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Global production networks and uneven development: Exploring geographies of devaluation, disinvestment, and exclusion
Author(s) -
Werner Marion
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
geography compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.587
H-Index - 65
ISSN - 1749-8198
DOI - 10.1111/gec3.12295
Subject(s) - devaluation , disinvestment , production (economics) , economic geography , restructuring , grasp , stylized fact , economics , economic system , economy , business , market economy , microeconomics , engineering , exchange rate , software engineering , finance , macroeconomics , incentive
This paper examines global production networks through the lens of uneven development. Although originally concerned with asymmetries in the global economy, in the 1990s, global production network studies shifted decidedly towards a focus upon realizing the mutual benefits of engagement between multinationals, their suppliers, and the regions where the latter were located. Recent trends in supply chain restructuring, thrown into sharp relief by the 2008 financial crisis, have spurred more attention to the downsides of participation in global production networks, framed as empirical outcomes. Here, I explore this literature through the lens of three inter‐related processes of uneven development: strategies to defer devaluation, regional disinvestment, and constitutive exclusion. Viewed from this perspective, the global production network can serve as a powerful heuristic device to grasp emerging forms of territorial and social unevenness in the global economy.