Global production networks: A geographical review of a research tradition
Abstract
This paper analyses the academic literature on global production networks (GPN) from 2000 to 2024 based on data from the Scopus database. It focuses on the uneven international landscape of authors, publications, funding sources, publishers and citations in the GPN literature compared with the firm Anglo-American hegemony prevailing in international geography in general. The article begins with an overview of the existing literature on asymmetrical power geometries in geography as a discipline, as well as the scholarly project of internationalising, worlding and decolonising geography. After that, it presents the research methodology of the current study. The results section highlights the temporal dynamics of the rise of the GPN research tradition. It reveals the multidisciplinary nature of this field of research and its solid interest in the industrial sector and the geographical dimension of the economy. It identifies the existence of a ‘primary European core’ and a ‘secondary Asian core’ rather than Anglo-American hegemony in the GPN literature, as reflected in the authors, funding sources and case study areas. It also confirms the dominance of Manchester and Singapore as leading global centres of calculation, as well as the still massive British hegemony over major publishing platforms, which is particularly strong in terms of citation-attracting ability. Meanwhile, the results reaffirm the marginalised position of most of the Global South. Finally, our study examines the uneven geography of GPN literature from authors in East Central Europe as a global semi-periphery and draws some general lessons for the geographies of science and the future possibilities of promoting the process of internationalisation, decolonisation and worlding of geographical research.
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