Global value chains and human development: a class-relational framework

Global Value Chain proponents argue that regional and human development can be achieved through ‘strategic coupling’ with transnational corporations. This argument is misleading for two reasons. First, GVC abstracts firm-firm and firm-state relations from their class-relational basis, obscuring fundamental developmental processes. Second, much GVC analysis promotes linear conceptions of development. This article provides a class-relational framework for GVC analysis. The formation and functioning of GVCs and the developmental effects associated with them are products of histories of evolving and often conflictive, class relations. A study of export horticulture in North East Brazil provides empirical support for these arguments

Labour-centred development in Latin America: two cases of alternative development

The ‘pink tide’ in Latin America, or what remains of it, is drawing increasing criticisms from the political left for its inability to confront existing socio-structural inequalities. This article contributes to these debates in two ways. First, as a means of understanding better the development strategies that have been followed by left-leaning governments, it highlights and critiques what it labels Elite Development Theory (EDT) encompassing Washington Consensus and Statist Political Economy. It shows how despite its self-stated objectives - the amelioration of the conditions of the poor and their uplifting - EDT is grounded in elite assumptions about social change: States and corporations are posited as prime-movers in the development process while collective efforts of labouring classes to pursue their own developmental strategies are ignored and/or de-legitimated. Exploitation, oppression and the ideological delegitimation of labouring class collective actions form the core of EDT. The second contribution of this article is to argue for an alternative form of what it terms labour-centred development (LCD). This argument is supported through an examination of the Chilean cordones industriales and Argentinian empresas recuperadas por sus trabajadores (ERT) movements. The article concludes that whilst LCD may be a rarity, its existence offers the basis for alternative development theory and strategy

The incidence and clinical burden of respiratory syncytial virus disease identified through hospital outpatient presentations in Kenyan children

There is little information that describe the burden of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) associated disease in the tropical African outpatient setting. Methods We studied a systematic sample of children aged <5 years presenting to a rural district hospital in Kenya with acute respiratory infection (ARI) between May 2002 and April 2004. We collected clinical data and screened nasal wash samples for RSV antigen by immunofluorescence. We used a linked demographic surveillance system to estimate disease incidence. Results Among 2143 children tested, 166 (8%) were RSV positive (6% among children with upper respiratory tract infection and 12% among children with lower respiratory tract infection (LRTI). RSV was more likely in LRTI than URTI (p<0.001). 51% of RSV cases were aged 1 year or over. RSV cases represented 3.4% of hospital outpatient presentations. Relative to RSV negative cases, RSV positive cases were more likely to have crackles (RR = 1.63; 95% CI 1.34–1.97), nasal flaring (RR = 2.66; 95% CI 1.40–5.04), in-drawing (RR = 2.24; 95% CI 1.47–3.40), fast breathing for age (RR = 1.34; 95% CI 1.03–1.75) and fever (RR = 1.54; 95% CI 1.33–1.80). The estimated incidence of RSV-ARI and RSV-LRTI, per 100,000 child years, among those aged <5 years was 767 and 283, respectively. Conclusion The burden of childhood RSV-associated URTI and LRTI presenting to outpatients in this setting is considerable. The clinical features of cases associated with an RSV infection were more severe than cases without an RSV diagnosis

Schizophrenia spectrum disorders and dissociative disorders:The blurry boundaries between categorical diagnoses

In lijn met de onderzoektrend die afstand neemt van categorische modellen van psychopathologie, wordt in dit proefschrift onderzocht in hoeverre schizofrenie spectrum stoornissen en dissociatieve stoornissen categorisch verschillende aandoeningen zijn. Het proefschrift begint met een overzicht van de literatuur gevolgd door nieuw onderzoek dat de uniekheid en de overlap van deze twee diagnostische clusters toetst. Verschillende benaderingen worden hierbij gebruikt, zo wordt er bijvoorbeeld door middel van netwerk analyse specifiek gekeken naar dissociatieve symptomen, die bij beide diagnoses voorkomen. Een andere studie is gericht op het experimenteel induceren van derealisatie, onafhankelijk van schizotypische ervaringen. Hoewel er verschillen zijn tussen schizofrenie spectrum stoornissen en dissociatieve stoornissen, blijkt uit dit proefschrift dat de grenzen tussen deze diagnoses niet zo duidelijk zijn als categorische modellen van psychopathologie, zoals het DSM-5, impliceren. De bevindingen van het proefschrift worden besproken in relatie tot veelbelovende projecten zoals RDoC, HiTOP en het netwerkmodel van psychopathologie

Oligopoly-driven development: the World Bank's Trading for Development in the Age of Global Value Chains in perspective

The World Development Report 2020 (WDR2020) asserts that global value chains raise productivity and incomes, create better jobs and reduce poverty, and proposes state policies to facilitate global value chain-based development. We deploy an immanent critique of WDR2020 to interrogate its claims regarding wages and working conditions. Using the Report’s own evidence, we identify contradictions in its claims, which stem from its use of comparative advantage trade theory to reconceptualize global value chain relations. This perspective predicts mutual gains between trading partners, but its core assumptions are incompatible with the realities of global value chains, in which (mostly Northern) oligopolistic lead firms capture value from (mostly Southern) suppliers and workers. We show how WDR2020 conceals these contradictions by misconstruing, inverting and ignoring evidence (particularly of labour’s agency), whilst failing to recommend redistributive measures for the unequal outcomes that it recognizes. By redeploying heterodox conceptions of monopoly capital and by using a class-relational approach, we scrutinize WDR2020's overly positive portrayal of lead firms. We provide alternative theoretical foundations to better explain the evidence within the Report, which shows that global value chains concentrate wealth, exacerbate inequalities and constrain social upgrading – with negative consequences for supplier firm workers in developing countries