wow-inequalities/02-data/intermediate/wos_sample/e0e0750bb82aca950b8c683b6fdf25cb-niembro-andres/info.yaml

abstract: 'Socioeconomic inequalities can take different forms. Sometimes they

  appear simply as disparities between individuals or households, or

  between groups that differ on the basis of factors such as social class,

  gender, age, ethnicity, among many others. Likewise, social and economic

  inequalities can be perceived in different geographical scales of

  analysis, between countries or groups of countries, as well as between

  regions, provinces, cities or neighborhoods. Although this paper focuses

  on territorial inequalities, there is no doubt that both levels are

  deeply interrelated.

  At this point, there is no longer any doubt that globalization has gone

  hand in hand with increasing inequality in general and, in particular,

  growing regional disparities in developing countries throughout Latin

  America, Asia, Africa or Eastern Europe, as well as the continuity of

  regional inequalities in developed countries such as Spain, for example.

  This context poses new challenges for the academic investigation of

  inequality, because to explain the phenomenon of unequal regional

  development in a globalized world it is necessary to put the actors of

  this process and their roots in the territory in the center of the

  scene, along with issues such as their position in the economic system

  and the generation and reproduction of power asymmetries.

  Although for some authors globalization acts as an asymmetric process

  that tends to deepen the inequalities between countries and regions, for

  others the problem is not strictly the process of globalization, but the

  way in which countries, regions and firms are inserted and positioned in

  global economy. What is clear is that, being in some way an inevitable

  scenario, globalization contains both opportunities and challenges for

  regional development, while it generates winners and losers among the

  actors and regions involved.

  We believe that the approaches of Global Value Chains (GVC) and Global

  Production Networks (GPN) can be useful tools for understanding the

  relationships between globalization and unequal regional development,

  and for analyzing how actors and regions participate in the global

  economy, how the power and income are distributed among them and what

  possibilities exist for repositioning, among other issues.

  If we look at, for example, the literature on developing countries in

  Latin America, the tendency in recent decades to adopt the conceptual

  framework of GVC is evident, but the contributions from GPN have been

  largely unnoticed so far, which has tended to limit its specific

  application to the analysis of territorial inequalities. On the other

  hand, several authors have highlighted the need to compatibilize, enrich

  and eclectically integrate the analytical frameworks of GVC and GPN.

  The article aims to cover these research niches with a comprehensive

  review of the approaches of global value chains and global production

  networks, hoping that it can be used as a theoretical and methodological

  contribution to the analysis of regional inequalities. This review is

  structured on the basis of a contrast between the respective strengths

  and weaknesses of each approach, showing those points where they can

  complement and enrich each other.

  Throughout the literature there is an old interest in understanding the

  changing forms of organization of production and trade at global level,

  its evolution and its repercussions over territorial inequalities,

  starting for example with dependence theories, center-periphery, world

  system and commodity chains, passing through global commodity chains

  (GCC) and arriving at the further development of GVC. While there are

  some differences in terminology and emphases between the origins of GVC

  and GPN, over the years they have tended to shrink and converge, since

  these approaches are interrelated and share a common agenda of problems.

  Another central aspect is that, despite theoretical discussions (and, in

  particular, criticisms of GPN towards GVC), studies under one tradition

  or another tend to be largely similar, since there are not great

  methodological differences between them. This is directly related to the

  balance of strengths and weaknesses of each approach. On the one hand,

  authors that support the GPN framework value their greater

  analytical-conceptual breadth (covering topics supposedly relegated by

  GVC tradition), but it has the counterpart of making its implementation

  more complex. In contrast, GVC analysis is best understood as a

  methodological approach that can be mobilized within various theoretical

  perspectives, although this greater operational versatility comes with

  the cost of some degree of theoretical eclecticism.

  It should be noted that, although these approaches have been developed,

  such as their own names indicate, over the basis of the

  internationalization and relocation of different circuits of production

  and trade at a global level, their methodological contributions can also

  be applied to domestic chains or networks, making a broad interpretation

  of trade and exports of a particular region to analyze the interaction

  between the local dimension and the extra-regional scale (national or

  international factors).

  As a closure, we can conclude that the GVC approach is applicable to

  regional analysis (avoiding some analytical complexities of GPN) but it

  needs to be strengthened with some elements of GPN tradition. In

  particular, it is necessary to reinforce the territoriality of chains of

  networks, to widen the spectrum of institutions taken into account and

  to analyze their relations from a multidimensional (vertical,

  horizontal, diagonal) and multiscalar perspective (regional, national,

  international, global). At the same time, it is necessary to keep in

  mind the existence of different types of networks, power relations and

  possibilities of upgrading.

  At this point we should also point out some possible restrictions or

  weaknesses for the application of the approaches of GVC and GPN to the

  analysis of uneven regional development. On the one hand, the idea of

  inequality necessarily relates with economic processes that, by their

  own nature, can adopt asymmetric and divergent characteristics. But

  unlike the analytical (often critical) perspectives we present in this

  paper, the use of the concept of global value chains has become popular

  in recent years and has entered into the agendas of international

  organizations and multilateral forums that tend to adopt a highly

  optimistic (or uncritical) view towards globalization and its possible

  impacts on the progress of underdeveloped countries and regions. By

  circumventing or minimizing the potentially negative and inequitable

  factors discussed in the article, this can strongly change public policy

  recommendations and strategies.

  On the other hand, a weakness of GVC and GPN literatures is the limited

  recognition that innovation, knowledge and technology have usually

  received. In any case, these approaches recognize the importance of

  innovation as a basic input for upgrading processes, but little is said

  about the specific nature of the complex processes of learning and

  innovation, which represents an interesting line of work to be covered.'
affiliation: 'Niembro, A (Corresponding Author), Univ Nacl Rio Negro Sede Andina,
  San Carlos De Bariloche, Rio Negro, Argentina.

  Niembro, Andres, Univ Nacl Rio Negro Sede Andina, San Carlos De Bariloche, Rio Negro,
  Argentina.'
author: Niembro, Andres
author_list:
- family: Niembro
  given: Andres
da: '2023-09-28'
files: []
issn: 0213-7585
journal: REVISTA DE ESTUDIOS REGIONALES
keywords: 'Territorial inequalities; Regional development; Global value chains;

  Global production networks'
keywords-plus: 'REGIONAL-DEVELOPMENT; COMMODITY CHAINS; INWARD INVESTMENT; LOCAL

  CLUSTERS; LATIN-AMERICA; NORTH-EAST; GOVERNANCE; GEOGRAPHIES;

  INNOVATION; PERSPECTIVE'
language: English
month: MAY-AUG
number: '112'
number-of-cited-references: '135'
pages: 15-40
papis_id: 4f2e7b98802bed71e0593c1deedd2c94
ref: Niembro2018globalizationproduct
tags:
- review
times-cited: '0'
title: 'Globalization, productive re-location and territorial inequalities: A comprehensive
  review of the approaches of global value chains and global production networks'
type: article
unique-id: WOS:000450677100001
usage-count-last-180-days: '0'
usage-count-since-2013: '41'
web-of-science-categories: Environmental Studies
year: '2018'