Abstract
Abstract. The article examines how to adapt the global production network (GPN) approach to situations of natural resource extraction. Based on an integration of a political ecology perspective into GPN research, we exemplarily apply the GPN framework to the primary sector. Based on extensive qualitative fieldwork regarding Argentine lithium mining and Brazilian soy agribusiness we illustrate that particularly a political ecological environmental perspective allows for a more nuanced and critical analysis of ambiguous local development outcomes. While from a purely economic development perspective in both cases the economic activity (integrated into GPNs) is celebrated as an imperative economic growth driver, our framework helps identify the emergence of unilateral dependencies, a decline of social autonomy and an unequal distribution of environmental risks.
Highlights
Starting with the discovery of Cerro Rico, close to Potosí, Latin America has historically been reduced to its role as a supplier of raw material
We exemplarily focus on the conceptual category of value capture and combine it with a political–ecological perspective on social– ecological consequences in order to critically analyze development outcomes of resource extraction embedded in global production network (GPN)
While GPN offers deep insights into the organization of firms and production, Political Ecology (PE) focuses on the unequal distribution of resources and environmental risks
Summary
Starting with the discovery of Cerro Rico, close to Potosí, Latin America has historically been reduced to its role as a supplier of raw material. The extractive boom in the early 2000s coincided with a period of dominance of leftist governments and further deepened the re-primarization of national economies This concern has been widely discussed by academic intellectuals in the context of neo-extractivism. Conservative and right-wing governments have taken over in some countries of Latin America, whereby the strategy of exportoriented extractivism has been further enhanced Such extractivist development models are thickly embedded in global production networks (GPNs). Bearing in mind the developmental significance of resource extraction in Latin American history and the global production networks in which the extractivist activities are embedded, the GPN approach seems to be a useful concept. By analyzing the cases of lithium mining in the Argentine Andes and soy agribusiness in the Brazilian transition zone between the Cerrado and the Amazon biome, we point out and discuss the strengths of GPN analysis for extractive contexts
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