explaining the structural and institutional preconditions of human action, while ANT as a
poststructuralist concept helps us focus on the agency dimension in producing GPNs. The
cultural turn – albeit largely ignoring the material and economic basis of contemporary
capitalism (discussed below in more detail) – is helpful in integrating the socio-cultural
dimension of economic exchange and value creation, enhancement and capture. To this end,
progress has already been made over the last decade or so. For instance, while deriving from
the ‘structuralist’ world systems theory concerned with the “system-world”, to use
Habermas’ term, the GCC analysis clearly has moved on to investigate the life-world
dimensions of global production and development (e.g. Lagendijk, 2004). This is not to say
that “systemic” economic rationales (capitalist modes of production, reducing cost,
increasing profit) are not important or that relatively formal “systems” (markets, bureaucratic
organisations) with their own logic and momentum do not play a major role in shaping the
organisation of global industries. As Sayer (2001: 690) notes, “[c]oncrete economic
organisations like firms exist in both system and lifeworld”. However, systems “are always
culturally embedded in and dependent on the lifeworld; hence, the latter is a precondition of
systems, not an add-on” (Sayer, 2001: 689). What might be called for, then, is a cultural
political economy of GPNs to inform future research.