Speaker: Ben Selwyn
The cycle of making and upgrading products through global value chains (GVCs) is pitched as a positive thing for development. But what if it isn’t? Drawing on a new book, Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics, its co-author Benjamin Selwyn challenges mainstream narratives of trade-led progress and reveals how GVCs drive labour exploitation, uneven development, environmental degradation, and geopolitical tensions.
Benjamin Selwyn is a professor of international relations and international development at the University of Sussex, and co-author with Christin Bernhold of Capitalist Value Chains: Labour Exploitation, Nature Destruction, Geopolitics (2025, Oxford University Press). He is the author of The Struggle for Development (2017), The Global Development Crisis (2014), and Workers, State and Development in Brazil (2012), and co-editor of Class Dynamics of Development (2017).