Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/f
This article examines how resource materiality, scarcity, and evolving international environmental regulation shape global production networks (GPNs).Naturefacingelements, including resource scarcity and environmental regulation, have seldom featured in GPN analysis. So, too, GPN analysis emphasizes spatial relations between network actors over temporal change. We extend GPN theorization through a temporal analysis of industrial change, connecting manufacturing to upstream resource materialities and shifting regulation, and to downstream consumers increasingly concerned with provenance and material stewardship. To illustrate, we document a resourcesensitive GPN—acoustic guitar manufacturing— where scarcity of select raw materials (tonewoods) with material qualities of resonance, strength, and beauty, as well as tighter regulation, has spawned shifting economic geographies of new actors who influence the whole GPN. Such actors include specialist extraction firms, salvagers, traders, verification consultants, and customs agents who innovate in procurement and raw material supply risk management…)
