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Abstract
The dual emphasis on the benefits of global supply chain integration and private governance to address its ethical gaps have given prominence to an inclusive vision of chains which, this paper argues, drawing on the case of St. Vincent and the Grenadines (SVG), has been greatly exaggerated. In the post-war era, SVG built a successful banana industry under a preferential agreement with the EU. When the agreement collapsed under free trade reforms, the burden of finding new forms of reintegration fell on the state and laboring classes. The paper argues that conventional supply chain approaches have adopted a static understanding of the relationship between inclusion and exclusion, overlooking the exclusionary nature of supply chains and placing too much emphasis on assessing the possibilities for private supply chain initiatives to address their negative social and environmental impacts. The effect has been to obscure the centrality of the state and laboring classes in continuing, out of necessity, to confront, manage, and address the many costs that corporations are not willing to pay. It is their centrality to managing the uneven and unpredictable nature of supply chain integration/reintegration, that is often the most hidden of all.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank Kate Ervine, Michael Bloomfield, Jane Lister, Genevieve LeBaron, and the anonymous reviewers. Special thanks to Cecil Ryan for his advice and support, and to all of those who agreed to be interviewed in SVG.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Funding
This work was supported by the Canada Research Chairs (CRC) program of the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada (SSHRC) under grant number 950-231376.
Notes
1 The majority of interviews took place between March 2018 and May 2019, and included a trip by the author in July 2018 to SVG, which included meetings with government officials and a tour of the VincyFresh facility. Three SVG interviews were conducted by Tanisi Pooran, whose role as a Research Assistant is gratefully acknowledged. Other interviews were in person or electronic with key informants in Belgium, Canada, Chile, Geneva, Saint Lucia, and the United Kingdom.
2 For further elaboration of these debates see Fridell (Citation2019) and Bush et al. (Citation2014).
3 For a critical reflection on social upgrading, see Fridell and Walker (Citation2019).
4 ‘European Union, Trade in goods with ACP – Caribbean Countries,’ European Commission, Directorate-General for Trade, accessed January 8, 2019, http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2006/september/tradoc_113476.pdf.
5 personal communication, Cecil Ryan, April 10, 2019
6 In 2017, SVG’s total merchandise exports were valued at USD 42,299,410. In 1993, they were USD 57,772,860—adjusted for inflation this is around USD 260,555,598 in 2017 dollars. WITS-UN-COMTRADE (Citation2019).
7 In 2017, the total value of SVG’s merchandise exports were USD 42,299,410 and imports were USD 329,945,950. In 1993, its exports in current dollars were USD 57,772,860 and imports were USD 133,719,24. WITS-UN-COMTRADE (Citation2019).
8 Interview with Ralph Gonsalves (Prime Minister of SVG), Kingstown, SVG, 15 July 2008.
9 World Bank Open Data, http://data.worldbank.org.
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Notes on contributors
Gavin Fridell
Gavin Fridell is Canada Research Chair in International Development Studies at Saint Mary’s University and the author of numerous articles and books on fair trade and free trade, including Coffee (Polity Press). He is a member of the Advisory Board of the Canadian Fair Trade Network and the College of New Scholars of the Royal Society of Canada.