摘要
Sustainability standards are central to the governance of global value chains, shaping labour conditions and environmental practices. Yet established scholarship privileges standards originating in the Global North, creating a significant gap in understanding how sustainability governance is shaped for and within the Global South. Through a comparative analysis of standards in South African wine and Indian tea, this article shows that Southern standards are produced through relational and trans-scalar struggles embedded in uneven material power relations within and across value chains. By tracing their interaction with established Northern regimes, the article reconceptualises sustainability governance as a contested and polycentric field.