The relationship between uneven development and the reconfigurations of agricultural production networks in the global South remains a prevalent topic of debate within social science disciplines and policy-making circles. This paper intervenes in this literature by proposing to examine small-scale producers as primary actors playing an instrumental role in (re)structuring a given global production network (GPN) and (re)producing geographies of uneven development in agricultural contexts. The authors deploy key concepts of the disarticulations perspective – dispossession, articulation, disinvestment, constitutive exclusion – and rely on the case study of argan oil production in Morocco to develop a reformulation of the GPN theoretical framework re-centered around these producers. The paper theorizes ‘alternative resourcing’, ‘‘collective mobilizing’ and ‘adaptive downgrading’ as three strategic actions adopted by producers from the bottom up, and are central to understanding uneven development processes in an agriculture-based GPN.
