Benjamin Selwyn
Biographic Data
| ID | 82248 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Benjamin Selwyn |
| GIVEN NAMES | Benjamin |
| FAMILY NAME | Selwyn |
| SIGNATURE | SELWYN B |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sussex |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0279-8656 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 30 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 141 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 29 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 7 |
Global value chains, digital tech, systemic ecocide
Digital technologies are claimed to enhance environmental sustainability and profitability in global value chains (GVCs). This article challenges that view, showing how digital innovation and GVC expansion continue a historical trajectory of epoch-making technological progress — steam engines, railroads, automobiles — through environmental destruction. GVC growth stimulates digital innovation, and vice versa, producing environmentally destructive…
Value Chains in the Digital Age
In order to comprehend the environmental crisis that goes hand-in-hand with the "Structural Crisis of Capital," we must also understand the nature of global value chains and how they contribute to environmental degradation and worker exploitation on a global level. Benjamin Selwyn elucidates how global value chains and digitalization sit within a "conjoined dynamic of labor-exploitative accumulation and ecological expropriation."
Marx on the Circular Economy
Today, many use the term "circular economy" to describe a shift in the use of industrial waste products in a way that does not challenge the present mode of production. Returning to Marx, Benjamin Selwyn is able to show that this usage of the term is designed to facilitate the acquisitive demands of a capitalist economy, rather than a fundamental shift in resource use
Twin transitions and systemic ecocide
Capitalism’s systemic barriers to environmental upgrading in global value chains
Within the global value chain (GVC) research and policy community, the profundity of the environmental crisis is increasingly recognized. In response, scholars advocate environmental upgrading (EnvU) to reduce GVCs’ deleterious environmental impacts. This article argues that the EnvU notion obscures GVCs’ systemically destructive effect upon the natural environment. It is rooted in methodological singularism (analytically focussing upon single ch…
Eco-social foundations of capitalist value chains
The geopolitical underpinning of global value chains and production networks
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the heightening of US–China tensions, Global Value Chain (GVC) and Global Production Network (GPN) research has begun to pay more attention to geopolitics. This article argues however, that far from representing a recent phenomenon, geopolitics has underpinned the formation and expansion of GVCs and GPNs. Early GVC and GPN 2.0 literatures did not integrate geopolitical considerations into their conceptual framework…
Global Libidinal Economy and Capitalist Development
The book Global Libidinal Economy argues that the libidinal—the site of unconscious desires—plays a constitutive role in global political economy. This role includes capitalism’s profound hold on our ways of thinking and being, despite many of us recognizing its profoundly damaging impacts upon our socio-environmental world. This review essay suggests that the potential of the GLE approach can be maximized by clarifying a GLE methodology. It note…
De/Recolonising Development
Can development be decolonised? The dominant form of contemporary development thinking prioritises capital accumulation and economic growth, guided, if necessary, by violent means by national elites and hegemonic states. This article recounts an early moment in the struggle over the form and content of development. It argues that in response to post‐World War 2 decolonisation, W.W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth represents the modernisation a…
The Case for Socialist Veganism
There is a paradox, Benjamin Selwyn and Charis Davis write, at the heart of corporate veganism in the Global North. While vegan products are sold to consumers as environmentally conscious alternatives to meat and dairy, the world's largest producers of such products are rapacious, ecologically destructive, and exploitive of populations in the Global South. The authors argue that a turn toward socialist veganism can advance the goals of decommodif…
Limits to Supply Chain Resilience
Capital, Ben Selwyn writes, has been advancing its interests under the guise of protecting "global supply chain resilience." While those promoting the resilience agenda assert that these supply chains represent a net benefit, evidence suggests that they increase the transfer of surplus value from the Global North and, especially, in the. South
After the Foxconn Suicides in China
We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world's largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese workers while locating them within the global economy through an assessment of the relationship between Foxconn (the largest electronics manufacturer) and Apple (one of the richest corporations). Eight researchers fro…
World Development under Monopoly Capitalism
As the internationalization of monopoly capital grows, particularly through the domination of global value chains, the worldwide rate of exploitation and degree of monopoly increase as well
Value Chains
A green new deal for agriculture
Covid-19 has highlighted the destructiveness of modern agro-industry upon biosphere and humanity. Its contribution to environmental degradation intertwines with socio-economic inequality and labour exploitation. There are increasing calls for a green new deal (GND) to counter these dangers. This article argues that a GND for agriculture must combat environmental degradation, social inequality and labour exploitation, rather than aim to re-boot ca…
Poverty chains and global capitalism
The proliferation of global value chains is portrayed in academic and policy circles as representing new development opportunities for firms and regions in the global south. This article tests these claims by examining original material from non-governmental organizations’ reports and secondary sources on the garment and electronics chains in Cambodia and China, respectively. This empirical evidence suggests that these global value chains generat…
Making a global poverty chain
This article shows how the Eastern and Central European export footwear sector has experienced economic and social downgrading and immiserating growth over the last three decades. Based on interviews with 209 workers from 12 factories across six countries, it analyses how intense gender-based labor exploitation—entailing dangerous working conditions and poverty pay—underpins the sector’s expansion and extra-regional integration. It draws upon and…
Class Dynamics of Development
This book argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. It does so via a transdisciplinary approach that draws on case studies from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors illustrate and explain the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of dominance and subordination, such…
The Struggle for Development
"The world economy is expanding rapidly despite chronic economic crises. Yet the majority of the world's population live in poverty. Why are wealth and poverty two sides of the coin of capitalist development? What can be done to overcome this destructive dynamic? In this hard-hitting analysis, Benjamin Selwyn shows how capitalism generates widespread poverty, gender discrimination and environmental destruction. He debunks the World Bank's dollar-…
Global value chains and human development
Global Value Chain (GVC) proponents argue that regional and human development can be achieved through ‘strategic coupling’ with transnational corporations. This argument is misleading for two reasons. First, GVC abstracts firm–firm and firm–state relations from their class-relational basis, obscuring fundamental developmental processes. Second, much GVC analysis promotes linear conceptions of development. This article provides a class-relational …
Elite development theory
Much development theory is based upon elite-led conceptions of social change. Elite development theory (EDT) conceptualises ‘the poor’ as human inputs into or, at best, junior partners within elite-led development processes. This elitism contributes to the continual (re)framing of the poor as passive beneficiaries of elite policy, and legitimates economic exploitation of the poor. These claims are illustrated by discussing a number of EDT traditi…
Class dynamics of development
This article argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. The article illustrates and explains the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of…
Theory and practice of labour-centred development
This article outlines the theory and practice of labour-centred development (LCD). Much development thinking is elitist, positing states and corporations as primary agents in the development process. This article argues, by contrast, that collective actions by labouring classes can generate tangible developmental gains and therefore that, under certain circumstances, they can be considered primary development actors. Examples of LCD discussed her…
Labour-Centred Development in Latin America
The ILO’s World of Work 2014 Report
Class dynamics of development
This article argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. The article illustrates and explains the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of…
Commodity chains, creative destruction and global inequality
The majority of global commodity chain analysis is concerned with producer firm upgrading, because it is held to engender local-level development. This represents a myopic comprehension of the interaction of firms under capitalism. This article argues, in contrast, that lead firm chain governance and supplier firm upgrading attempts constitute strategies and practices that reproduce global poverty and inequality. Schumpeter’s concept of creative …
Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx, Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation
Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodific…
A green new deal for agriculture
Covid-19 has highlighted the destructiveness of modern agro-industry upon biosphere and humanity. Its contribution to environmental degradation intertwines with socio-economic inequality and labour exploitation. There are increasing calls for a green new deal (GND) to counter these dangers. This article argues that a GND for agriculture must combat environmental degradation, social inequality and labour exploitation, rather than aim to re-boot ca…
Elite development theory
Much development theory is based upon elite-led conceptions of social change. Elite development theory (EDT) conceptualises ‘the poor’ as human inputs into or, at best, junior partners within elite-led development processes. This elitism contributes to the continual (re)framing of the poor as passive beneficiaries of elite policy, and legitimates economic exploitation of the poor. These claims are illustrated by discussing a number of EDT traditi…
Theory and practice of labour-centred development
This article outlines the theory and practice of labour-centred development (LCD). Much development thinking is elitist, positing states and corporations as primary agents in the development process. This article argues, by contrast, that collective actions by labouring classes can generate tangible developmental gains and therefore that, under certain circumstances, they can be considered primary development actors. Examples of LCD discussed her…
Global value chains and human development
Global Value Chain (GVC) proponents argue that regional and human development can be achieved through ‘strategic coupling’ with transnational corporations. This argument is misleading for two reasons. First, GVC abstracts firm–firm and firm–state relations from their class-relational basis, obscuring fundamental developmental processes. Second, much GVC analysis promotes linear conceptions of development. This article provides a class-relational …
Making a global poverty chain
This article shows how the Eastern and Central European export footwear sector has experienced economic and social downgrading and immiserating growth over the last three decades. Based on interviews with 209 workers from 12 factories across six countries, it analyses how intense gender-based labor exploitation—entailing dangerous working conditions and poverty pay—underpins the sector’s expansion and extra-regional integration. It draws upon and…
Labour-Centred Development in Latin America
Twenty-first-century International Political Economy
The nature, subject matter and future direction of International Political Economy has been opened up for debate following interventions by Benjamin Cohen, John Hobson and special issues of the Review of International Political Economy and New Political Economy. Most contributors to the debate are dissatisfied with the current state of International Political Economy and desire to identify the ‘Big Questions’ of the 21st century. This article arg…
Eco-social foundations of capitalist value chains
The geopolitical underpinning of global value chains and production networks
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the heightening of US–China tensions, Global Value Chain (GVC) and Global Production Network (GPN) research has begun to pay more attention to geopolitics. This article argues however, that far from representing a recent phenomenon, geopolitics has underpinned the formation and expansion of GVCs and GPNs. Early GVC and GPN 2.0 literatures did not integrate geopolitical considerations into their conceptual framework…
After the Foxconn Suicides in China
We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world's largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese workers while locating them within the global economy through an assessment of the relationship between Foxconn (the largest electronics manufacturer) and Apple (one of the richest corporations). Eight researchers fro…
Global Libidinal Economy and Capitalist Development
The book Global Libidinal Economy argues that the libidinal—the site of unconscious desires—plays a constitutive role in global political economy. This role includes capitalism’s profound hold on our ways of thinking and being, despite many of us recognizing its profoundly damaging impacts upon our socio-environmental world. This review essay suggests that the potential of the GLE approach can be maximized by clarifying a GLE methodology. It note…
The ILO’s World of Work 2014 Report
Karl Marx, Class Struggle and Labour-Centred Development
Karl Marx has often been interpreted as formulating an economic determinist, Eurocentric and historically linear conception of human development. Where they exist, such interpretations understand 'development' as capitalist modernisation. If correct, this critique leaves Marxism ill-equipped to interpret and contribute to transformations of the conditions of labouring classes under neoliberal globalisation. This article argues against such interp…
Class Struggle or Embedded Markets? Marx, Polanyi and the Meanings and Possibilities of Social Transformation
Marx and Polanyi both held that socialism, in one form or another, was a preferable and possible alternative to capitalism. Their ideas are seen to offer theoretical tools to understand the tensions and contradictions of capitalism, and to inform ways to overcome them. This paper discusses Polanyi's work from a Marxist perspective in order to illuminate his strengths and weaknesses. Its main focus is to discuss Polanyi's juxtaposing of commodific…
The Global Development Crisis
The central paradox of the contemporary world is the simultaneous presence of wealth on an unprecedented scale, and mass poverty. Liberal theory explains the relationship between capitalism and poverty as one based around the dichotomy of inclusion (into capitalism) vs exclusion (from capitalism). Within this discourse, the global capitalist system is portrayed as a sphere of economic dynamism and as a source of developmental opportunities for le…
Commodity chains, creative destruction and global inequality
The majority of global commodity chain analysis is concerned with producer firm upgrading, because it is held to engender local-level development. This represents a myopic comprehension of the interaction of firms under capitalism. This article argues, in contrast, that lead firm chain governance and supplier firm upgrading attempts constitute strategies and practices that reproduce global poverty and inequality. Schumpeter’s concept of creative …
The ILO’s World of Work 2014 Report
Twenty-first-century International Political Economy
The nature, subject matter and future direction of International Political Economy has been opened up for debate following interventions by Benjamin Cohen, John Hobson and special issues of the Review of International Political Economy and New Political Economy. Most contributors to the debate are dissatisfied with the current state of International Political Economy and desire to identify the ‘Big Questions’ of the 21st century. This article arg…
Global value chains and human development
Global Value Chain (GVC) proponents argue that regional and human development can be achieved through ‘strategic coupling’ with transnational corporations. This argument is misleading for two reasons. First, GVC abstracts firm–firm and firm–state relations from their class-relational basis, obscuring fundamental developmental processes. Second, much GVC analysis promotes linear conceptions of development. This article provides a class-relational …
Elite development theory
Much development theory is based upon elite-led conceptions of social change. Elite development theory (EDT) conceptualises ‘the poor’ as human inputs into or, at best, junior partners within elite-led development processes. This elitism contributes to the continual (re)framing of the poor as passive beneficiaries of elite policy, and legitimates economic exploitation of the poor. These claims are illustrated by discussing a number of EDT traditi…
Class dynamics of development
This article argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. Class is conceived as arising out of exploitative social relations of production, but is formulated through and expressed by multiple determinations. The article illustrates and explains the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of…
Theory and practice of labour-centred development
This article outlines the theory and practice of labour-centred development (LCD). Much development thinking is elitist, positing states and corporations as primary agents in the development process. This article argues, by contrast, that collective actions by labouring classes can generate tangible developmental gains and therefore that, under certain circumstances, they can be considered primary development actors. Examples of LCD discussed her…
Labour-Centred Development in Latin America
The Struggle for Development
"The world economy is expanding rapidly despite chronic economic crises. Yet the majority of the world's population live in poverty. Why are wealth and poverty two sides of the coin of capitalist development? What can be done to overcome this destructive dynamic? In this hard-hitting analysis, Benjamin Selwyn shows how capitalism generates widespread poverty, gender discrimination and environmental destruction. He debunks the World Bank's dollar-…
Class Dynamics of Development
This book argues that class relations are constitutive of development processes and central to understanding inequality within and between countries. It does so via a transdisciplinary approach that draws on case studies from Asia, Latin America and sub-Saharan Africa. Contributors illustrate and explain the diversity of forms of class relations, and the ways in which they interplay with other social relations of dominance and subordination, such…
Poverty chains and global capitalism
The proliferation of global value chains is portrayed in academic and policy circles as representing new development opportunities for firms and regions in the global south. This article tests these claims by examining original material from non-governmental organizations’ reports and secondary sources on the garment and electronics chains in Cambodia and China, respectively. This empirical evidence suggests that these global value chains generat…
Making a global poverty chain
This article shows how the Eastern and Central European export footwear sector has experienced economic and social downgrading and immiserating growth over the last three decades. Based on interviews with 209 workers from 12 factories across six countries, it analyses how intense gender-based labor exploitation—entailing dangerous working conditions and poverty pay—underpins the sector’s expansion and extra-regional integration. It draws upon and…
World Development under Monopoly Capitalism
As the internationalization of monopoly capital grows, particularly through the domination of global value chains, the worldwide rate of exploitation and degree of monopoly increase as well
Value Chains
A green new deal for agriculture
Covid-19 has highlighted the destructiveness of modern agro-industry upon biosphere and humanity. Its contribution to environmental degradation intertwines with socio-economic inequality and labour exploitation. There are increasing calls for a green new deal (GND) to counter these dangers. This article argues that a GND for agriculture must combat environmental degradation, social inequality and labour exploitation, rather than aim to re-boot ca…
After the Foxconn Suicides in China
We seek to tackle myriad problems of a global production system in which China is the world's largest producer and exporter of consumer electronics products. Dying for an iPhone simultaneously addresses the challenges facing Chinese workers while locating them within the global economy through an assessment of the relationship between Foxconn (the largest electronics manufacturer) and Apple (one of the richest corporations). Eight researchers fro…
Limits to Supply Chain Resilience
Capital, Ben Selwyn writes, has been advancing its interests under the guise of protecting "global supply chain resilience." While those promoting the resilience agenda assert that these supply chains represent a net benefit, evidence suggests that they increase the transfer of surplus value from the Global North and, especially, in the. South
Global Libidinal Economy and Capitalist Development
The book Global Libidinal Economy argues that the libidinal—the site of unconscious desires—plays a constitutive role in global political economy. This role includes capitalism’s profound hold on our ways of thinking and being, despite many of us recognizing its profoundly damaging impacts upon our socio-environmental world. This review essay suggests that the potential of the GLE approach can be maximized by clarifying a GLE methodology. It note…
De/Recolonising Development
Can development be decolonised? The dominant form of contemporary development thinking prioritises capital accumulation and economic growth, guided, if necessary, by violent means by national elites and hegemonic states. This article recounts an early moment in the struggle over the form and content of development. It argues that in response to post‐World War 2 decolonisation, W.W. Rostow's Stages of Economic Growth represents the modernisation a…
The Case for Socialist Veganism
There is a paradox, Benjamin Selwyn and Charis Davis write, at the heart of corporate veganism in the Global North. While vegan products are sold to consumers as environmentally conscious alternatives to meat and dairy, the world's largest producers of such products are rapacious, ecologically destructive, and exploitive of populations in the Global South. The authors argue that a turn toward socialist veganism can advance the goals of decommodif…
The geopolitical underpinning of global value chains and production networks
Since the Covid-19 pandemic and the heightening of US–China tensions, Global Value Chain (GVC) and Global Production Network (GPN) research has begun to pay more attention to geopolitics. This article argues however, that far from representing a recent phenomenon, geopolitics has underpinned the formation and expansion of GVCs and GPNs. Early GVC and GPN 2.0 literatures did not integrate geopolitical considerations into their conceptual framework…
Global value chains, digital tech, systemic ecocide
Digital technologies are claimed to enhance environmental sustainability and profitability in global value chains (GVCs). This article challenges that view, showing how digital innovation and GVC expansion continue a historical trajectory of epoch-making technological progress — steam engines, railroads, automobiles — through environmental destruction. GVC growth stimulates digital innovation, and vice versa, producing environmentally destructive…
Political science (23 works) · Economics (19 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Law (13 works) · Political Economy and Marxism (13 works) · Global trade, sustainability, and social impact (12 works) · Politics (12 works) · Capitalism (11 works) · Political economy (11 works) · Economic system (8 works)