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

1 All about Oil 2 How America's Power Grew 3 Capital Bondage 4 Accumulation by Dispossession 5 Consent to Coercion AFTERWORD Further Reading Bibliography Notes Index

The New Imperialism

http://www.soc.duke.edu/~ggere/web/gereffi_jie_june_1999.pdf

International trade and industrial upgrading in the apparel commodity chain

From a world history perspective, the most noticeable trend in the history of the late 19th century was the domination of Europeans over Non­Europeans. This domination took many forms ranging from economic penetration to outright annexation. No area of the globe, however remote from Europe, was free of European merchants, adventurers, explorers or western missionaries. Was colonialism good for either the imperialist or the peoples of the globe who found themselves subjects of one empire or another? A few decades ago, the answer would have been a resounding no. Now, in the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, the more or less widespread discrediting of Marxist and Leninist analysis, and the end of the Cold War, political scientists and historians seem willing to take a more positive look at Nineteenth Century Imperialism. One noted current historian, Niall Ferguson has argued that the British Empire probably accomplished more positive good for the world than the last generation of historians, poisoned by Marxism, could or would concede. Ferguson has argued that the British Empire was a \" liberal \" empire that upheld international law, kept the seas open and free, and ultimately benefited everyone by ensuring the free flow of trade. In other words, Ferguson would find little reason to contradict the young Winston Churchill's assertion that the aim of British imperialism was to: give peace to warring tribes, to administer justice where all was violence, to strike the chains off the slave, to draw the richness from the soil, to place the earliest seeds of commerce and learning, to increase in whole peoples their capacities for pleasure and diminish their chances of pain. It should come as no surprise that Ferguson regards the United States current position in the world as the natural successor to the British Empire and that the greatest danger the U.S. represents is that the world will not get enough American Imperialism because U.S. leaders often have short attention spans and tend to pull back troops when intervention becomes unpopular. It will be very interesting to check back into the debate on Imperialism about ten years from now and see how Niall Ferguson's point of view has fared! The other great school of thought about Imperialism is, of course, Marxist. For example, Marxist historians like E.J. Hobsbawm argue that if we look at the l9th century as a great competition for the world's wealth and …

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

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to ‘hold down’ the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms’ production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between ‘globalizing’ processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the ‘strategic coupling’ of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.

Globalizing regional development: aglobal production networks perspective

historical place of Attic obscenity, a typological breakdown of obscene imagery, and an analysis of the dramatic part of obscenity in each play. The major part of the book consists of a philological critique of each word group suspected of obscene overtones. This is numbered, indexed, and divided into sexual organs, sexual congress, scatology and homosexuality. There is a second index of passages discussed and an appendix arguing against the influence of "Dorian farce" on Attic comedy. This is generally a judicious and well-written book, whose ease of reference and comprehensive coverage of the phenomena of obscenity will cause it to be used and abused for some time to come. Most readers will find that they had underestimated the amount of sexual metaphor in Aristophanes; indeed the author is scarcely to be blamed if his mind has been so steeped in double entendres that, e.g., on 130 he mistranslates Photius' ganglion to produce an erection, or on 147 a bird turns into a pussy. Clearly his Greek is not without faults and should be checked. The strength of the book is, despite lapses, in its gathering and analysis of the philological evidence. Henderson demonstrates that certain words are primally obscene and therefore shocking, others less so and adjustable in a scale upwards to mild euphemism and medical correctness. This observation enables him to make some good dramatic points about the distribution of obscenity between characters in the course of which the recent Oxford commentaries are several times correctly chastized for failing to explicate humour. I found his remarks on the Acharnians particularly well considered. In spite of the freedom of the language which Henderson of necessity employs, he has a peculiar view of modern sexuality which causes him to have an equally unbalanced view of ancient habits. Throughout the book "we" are accused of massive inhibitions, feelings of disgust, etc., leading to neuroses at the thought, sight, or sound of obscene phenomena. Perhaps this is true in Boston; but it is no longer true of most civilized countries, and neither conversation at a French dinner table nor behaviour at a

The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy

1. A New Mode of Industrialisation 2. The International Division of Labour, Industrial Change and Territorial Development: Theoretical and Methodological Issues 3. Semi-conductor Production: Labour Processes, Markets and the Determinants of Globalisation 4. East Asia: The Emergent Regional Division of Labour 5. Hong Kong: The Making of a Regional Core 6. Scotland: The European Connection 7. Prospects for Globalisation and Development 8. Semi-conductors, Development and the Changing International Division of Labour.

The Globalisation of High Technology Production

While rejecting arguments that locate the blame for the East Asian economic crisis in simplistic notions of ‘Crony capitalism’, this paper supplements analyses which have focused on the role of international finance capital. It does so by suggesting that threre were real internal causes of the cirsis in the countries most affectd and that these were intimately associated with asymmetrical state institutional capacities to mediate between the domestic and international economies. Nothing that the symptoms of crisis in Thailand, Malaysis, Indonesis and IIong Kong were quite different from those in Korea, the paper suggests that these differences were not coincidental. Rather they are traceable tothese asymmetric state capacities. Inter alia, the paper explores the role of Overseass Chnese conglomerates and state actors in the development of structurally weak economies in the Southcast Asian countries, and asks whether the ‘fundamentals’ of the real economies in question (including Korea)were indeed robust, ...

Jeffrey Henderson

Papers

Global production networks and the analysis of economic development

Globalizing regional development: aglobal production networks perspective

The Maculate Muse: Obscene Language in Attic Comedy

The Globalisation of High Technology Production

Uneven crises: Institutional foundations of East Asian economic turmoil