Analyzing the organization of global production: Thoughts from the periphery

Abstract

The rapid development of connective technologies in the last three decades has had a great impact on the physiognomy of production at global scale. In this context, some regions of the periphery seem to be benefiting more than others. The approach which gained most popularity among scholars for understanding these transformations is that of Global Value Chains (GVC). This approach had relative success on explaining the main determinants of the industrial organisation of international commoditychains, their forms of ´governance´, and the types of ´upgrading´ there can be within a chain. However, there still are some unsettled theoretical issues suchas the conceptualization of power; the analysis of State, the consideration of national and regional trajectories; and finally, the role of finanzialiation and geopolitics. These unsettled aspects undermine the explanatory power of GVC approach as theoretical framework for understanding the new configuration of the global economy and the center--periphery dynamics it involves. We will attempt to show how these aspects could be incorporated in the analysis in order to provide an appropriate interpretation of the current features of global capital accumulation and its uneven deployment in peripheral regions.