NB: This post is part of a symposium on law and global value chains co-convened with the Institute for Global Law and Policy’s Law and Global Production Working Group.
The Law-in-Global-Value-Chains perspective adopted in the Research Manifesto and introduced the initial blog of this series is based on the recognition that law is endogenous to the production, circulation, accumulation and destruction of value. Whether we are talking about labor, nature, capital or any of the other ‘cheap things’ that are central to the construction of the global system of production, the Manifesto suggests that law has a lot to do with the way in which that ‘thing’ becomes cheap and value is extracted from it..
Yet, not enough attention has been dedicated – so far – to the role of law as the enabler of financial markets, financial instruments and financial actors as value extracting participants to global networks of production. However, financial practices that prioritize the remuneration of capital holders contribute to redefining forms and spaces of production, along with the geographies of value appropriation and the relationships between people, planet and value chains. In the contemporary economy of atomized production and outsourcing, finance is at the core of how global production is organized. The study of law in global value is woefully incomplete without an understanding of the way in which legal structures define the space of operation of financial actors and financial actors utilize law and legal structures to increase the extraction of rent.
There are many ways into the study of how law and finance structure the operation of global value chains. Perhaps uniquely powerful is a focus on something both essential and increasingly fragile: the global food system.
Continue reading this blog on the LPE Project.