Giuliano Martiniello

The chapter explores key debates and analytical questions about the state-contract farming relationship in historical perspective. Through the interplay of diachronic and synchronic perspectives, the chapter offers an understanding of the evolving character of this nexus, with particular reference to Africa, building a genealogy of continuities and ruptures, starting from its colonial origins to the recent remodulations of the neoliberal agro-extractivist epoch. It argues that the state’s political agency remains unparalleled in the making, orchestration and reproduction of contract farming schemes, not only for the creation of the legislative and institutional environment essential to the proliferation of contract farming, and the often unlawful and violent acquisition of land necessary to the establishment of contract farming schemes, but perhaps most importantly, for the alignment of powerful politico-economic interests and social blocs behind shared narratives and visions of development. It shows how contract farming has been made a tool for the production of patronage networks into new geographical areas, and also for the integration of rural subjects within the formalized commercial circuits and the appropriation of key stakes in agribusiness through public/private partnerships, therefore, contributing to the expansion of capital frontiers in the countryside.

The chapter explores the significance and relevance of studying rural social movements in the Global South, and their coalescence into transnational agrarian movements, from an IPE perspective. It argues that putting rural social movements at the heart of the analysis of international political economy helps us decentering from core IPE geographic areas while simultaneously giving voice to the agency of the subjects affected by the operation of global markets and state forces. It focuses on two large and influential rural social movements – MST in Brazil and KPL in South Korea, analyzing their emergence through agrarian political economy lenses and situating them in the context of the growing contestation to the authoritarian character of neoliberal market-driven reforms. It argues that understanding the genealogy of rural social movements allows grappling with a plurality of responses from below to capitalist restructuring of the countryside while simultaneously reaffirming the centrality of food, agrarian and environmental questions in the study of IPE.

This chapter explores the IPE of globalization through a very particular lens – that of sex work. We first look at the notions of formal and informal labor to understand the distinct yet interrelated fields of economic activity that inform law, economy and politics in relation to human mental, emotional and bodily capacities. Then we discuss sex work as one part of the informal global economy: what is sex work? How is sex work a global formation of labor? We answer these questions by looking at the relationship between sex work and forms of development, as well as thinking about the different modalities of care work or intimate labor that are part of the globalized economy. We consider diverse ways of thinking about the temporality of globalization, focusing on the deterritorialization or offshoring of production processes and on Puerto Rico as a unique site from which to consider the historical processes commonly referred to as globalization, as well as movements of resistance to globalization. Throughout the chapter, we aim to contextualize sex work and other forms of informal labor as being part of and connected to the forms of globalization more commonly remarked upon by scholars and either celebrated or vilified by states in the international arena. Finally, we consider alternative models of globalization and pay particular attention to anthropologist Svati Shah’s research on sex work as one of the forms of day labor sold in Indian street markets.

Money and finance allow for the exchange of goods and services in the economy. At an international level, money and finance are governed by regulation and international politics. This chapter traces some of the history of the rise of money and financialization to shed light on the effect of inequality and vulnerability on international financial markets. This chapter will explore the extent to which the financial sector channels funds away from poor actors in need to rich actors who control the financial system. This structural constraint is magnified in the case of the Global South as the monetary system there is at a fundamental competitive disadvantage, because of the hegemony of big financial actors. (the monetarist thinking in 2007 global financial crisis. Effect of giving more power to big players, like Germany in the EU against Greece, and power to big banks like ECB. And their ideas of doing financial restructuring so here the pretense that they can take over the control of other’s economies and “restructure”.

International Political Economy and the Global South provides students from both the Global South and the Global North a textbook that speaks to distinct concepts, categories and issues of International Political Economy (IPE) from a Southern and Northern perspective, while identifying how they differ. The primary goal is to provide an alternative or complementary reading of IPE derived from the experiences of the periphery. The textbook asks: how has the Global South responded to the demands of a global economy? What is the meaning of sovereignty to those who have experienced colonialism and imperialism? How can the Global South claim the “international” when the Global North sets its norms, institutions and practices? It opens with a standard introduction, offering an intellectual history of key IPE concepts, including state, firm, capital, power, labor, globalization and finance. Each subsequent chapter follows a similar structure: exploration of the problem; discussion of what may be missing from dominant understandings of the problem and/or how orthodox IPE may tell us something different about the problem compared to what is experienced in the Global South; and identification of alternative frameworks and perspectives. Aiming to de-Westernize and decentralize the production of knowledge, the textbook introduces students to the discipline and phenomenon of IPE with a genuinely global perspective.

Security is traditionally studied by international relations students and seldom mentioned in books about IPE. And as we will show in the chapter, there is no functioning economy without a political regime that produces a structure, or an order that enables some form of stability and predictability for economies to function. Moreover, security-related concerns oftentimes dictate the future shaping of the international economic order. This chapter will discuss several aspects of the intertwining of security and economy, in the hope of shedding light on the relationship between imperialism and capitalism, the role of states and other regional groups in the world economy, the politics of the notion of human security and so on.

This chapter focuses on how labor has been oscillating between power and powerlessness through times and geographies. We set the story of a textile manufacturing company in Morocco to see how labor is transformed by market needs and capital movement, as the country’s economy integrates into the global context. The current global economy is also much driven by industrial change which has a direct impact on the transformation of work. One major observation is that, though unions organize to protect the interests of workers in the face of multiple structural changes in the global economy, workers are still at a disadvantage with capitalist expansion. This disadvantage is particularly observed with marginalized groups based on race and gender for example. The development of capitalist modes of production is, therefore, engendering more inequality and precarity everywhere, but particularly in the Global South. Instead, a workers-led model of production helps the interests of labor and promotes a more sustainable global economy.

This chapter introduces international political economy (IPE) as a field of study at the intersection of political economy and international relations. It then presents major economic and political problematics and how they are treated in three major ideologies of IPE: Marxism, liberalism and mercantilism. We also argue for the need for a Global South perspective as it helps us decenter and expand paradigms of IPE. Lastly, we present the organization of the book and the general themes of the book chapters.

This chapter provides a historical overview of the processes of globalization of food through the notion of international food regimes. The goal is to understand how food production, distribution and consumption of food have been made part of a capitalist and consumerist system. The chapter focuses on the experiences of the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region and African countries south of the Sahara. It argues that countries in the region have progressively been incorporated into the international food regime and significantly adopted elements of the international food system and neoliberal diet.