Seminar by Ben Selwyn (Sussex), "Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics"
| Dates: | 5 November 2025 |
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| Times: | 14:00 - 15:30 |
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| What is it: | Seminar |
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| Organiser: | School of Social Sciences |
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Please join us on Nov 5th for a book launch of Prof Ben Selwyn's book (co-authored with Christin Bernhold) Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics (OUP, 2025).
We will be in Sam Alex_A102 from 2-3:30pm. Ben will introduce the book and then we will have short comments from Perla Polanco Leal (UofM Politics) and Pritish Behuria (UofM GDI) as discussants. Then there will be time for Q&A and discussion.
Benjamin Selwyn is Professor of International Relations and International Development, Department of International Relations, University of Sussex. He researches, writes, and teaches about international political economy and development from the vantage point of value chains, food and agriculture, and labour. His previous books include The Struggle for Development (2017).
Is it true that Global Value Chains (GVCs) 'boost incomes, create better jobs, and reduce poverty', as commonly claimed? In this compelling book, Selwyn and Bernhold show how the mainstream notion of GVCs obscures their capitalist character. To transcend this shortcoming, the authors introduce the concept of Capitalist Value Chains (CVCs). They explore how and why CVCs generate many highly exploitative jobs, new forms of poverty, are stunting real human development, and are destroying the world's environment. CVCs are a historically-specific configuration of capitalist class relations that have been restructured and bolstered through geopolitics. The authors argue that rather than waiting for the elusive benefits of 'economic, social, and environmental upgrading' as promoted in mainstream GVC scholarship, workers' collective actions can improve their pay and conditions-under historically and geographically specific conditions of uneven development. The authors clearly explain how, instead of striving to make CVCs more 'resilient', progressive political economists need to envision a world beyond these capitalist relations of generalized exploitation and appropriation.
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