A Decolonial Approach to Value Chain Analysis

In this article, I advance a decolonial perspective on global value chains (GVCs) that moves beyond the dominant focus on lead-firm governance and upgrading to interrogate the epistemic hierarchies shaping how global production is studied and governed. This perspective rests on three commitments: exposing the coloniality of knowledge that privileges certain categories and voices in GVC analysis, adopting pluriversality to recognize diverse worldviews on labor and nature, and advancing epistemic justice in the field. I situate this approach in relation to earlier critical strands of GVC research—including disarticulation, inequality and poverty chains, monopsony capitalism, and feminist and ecological critiques—that trace how colonial histories and capitalist logics continue to shape GVC dynamics. In doing so, the article develops a decolonial approach that broadens both the explanatory and normative horizons of GVC analysis.