Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism, by Intan Suwandi

Abstract

In Value Chains: The New Economic Imperialism, Intan Suwandi exposes market-based economic development strategies as core-centered efforts to maintain monopoly power, derived from the legacy of colonialism. Suwandi, Assistant Professor of Sociology at Illinois State University and frequent contributor to the Monthly Review, makes the case that imperialism remains a relevant concept and that global supply chains are the contemporary site of expropriation from the periphery (roughly, Global South) to the core (roughly, Global North). Suwandi introduces a labor-value commodity chain approach which improves upon “the weaknesses of the GCC/GVC 1 frameworks and the world-systems approach”, by bringing together the organizational strengths of GCC/GVC analysis and the global capital-labor analysis of World Systems analysis.