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 ...

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-a-day methodology for calculating pover...

Cet ouvrage d’une ambition exceptionnelle présente sous une forme accessible à un large public une histoire inédite de l’esclavage depuis la Préhistoire jusqu’au présent. Il paraît vingt ans après le vote de la loi Taubira, alors que la prise de conscience du passé esclavagiste est chaque jour plus aiguisée au sein de la société française. L’histoire de l’esclavage, trop longtemps tenue pour une forme de passé subalterne, est ici replacée au coeur de l’histoire mondiale. Le livre renouvell...

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 less developed countries and their populations...

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 as gender and ethnicity as part of a wider ...