Social Exclusion in the New Economy: Beyond the Digital Divide

As new information and communication technologies contribute to the restructuring of relationships of production and distribution and connect people and places across the globe in new ways, concerns have emerged regarding the formation of a ‘digital divide’ between those who can access and make use of these new technologies and those who cannot. That is, how can we ensure that the information age does not create new and exacerbate existing inequalities, let alone any hope that these gulfs will be narrowed? What is often missing from these discussions is an understanding and articulation of the mechanisms that continue to create and exacerbate inequalities both between and within states. This article will, therefore, explore competing theoretical explanations of poverty, exclusion and inequality that have evolved through history both in academia and in everyday understandings of these phenomena. As changes within the “new economy” become evident, one must recognize that inequality, poverty and exclusion are rarely experienced along a single axis. Thus, while the digital divide is but one expression of current inequalities, a closing of this inequality and others requires a fuller understanding of the mechanisms, both material and ideological that generate and legitimate diverse and complex experiences of exclusion

Transnational Governance as Contested Institution-Building: China, Merchants, and Contract Rules in the Cotton Trade

We are in an era of uncertainty over whose rules will govern global economic integration. With the growing market share of Chinese firms and the power of the Chinese state it is unclear if Western firms will continue to dominate transnational governance. Exploring these dynamics through a study of contract rules in the global cotton trade, this article conceptualizes commodity chain governance as a contested process of institution-building. To this end, the global commodity chain/global value chain (GCC/GVC) framework must be revised to better account for the broader institutional context of commodity chain governance, institutional variation across space, and strategic action in the construction of legitimate governance arrangements. I provide a more dynamic model of GCC governance that stresses how strategic action, existing institutions, and dominant discourses intersect as firms and states compete for institutional power within a commodity chain. This advances our understandings of how commodity chain governance emerges and changes over time