Liam Campling

Queen Mary, University of London | QMUL

Despite 30 years of research on global value chains, the appropriation of nature in general and natural resource industries in particular remain marginal both theoretically and empirically. There is a parallel ecological deficit in labour process theory and a lack of applied research on natural resource industries. But since historical capitalism i...

Today, production processes have become fragmented with a range of activities divided among firms and workers across borders. These global value chains are being strongly promoted by international organisations, such as the World Bank and the World Trade Organization, but social and political backlash is mounting in a growing variety of forms. Thi...

There has been a recent resurgence in interest in the theorization of labour regimes in various disciplines. This has taken the form of a concern to understand the role that labour regimes play in the structuring, organization and dynamics of global systems of production and reproduction. The concept has a long heritage that can be traced back to t...

The global ocean has through the centuries served as a trade route, strategic space, fish bank and supply chain for the modern capitalist economy. While sea beds are drilled for their fossil fuels and minerals, and coastlines developed for real estate and leisure, the oceans continue to absorb the toxic discharges of our carbon civilisation—warming...

This chapter asks whether the study of the corporation can enrich critical resource geography (CRG) and, conversely, the ways in which CRG can contribute to our understanding of contemporary capitalism as dominated by multinational corporations. It starts by setting out some contours of the corporation-and the business "firm" more broadly-as a powe...

In this article, we analyze the strategies, surprises, and sidesteps in the World Bank’s 2020 World Development Report, Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains. Strategically, the Report promotes an expansion of neoliberal globalization couched in the language of global value chains. Curiously detached from the broader academic li...

Fisheries, and ocean resources more broadly, have tended to be side-lined in critical agrarian studies, but this has changed significantly in the last decade. We identify three themes pertinent to critical agrarian studies and the political economy of capture fisheries: market dynamics and competition in fisheries production-consumption systems; la...

Three-fourths of the world’s marine capture fisheries are at or beyond ‘full exploitation’, indicating the likelihood that many fish populations, and the ecosystem of which they are a part, will decline (if they are not already) with current and expanded levels of competitive extraction, though the geographies of fisheries decline and recovery are...

Covid‐19 generated a crisis in capitalism, but not of capitalism. Capitalism reproduces itself in crisis and in ways that have significant but uneven impacts on the conditions and struggles of agrarian classes of labour. This article explores preliminary studies of how Covid‐19 has affected agrarian social formations in Africa, Asia and Latin Ameri...

Attention to firms in the ocean economy is growing as oceans face rapid ecological change as well as surges in investment and governance efforts under a ‘‘blue economy’’ paradigm. Concepts and methods that can ‘‘make sense’’ of firms and their positioning within value chains are essential for scholars seeking to inform a more sustainable ocean futu...

We examine corporate rentiership in the contemporary economy and suggest that the idea we are in a moment of step-change within capitalism may be premature. Implicit in arguments for a step-change is the claim that the present-day economy emphasises unproductive or rentier forms rather than the more productive and entrepreneurial forms of the past....

The ‘environment’ is central to all economic activity, everywhere, always. However, GVC scholars have paid only minimal attention to the environment and its formative role in structuring GVCs and inter-firm relations, as well as their socio-ecological manifestations. The outcome, we suggest, is an important blind spot in GVC scholars’ understanding...

This article explores the interrelationship between global production networks (GPNs) and free trade agreements (FTAs) in the South Korean auto industry and its employment relations. It focuses on the production network of the Hyundai Motor Group (HMG) — the third biggest automobile manufacturer in the world — and the FTA between the EU and South K...

Management theory offers a unique perspective on the political nature of production epitomized in global value chains (GVCs). Through our reading of management , we challenge several assumptions underpinning much GVC thinking to provide a counter-narrative to the idea that GVCs equate to development. We focus on three ideas within management theory...

This commentary on Chapter 6 on Markets, Finance, and Corporations of the International Panel for Social Progress (IPSP 2018) report makes four points. The first suggests that proposals for legal reform of the corporation require consideration of the underlying processes of capital accumulation. Second, thinking about the articulations of global va...

Despite the recognition that trade policy-in particular, tariff regimes and rules of origin-can affect the geography of production, much GPN analyses pay scant attention to the tariff context of the sector studied. This paper proposes an analytical framework to more effectively integrate these regimes into applied GPN research. We test the framewor...

Madagascar, Mauritius and Seychelles are at the center of industrial tuna extraction in the Southwest Indian Ocean (SWIO). In this paper, we show that, while a discourse of regionalism between the three islands is prominent, the possibilities of regionalism face deep challenges in relation to the tuna industry. This is due to three factors. First,...

Labour standards provisions contained within the European Union's (EU) free trade agreements (FTAs) are a major iteration of attempts to regulate working conditions in the global economy. This article develops an analysis of how the legal and institutional mechanisms established by these FTAs intersect with global value chain governance dynamics in...

This report provides Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency members with industry and market intelligence on the current status of the shelf-stable (e.g. canned) tuna processing industry. It offers a global overview of processing capacity (providing data on volume and value of activities), new developments and key issues shaping the sector. It then...

Labour standards provisions within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of EU Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) are presented as a key element of the EU's commitment to a ‘value-based trade agenda’. But criticism of TSD chapters has led the European Commission to commit to improving their implementation and enforcement, creating a critic...

This article examines the relations between workplace and local labor regimes, global production networks (GPNs), and the state-led creation of expanded markets as spaces of capitalist regulation through trade policy. Through an examination of the ways in which labor regimes are constituted as a result of the articulation of local social relations...

This article situates seafood in the larger intersection between global environmental governance and the food system. Drawing inspiration from the food regimes approach, we trace the historical unfolding of the seafood system and its management between the 1930s and the 2010s. In doing so, we bridge global environmental politics research that has s...

The EU has established a new architecture of international labour standards governance within the Trade and Sustainable Development (TSD) chapters of its Free Trade Agreements (FTAs). To examine the operationalization of this framework, we draw upon 121 interviews undertaken with key informants in three FTAs signed with the Caribbean, South Korea a...

This report provides industry and market intelligence regarding the current status of the tuna longline industry in terms of distant water fleets (DWF) and other companies involved in the global value chains that these fleets supply. The study examines the DWFs of China, Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. The primary focus is on industry dynamics, that...

This paper introduces the term ‘terraqueous territoriality’ to analyse a particular relationship between capitalism as a social formation, and the sea as a natural force. It focuses on three spaces – exclusive economic zones (EEZs), the system of ‘flags of convenience’ (FOC), and multilateral counter-piracy initiatives – as instances of capitalist...

The global value chain (GVC) analytic, as currently conceived in the literature on global production, tracks ‘value added’ along commodity chains but does not interrogate where value comes from and where it goes. This tends to deflect narratives that relate to systemic inequalities and the mechanisms by which those inequalities are reproduced. We s...

There is an urgent need for developing policy-relevant future scenarios of biodiversity and ecosystem services. This paper is a milestone toward this aim focusing on open ocean fisheries. We develop five contrasting Oceanic System Pathways (OSPs), based on the existing five archetypal worlds of Shared Socioeconomic Pathways (SSPs) developed for cli...

In value chain scholarship, chain governance is the relationship of power among firms in a production network. For economic geographers working on the environment, governance refers primarily to state- and nonstate-based institutional and regulatory arrangements shaping human–environment interactions. Yet the theoretical and empirical links between...

The corporation has become an increasingly dominant force in contemporary society. However, comprehensive, in-depth analysis of the concept of the corporation is often restricted, or limited to one disciplinary approach. This handbook brings together the cutting-edge scholarship, expertise and insight of leading scholars in a wide range of discipli...

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 divers...

Resumen La Unión Europea (UE) ha concluido alrededor de 50 acuerdos de libre comercio bilaterales y sigue negociando otros. En la actualidad, estos incluyen un capítulo sobre comercio y desarrollo sostenible con disposiciones laborales de enfoque «promocional», y no «condicional». Alimentando el debate sobre el objeto y la eficacia de vincular come...

Henry Bernstein was co-editor (with Terence J. Byres) of the Journal of Agrarian Change between 2001 and 2008 and co-edited The Journal of Peasant Studies (where he joined Byres) between 1985 and 2000. This interview highlights some of Bernstein's major pedagogical and theoretical contributions to the fields of agrarian political economy and develo...

This special issue presents five essays and an interview in appreciation of Henry Bernstein. The essays – by major scholars in the field of agrarian political economy – engage with different aspects of Bernstein's oeuvre: from direct critical reflections on his approach to the peasantry and the agrarian question through to arguments developed in co...

Following a precise evaluation protocol that was applied to a pool of 202 articles published between 2003 and 2014, this paper evaluates the existing evidence of how and to what extent capture fisheries and aquaculture contribute to improving nutrition, food security, and economic growth in developing and emergent countries. In doing so we evaluate...

Most scholars attribute the development and ubiquity of global value chains to economic forces, treating law as an exogenous factor, if at all. By contrast, we assert the centrality of legal regimes and private ordering mechanisms to the creation, structure, geography, distributive effects and governance of Global Value Chains (GVCs), and thereby s...

Using the case of canned tuna, this article shows that EU and US tariff regimes profoundly influence the location of processing activities, thereby shaping the international division of labour. It argues that the impact of trade preferences and tariff liberalization cannot be adequately understood without taking into consideration the particular ch...

The European Union (EU) has approximately fifty bilateral trade agreements in place with partners across the world, and more than twenty more that are at various stages of the negotiating process. At the same time as they increase in number, these agreements also increase in scope. EU trade agreements now cover a wide range of regulatory measures,...

This paper reviews recent literature on the effects of tariff liberalization on wild caught fish product production structures, development outcomes, and fish stocks. Using the case of canned tuna, the report shows that tariff regimes clearly influence the location of production and processing activities, thereby shaping the international division...

The chapter traces the EU’s system of trade preferences to British and French colonial production regimes. It argues that the system of non-reciprocal trade under Lomé – the high point for the ACP of recognition of their asymmetrical incorporation into the world economy – was not a product of European developmental largesse but a (re)negotiated out...

Situated within the broader conference theme of historical change, this panel session brought together international business and economic geography perspectives on multinational enterprise (MNE) evolutionary trajectories. The panel session follows a series of past conference sessions aimed to increase dialogue and interaction between economic geog...

Preferential trade is a major aspect of the post-World War Two international economic environment. It includes the reciprocal liberalisation of trade between parties under free trade agreements (FTAs) and the non-r eciprocal liberalisation of market access by one party to those countries self-categorised as ‘developing’.2 Mainstream narratives on A...

Fisheries systems are widely considered to be ‘in crisis’ in both economic and ecological terms, a considerable concern given their global significance to food security, international trade and employment. The most common explanation for the crisis suggests that it is caused by weak and illiberal property regimes. It follows that correcting the cri...

The Global Partnership for Oceans (GPO) is an alliance of governments, private firms, international organizations, and civil society groups that aims to promote ocean health while contributing to human wellbeing. A Blue Ribbon Panel (BRP) was commissioned to develop guiding principles for GPO investments. Here we offer commentary on the BRP report...

Theory as History, which was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2011, collects together several of Jairus Banaji’s essays published over the course of 30 years. This symposium comprises four essays engaging with different aspects of the powerful and provocative contributions in Theory as History, as well as an essay in response by Banaji. The...

Recently, researchers have drawn attention to an inclusionary bias in commodity chain research and proposed a ‘dis/articulations’ project aimed at drawing out how things included in, as well as excluded or expulsed from, production processes mutually, and often simultaneously, constitute commodity chains. The purpose of this paper is to situate the...

The relationship among trade liberalization, the environment, and socioeconomic development is marked by controversy, though it is well accepted that in practice economic interests often trump environmental concerns and that developing countries incur a range of costs to participate in, and comply with, multilateral and bilateral trade agreements....

Theory as History, which was awarded the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2011, collects together several of Jairus Banaji’s essays published over the course of 30 years. This symposium comprises four essays engaging with different aspects of the powerful and provocative contributions in Theory as History, as well as an essay in response by Banaji. The...

Small island developing states (SIDS) are vulnerable to climate variability and change due to high levels of exposure of local fisheries to physical climate effects, economic dependence on the fishing industry (sensitivity), and poor adaptive capacity (the extent to which effects of change can be offset). This article briefly reviews the major mech...

An industrial fishery is a geographical area of operation of a complex of capitals whose form of organization is the firm and whose medium of operation is fishing vessels. Tuna fisheries are among the most highly capitalized and valuable fisheries in the world. This paper distinguishes between two relations that function simultaneously at the point...

Capture fisheries are constituted through historically specific environmental conditions and social and economic relations of production. Fisheries, whether saltwater or freshwater, are an important source of animal protein, livelihoods and exchange value in international trade, and are presently undergoing rapid socio-ecological change. To explore...

Seychelles has one of the most extensive social policy programmes in the developing world, and has been identified as a model for the rest of Africa. As a small state, however, it remains economically vulnerable and in 2008 had to accept a financial rescue package from the IMF. This book provides comprehensive analysis of social policy development...

As major stakeholders in the global tuna industry, it is critical that Pacific Island countries (PICs) have a comprehensive understanding of supply chain dynamics. An enhanced understanding of how industry drivers and market dynamics shape the global tuna supply chain and influence the major industry players is particularly critical to PICs in achi...

Giovanni Arrighi (1937–2009) was a leading figure in the development of world-systems theory and also contributed to a range of debates in Marxist thought. This symposium engages with Arrighi’s last book, Adam Smith in Beijing, which was the final instalment in his ‘trilogy’, following Th e Long Twentieth Century (1994) and Chaos and Governance in...

The Western and Central Pacific Ocean (WCPO) tuna fishery is the largest and most valuable in the world. Although the International Law of the Sea granted Pacific island countries the right to exploit and manage this valuable fishery, they have been unable to prevent resource decline or to capture economic development potential from their intersect...

It is widely argued that small states and territories have relied upon the strategic trade and economic policies of larger countries to achieve development goals. Using the case of the export-oriented tuna industry in American Samoa (a territory of the United States), we argue that its status as a sub-national island jurisdictions (SNIJ) has been e...

This Guidebook, Pacific Islands Countries, the Global Tuna Industry and the International Trade Regime, outlines the major trade-related elements of the tuna fishing industry in the Western Central Pacific Ocean. In particular, it is meant to be a reference guide to assist government officials (particularly fisheries, trade and foreign affairs offi...

The changing nature of the international trade regime presents a series of new challenges to fish industries on the African continent. This article explores how WTO and EU trade negotiations and regulation impact market-access possibilities for African fish exports. It comes to the conclusion that while bilateral negotiations with the EU have been...

The 1994 Declaration of Barbados and the Barbados Programme of Action (BPOA) was a watershed in the scale and scope of international cooperation between small island developing states (SIDS). It was also the beginning of a heightened international concern with the particularities of SIDS developmental trajectories, constraints and opportunities. Ho...

The two edited collections and the monograph reviewed here provide the means to consider an extended range of commodities, locations, commodity/value chains, and issues of theory and method in political economy, beyond those presented by Gibbon and Ponte (2005) that we considered in the first part of this essay. Our discussion here touches on issue...

Since the 1970s there has been a significant interest in small island developing states (SIDS). Since the 1990s the vast majority of this focus has been on economic and environmental 'vulnerabilities'. This paper reaffirms the importance of 'the social' when analysing the 'vulnerabilities' of SIDS through a country case study of Seychelles in the c...

This first instalment of a two-part review essay on current work in commodity studies considers, at some length, an important and distinctive text by Peter Gibbon and Stefano Ponte. It draws on a unique set of case studies of African export commodities, using (and developing) the framework of Global Value Chain (GVC) theory, of American provenance,...