503d0.pdf

Integrating world cities into production networks : the case of port cities

This paper rethinks the trajectories of regional development in an era of economic globalization. It argues for a more dynamic perspective on regional development that must incorporate both endogenous regional assets and strategic imperatives in global industries. Premised on theoretical advances in research into global production networks (GPNs) and global value chains (GVCs), a dynamic perspective of strategic coupling is further developed and reconstructed in this paper to demonstrate how regional development can result from the interaction effects of these regional assets and GPN logics. This perspective also points to different modes of strategic coupling for understanding the changing pathways of regional development. Several key issues for regional policy and practice are outlined to substantiate this call for a shift towards a dynamic and multi-scalar view of regional development in today's global economy.

Regional development in the global economy: A dynamic perspective of strategic coupling in global production networks

Global integration heightens the cyclical crises of capitalism by incorporating the subsistence sectors of advanced and peripheral economies. World trends show a contraction in industrial production, the rise of unemployment, an increase in military spending and decline in social welfare, a reversal of capital flows from developing countries to developed economies, and a worldwide drop in real wages. The impact of these trends on communities in Mexico, Bolivia, and the United States where the author has done fieldwork is assessed in relation to current economic crises and the social movements that respond to them. The author shows that collective action to oppose the devastating effect on subsistence is more prevalent in marginal economies that are just beginning to experience the effect of capital penetration than in the industrial wastelands of developed countries. Theories of the crisis neglect those arenas where resistance and protest are most active: the urban barrios struggling for food and water, the rural laborers forced off of their land base, and the hunters and cultivators of the jungle. Luxemburg's thesis asserting the importance of the subsistence sector in capital accumulation acquires increasing significance at a time when those economies are threatened with extinction. Expanding the notion of subsistence production to include nonwage work allows us to theorize the significance of social reproduction in crisis conditions. THE INTEGRATION OF PEASANTS AND WORKERS throughout the world in a global economy exacerbates the cyclical crises of capitalism as more people are affected by changes in employment levels and fewer resources in subsistence economies are available to cushion the impact. These recurrent cycles are further compounded by an environmental crisis caused by intensive agricultural practices and widespread exploitation of forests, fossil fuels, and mineral resources, depleting wild fauna and fish that once fed millions. The crisis is reaching alarming proportions as capitalist enterprises expand the frontiers of investment into new areas that offer more promising returns. Hunter-gatherers and cultivators in the few remaining tropical forests are among the most recent to lose their subsistence base with the advance of loggers, drug dealers, cattle raisers, miners, irrigation dams, and multinational corporations (Bodley 1988; Davis 1977; Lee 1992). Like peasants and proletariats of decades past, the forest dwellers are becoming dependent on global enterprises for jobs, markets, or handouts. At the same time, the withdrawal of capital from old industrial areas leaves communities devastated in its wake, forced to resort to whatever subsistence strategies are still viable. In the present global crisis, anthropologists have a mandate to integrate their views of foragers and cultivators in these new frontiers of capitalist advance with studies of declining industrial wastelands. The multiplicity of ways in which people in very diverse settings are experiencing and responding to the threat to subsistence security reveals the importance of local knowledge in balancing productive strategies with the restoration of natural resources for future generations. Residents of the same community and even members of the same family may operate simultaneously within several distinct productive systems, alternating wage work with subsistence farming, petty commodity production, and commercial sales or trucking operations.

Global Integration and Subsistence Insecurity

The main thesis of this study is that the world economy is undergoing a profound structural change that is forcing companies to reorganize their production on a global scale. This is being brought about both through the relocation of production to new industrial sites, increasingly in the developing countries, and through the accelerated rationalisation measures at the traditional sites of industrial manufacture. The authors have designated this structural movement as 'the new international division of labour', and argue that it has led to the crisis that can be observed in industrial countries, as well as to the first steps towards export-oriented manufacturing in the developing countries. They see these trends as being largely independent of the policies pursued by individual governments and the strategies for expansion adopted by individual firms, and argue that the conditions currently prevailing in the capitalist world economy mean that the efforts of individual countries to devise economic policies to reduce industrial unemployment in the industrialised countries or to accentuate a balanced process of industrialisation in the developing countries are doomed to failure.

Folker FrÃ¶bel

Papers

The New International Division of Labour

The New International Division of Labour