Foregrounding agency and deliberative relations in GPN 2.0: insights from Whitehead’s process philosophy

Abstract

The Global Production Networks (GPN) 2.0 approach requires greater conceptualization of human actors and deliberative (power) relations. This includes the social construction and heterogeneous composition of human actors, nature of their decision-making, role of deliberations in strategies and actions, and the relational nature of power. This paper applies the process philosophy perspective of Alfred North Whitehead to develop a more social constructivist GPN 2.0 perspective, focusing on human agency and deliberative (power) relations. A process perspective provides significant focus on the causal mechanisms within the actual occasions of experience constituting reality, which influence and constitute human actors, deliberative relations, and ‘spacetime’.