Global Wealth Chains

This volume is a vital complement to the well-established literature on global value chains. In an ambitious introduction, Seabrooke and Wigan lay the groundwork for this analytical project by developing a typology of global wealth chains. Contributors bring these ideal types to life through theoretically and empirically rich explorations of fields as diverse as art, mining, and public utilities. By focusing on asset strategies and the interpretive communities that devise and defend them, this volume pioneers a method for unraveling the intentionally complex and opaque machinations by which wealth is accumulated and maintained. It is essential reading for anyone seeking to understand the nature of power, privilege, and inequality in the global political economy. * Jennifer Bair, Professor of Sociology, University of Virginia * Global Value Chains (GVCs) enable firms to make things cheaply and maximize profits. But what happens to those profits? If production is about value, then profits are about wealth. And just as GVCs create those profits, so Global Wealth Chains — profit defending asset strategies — keep those profits out of the hands of those outside the firm (workers, regulators, governments) that would like to get their hands on them. Seabrooke and Wigan and their collaborators show us through detailed case studies how wealth is defended, augmented and extended through a variety of corporate and other legal forms. * Mark Blyth, The William R. Rhodes '57 Professor of International Economics, Brown University * With their concept of global wealth chains, Seabrooke and Wigan have opened up a powerful new stream of research that addresses a central issue in modern societies — how wealth is maintained and reproduced in a world characterised by economic uncertainties, financial market instabilities, state revenue and tax authorities, and egalitarian social movements. This is essential reading for anybody interested in how wealth is sustained and protected in the contemporary period. It is a truly inter-disciplinary project that reflects the best of contemporary social science and its ability to reveal to society and policy makers the opaque structures and processes that underpin current conditions of inequality of wealth and power. * Glenn Morgan, Honorary Professor of Management, University of Bristol *