Reconfigured Geographies of Timber and Acoustic Guitar Manufacturing

University of Wollongong Research Online

Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences & Humanities

2016

Resource-sensitive global production networks: reconfigured geographies of timber and acoustic guitar manufacturing

Christopher R. Gibson University of Wollongong, [email protected]

Andrew T. Warren University of Wollongong, [email protected]

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Recommended Citation Gibson, Christopher R. and Warren, Andrew T., "Resource-sensitive global production networks: reconfigured geographies of timber and acoustic guitar manufacturing" (2016). Faculty of Social Sciences - Papers. 2538. https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/2538

Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] Resource-sensitive global production networks: reconfigured geographies of timber and acoustic guitar manufacturing

Abstract This article examines how resource materiality, scarcity, and evolving international environmental regulation shape global production networks (GPNs). Nature-facing elements, 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 resource-sensitive 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. Traditional large guitar manufacturing firms have struggled with regulation and securing consistent resource supply, although smaller lead manufacturing firms have creatively responded via novel procurement methods and marketing, developing closely bound, iterative relationships with specialist timber harvesters, traders, and with emotionally attached consumers. A cohort of tonewood supply firms and guitar manufacturers- especially in Australia, the Pacific Northwest and Canada, key locations of both resource and design expertise-have together altered material stewardship practices and commodity production. Niche strategies derive exchange value from rarity and resource innovation, embracing raw material variability, inconsistent supply, and the need for alternatives. How firms adapt ot resource supply security risks, we argue, is an imperative question for GPN analysis.

Keywords resource, timber, sensitive, acoustic, guitar, manufacturing, global, production, networks, reconfigured, geographies

Disciplines Education | Social and Behavioral Sciences

Publication Details Gibson, C. & Warren, A. (2016). Resource-sensitive global production networks: reconfigured geographies of timber and acoustic guitar manufacturing. Economic Geography, 92 (4), 430-454.

This journal article is available at Research Online: https://ro.uow.edu.au/sspapers/2538 Economic Geography

ISSN: 0013-0095 (Print) 1944-8287 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/recg20

Resource-Sensitive Global Production Networks: Reconfigured Geographies of Timber and Acoustic Guitar Manufacturing

Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren

To cite this article: Chris Gibson & Andrew Warren (2016) Resource-Sensitive Global Production Networks: Reconfigured Geographies of Timber and Acoustic Guitar Manufacturing, Economic Geography, 92:4, 430-454, DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2016.1178569

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2016.1178569

Published online: 03 Jun 2016.

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Download by: [University of Wollongong] Date: 09 October 2016, At: 17:06 CNMCGEOGRAPHY ECONOMIC Resource-Sensitive Global Production Networks: Reconfigured Geographies of Timber and Acoustic Guitar Manufacturing

Chris Gibson This article examines how resource materiality, scarcity, and evolving international environmental regula- School of Geography and tion shape global production networks (GPNs). Nature- Sustainable Communities facing elements, including resource scarcity and envir- University of Wollongong onmental regulation, have seldom featured in GPN Wollongong, NSW 2522 analysis. So, too, GPN analysis emphasizes spatial

Australia abstract relations between network actors over temporal [email protected]. change. We extend GPN theorization through a temporal analysis of industrial change, connecting manufacturing to upstream resource materialities and 430 Andrew Warren School of Geography and shifting regulation, and to downstream consumers Sustainable increasingly concerned with provenance and material Communities stewardship. To illustrate, we document a resource- University of Wollongong sensitive GPN—acoustic guitar manufacturing— Wollongong, NSW 2522 where scarcity of select raw materials (tonewoods) Australia with material qualities of resonance, strength, and [email protected]. beauty, as well as tighter regulation, has spawned shift-

ing 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 Key words: raw material supply risk management. Traditional large guitar manufacturing firms have struggled with regula-

92(4):430 resource geographies tion and securing consistent resource supply, although global production networks smaller lead manufacturing firms have creatively environmental protection responded via novel procurement methods and market- timber ing, developing closely bound, iterative relationships –

5.www.economicgeography.org 454. materiality with specialist timber harvesters, traders, and with stewardship emotionally attached consumers. A cohort of tonewood expertise supply firms and guitar manufacturers—especially in innovation sustainability Australia, the Pacific Northwest and Canada, key loca- — supply chains tions of both resource and design expertise have together altered material stewardship practices and commodity production. Niche strategies derive exchange value from rarity and resource innovation, embracing raw material variability, inconsistent supply, and the need for alternatives. How firms adapt to resource supply security risks, we argue, is an imperative question for GPN analysis. Vol. 92 No. 4 2016

Acknowledgments This article places material resources and accompanying environmental regulation more firmly in the frame of Global Production Network (GPN) We wish to thank Miles “ Jackson, Steve McMinn, David theory. A GPN is defined as the organizational Olsen, Kevin Burke, Bob arrangement comprising interconnected economic Rose, Richard Hoover, Scott and non-economic actors coordinated by a global Meidell, David and Kate lead firm and producing goods and services across multiple geographic locations for worldwide mar- Kirby, Peter Howorth, and ” Bob McMillan for leads and kets (Yeung and Coe 2015, 32). Lead firms are insights, John Steele and considered primary actors responsible for organiz- Shaun McKiernan for ing, coordinating, and controlling commodity pro- research assistance. Thanks duction across national boundaries (Yeung and Coe also to the three anonymous 2015). Economic geographers increasingly employ referees and Henry Yeung for GPN theory to understand how goods and services their constructive comments are produced, distributed, and consumed (Henderson et al. 2002; Dicken 2011; Coe and on earlier versions of the 431 article. Yeung 2015). GPN frameworks enable analysis of the spatial fragmentation of production and resulting economic development outcomes. Here we GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE extend GPN analysis by engaging with environ- Funding mental factors, particularly “upstream” resource geographies. The article identifies new actors This research received fund- across global networks innovating in resource ing support from the extraction, processing, verification, and trade, and University of Wollongong explores the deeper binding of such actors with Faculty of Social Sciences emergent lead firms in a downstream manufactur- grant scheme [grant number ing sector, and with emotionally attached consu- 04/2015]. mers concerned with resource stewardship and provenance (cf. Bridge and Smith 2003). We con- ceptualize and empirically examine a more broadly conceived GPN, from resource to consumer, incorporating environmental regulation and interactions between sustainability concerns, manufacturing, and new resource actors. Notwithstanding contributions made by GPN theor- ists to understanding the interconnected global economy, limitations persist. Critics have questioned the © 2016 The Author(s). Published by network ontology underpinning GPN perspectives and Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor resultant “decontextualized and depoliticized” read- & Francis Group, on behalf of Clark ings of economic geographies (Peck 2005, 133). University There are also concerns with limited appreciation of This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the labor agency (Cumbers, Nativel and Routledge 2008), Creative Commons Attribution- Non- and a narrow conception of lead firms, focused espe- Commercial-NoDerivatives License cially on big capital multinationals, rather than smaller, (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/ niche firms (Murphy 2012)—a criticism relevant here. by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non- Even though GPNs are clearly linked to upstream commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided resource supplies, and thus entail ecological impacts theoriginalworkisproperlycited,and (Cook 2004), material resources and their extractors, is not altered, transformed, or built verifiers, and regulators remain taken-for-granted upon in any way. actors in GPN research. Only recently has an emergent ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

literature sought to place material resources and environmental concerns on the GPN agenda (Bridge 2008; Crang et al. 2013; De Marchi, Di Maria and Ponte 2013). Questions of links between resource and production phases are nothing new in economic geography. In the 1980s and 1990s, analysis documented vertical integration into resources by mining and manufacturing companies seeking to secure supply, achieve economies of scale, and reestablish corporate power (Fagan 1986; Ó hUallacháin and Matthews 1996). Unresolved in GPN analysis, however, is the role and power of material resources—and the innovative firms that extract, process, certify, and regulate them—in shaping global dynamics of industrial organization in downstream sectors dependent on those resources. Contributing to critical appraisal of the GPN framework, the article draws attention to limited engagement with material resource dimensions of globalized production. We provide a novel theorization of a resource-sensitive GPN incorporating physical materiality, actors involved in extraction, verification and regulation, subsequent innovations undertaken by lead firms in manufacturing, and the role of consumers who express concern with material stewardship and provenance. Focused at the nexus of material resources and globalized production, we subject 432 an increasingly scarce and regulated natural resource—hardwood timber—and one form of material production utterly dependent on it—acoustic guitar manufacture— to a GPN analysis. Attention is afforded to interactions between material resources, manufacturing, and consumer concern, and actors in upstream nodes of extraction, verification, and regulation. As a transnational industry of surprising significance (the highest volume form of musical instrument manufacture, worth over $3 billion annually—UN Comtrade 2014), guitar production depends on matured hardwood timbers (tonewoods) with requisite structural, aesthetic, and tonal qualities. Both use and exchange value for acoustic guitar production depend on specific hardwood timbers, following a “type form” (Molotch 2005,6)that“locked-in” (David 1985, 333) as the dominant design template during the early-twentieth-century advent of industrial-scale production. Unlike some other industries dependent on timber, such as construction, further contributing to resource sensitivity in guitar manufacturing is that tonewoods are increasingly scarce and regulated, and not easily fungible. Select high-value tree species used in acoustic guitar production grow in limited spatial and climatic contexts, and renew slowly, over centuries. Such timescales conflict with short-term commercial imperatives, and with predicted climate change impacts on future forest range and habitat scenarios (Iverson et al. 2008). Increasing regulation of trade in high-value timbers and uncertainty around consistent and sustainable supplies have become major challenges for guitar manufacturing. Resource fungibility, knowledge of forest ecology, environmental stewardship responsibilities, and literacy with unfamiliar, and complex, international trade law, are issues guitar manufacturing firms now deal with, whereas consistent and unproblematic supply of core input materials was once assumed. In consequence, new actors are emerging in upstream nodes of extraction, certification, and regulation in existing and new regions of material resource expertise, since regulation of threatened species produces distinctive market conditions: salvagers, specialist agroforestry and tonewood firms, and verification consultants. Such actors profit from scarcity and regulation, are constructing new networks and markets, and influence downstream manufacturing and consumption. The result is a resource-sensitive GPN incorporating specialist cultivation, extraction and processing; verification and regulation; and smaller, innovative manufacturing firms increasingly adopting an adjunct role as chain-of-supply resource stewards. Vol. 92 No. 4 2016

Animated by the possibility for a more mutually enriching dialogue between GPNs and environmental matters related to resources, the article pursues two main objectives. First, we aim to contribute an analysis of the way firms in extraction and manufacturing adapt and transform GPNs in light of shifting availability and regulation of material resources. Relations between resource extractors, traders, accreditors, manufacturers, and consumers are being reorganized and rescaled in resource-sensitive GPNs. Second, with a focus on the specific materiality of the natural resource itself, we emphasize the capacity of raw materials —their materiality, distribution, processing, and regulation—to shape GPNs and attending geopolitical relations. According to Hudson (2008, 421), “there has been little serious engagement with the materiality of the economy,” including in GPN analysis. The approach has continually underplayed the “influence materiality exerts on industrial organization” (Bridge 2008, 415). Cases of scarcity and abundance are far from identical across resource types in a “world that is biophysically heterogeneous” (Bakker and Bridge 2006,5).The world of material resources resists neat and orderly representation (Bridge 2009). Resource materiality influences not only sheer availability but also how availability is perceived, measured, and regulated (Labban 2010). For timber, this results from its distinctive materiality: the unique and infinitely variable genetic properties of trees, limited possibilities for 433 substitution (depending on the product being manufactured), and long lead times for resource replenishment. GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE Shaping and transforming resource-sensitive GPNs are, therefore, not just questions of security of supply but raw material qualities (and how and where they come to be); how resources are cultivated, harvested, certified, and regulated (spawning new accumulation strategies); and how organic properties live beyond extraction into product design, manufacture, and consumption (cf. Crang et al. 2013; Gibson 2016). Material resources and environmental regulation have capacities to iteratively shape global networks of production and consumption. Our article is structured as follows. In the next section, we address efforts to system- atically theorize the multiscalar, spatially dispersed global economy. Among attempts to develop more dynamic GPN theory, we highlight limitations relating to material resources and argue the case for a broader conceptualization. After a contextual descrip- tion of acoustic guitar manufacturing and design lock-ins, and explanatory note on research methods, we proceed with empirical analysis. With an industrial history span- ning early international mercantile trade of hardwood timbers (cf. Cronon 1991), we emphasize problems of resource scarcity that surfaced in the 1960s following mass production and postwar consumerism. The subsequent Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES 1973) and the US- based Lacey Act (1900, revised in 2008) challenged acoustic guitar making in unfore- seen ways. We document the emergence of new, globally networked lead firms across resource extraction/processing and guitar manufacture in both existing and new locations of resource and production expertise (such as Australia and Canada), examining responses to a new normal of intermittent (or even nonexistent, for some timber species) materials supply and regulated global trade. Analysis charts legal, cultural, and tactical difficulties faced by traditional market leaders (amid shifting consumer preferences), alongside closer binding of new, innovative resource supply and niche manufacturing firms. We explicate adaptive strategies to sustain markets and commercial viability amid inconsistent supply of a scarce and variable resource. Conclusions draw out resulting implications for broader theorization of nature-facing elements of GPNs, namely, how resource actors and production are dialectically bound in temporally evolving relations, especially in light of biophysical materiality. ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY Incorporating Resource Actors and Environmental Regulation into GPN Theory GPN theory rose to prominence in the early 2000s, as geographers progressed relational forms of economic geography (Henderson et al. 2002; Yeung 2005; Coe 2011). Early GPN approaches sought meso-level explanations of capitalism’s paradoxical qualities: spatial interconnectedness, on the one hand; fragmentation and uneven economic development, on the other. Three interrelated political economic processes were prioritized: value creation, embeddedness, and power. Value creation is a firm’s ability to generate profit via a given commodity’s exchange value and is a unifying feature of global capitalism (Castree 2003). Embeddedness concerns the way economic activity, encapsulated in the actions of lead firms, becomes settled in networks of social relations and concentrated in certain locations (Polanyi 2001 [1944]). Power relates to corporate, collective, and institutional control over production systems (Henderson et al. 2002). GPN analysis supported a heuristic framework (Coe, Dicken and Hess 2008), seeking understanding of the multiactor and multiscale characteristics of transnational production. 434 The approach attracted critique, however, over its limited capacity to diagnose the driving forces of economic change and uneven development (Sunley 2008;Coe2011). Geographers have recently called for a more systematic GPN theory (Yeung and Coe 2015; Mayes 2015). Working from the premise that GPNs are the new “structural architecture of the global economy” (Yeung and Coe 2015, 30), economic geographers are uncovering dynamic, competitive forces shaping relations between actors embroiled in GPNs. The GPN framework applies to our case here because, at the outset, it assists in understanding the manner in which manufacturing networks have become increasingly transna-

tional, driven by competitive pressures. Nevertheless, despite notable advances, we contend that, in light of this case study, there are two key limitations of current GPN theory. First, GPN theory tends to emphasize spatial relations between production network actors at the expense of longer-run transformation over time. In the case below, a phase of production fragmentation and offshoring began nearly two decades ago, as lead manufacturers such as Gibson and Fender, sought to subcontract production for budget lines to low-labor cost Asian original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), in competition with new players such as Yamaha and Ibanez. The significance of that phase persists in, among other things, a thoroughly transnational industry structure where market strategy and product lines reflect distinctive geographies of production and labor exploitation (from cheap guitars made in China—which make up about half of all global trade (UN Comtrade 2014)–to elite American-made instruments). However, since the 1990s, other drivers have emerged that reshape GPNs and that establish the conditions for new actors to emerge and gain prominence. In this case, security of resource supply and environmental regulation are key drivers, enabling new actors in cultivation, procurement, certification, and manufacturing to emerge. A revised GPN framework attuned to temporal shifts across such phases is thus necessary. This in turn highlights the second key limitation of GPN theory: it remains neglect- ful of material resources underpinning commodity production, including increasingly elongated and binding chains of extraction, processing, certification, regulation, and trade, as well as associated environmental dimensions of globalized industry (Dicken 2011; De Marchi, Di Maria and Ponte 2013). With exchange value increasingly derived from nature in complex ways (e.g., carbon markets, ecosystem services, financialized resource markets—see Knox-Hayes 2009; Labban 2010; Osborne 2015), the increased significance in trade of value-added intermediate goods in GPNs (Coe and Yeung 2015) extends beyond manufactured component parts and associated producer services to earlier raw material extraction and transformation. As yet, conceptions of Vol. 92 No. 4 2016 intermediate goods in GPNs have seldom included input material resources or their upstream extraction, processing, verification, regulation, and trade. This invites greater appreciation of the reconfiguration of actors and networks that connect upstream biophysical resources with downstream manufacture, assembly, and consumption. Indeed, little is known on the interface between raw material supply and dynamics in downstream manufacturing. Earlier insights on raw material supply and processing in primary industry, revealed vertical integration as a key firm-based strategy for establishing a reliable resource supply chain and achieving economies of scale (Ó hUallacháin and Matthews 1996). But resource extraction, processing, disclosure, verification, financialization, and distribution have become progressively complex and regulated. This interface is a source of new expertise, firm formation, and value creation (Knox-Hayes 2013), since the scale and logics of procurement shift amid heightened regulation. Resource geographies have become spatially fragmented and dispersed, reinforcing existing concentrations of expertise and corporate power (Knox- Hayes 2009). Resource phases also influence downstream labor–capital relations, and the organization and transformation of commodity production (Bakker and Bridge 2006; Hudson 2012). The result, in the industry analyzed here, is that following an 435 earlier phase of cost-driven restructuring, GPNs are increasingly sensitive to, and reconfigured because of, upstream resource security issues. Traditional market leaders GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE have struggled to secure raw material supply, although new economic geographies are forged by emergent players, in Australia, the Pacific Northwest and Canada for instance, where strategic opportunities are seized by specialist resource suppliers with expertise in alternative and verifiable species, and by manufacturers in high- wage, design-intensive locations most attuned to low-volume/high-value niche production. In so doing we engage with, and further contribute to, antecedent work by Gavin Bridge and others theorizing resource GPNs. Importantly, resource scarcity is a produced circumstance—an outcome of regulatory and corporate machinations (Bakker 2000; Bridge 2009; Labban 2010). Scarcity and abundance are constructed through regulation, futures trading, and commodity markets (Cronon 1991). Energy and resource firms manipulate availability for strategic advantage (Bridge and Wood 2010). Uncertainties in resource supply and resultant regulation can be sources of creative destruction that reconfigure markets and relations between firms in GPNs, catalyzing opportunities as well as crises. The GPN approach is well suited to drawing out institutional processes and regulatory pressures reshaping resource networks—but those resource networks also need connecting with dynamics in downstream manufacturing. For timber, environmental legislation and regulation, intended to limit environmental damage, has in the process “created a certain scarcity of what can be called ‘allowable natural destruction’” (Smith 2007, 20). In the case below, international conservation law and accompanying national-scale regulation has both responded to extant species endangerment, and created suitable market conditions for allowable trade in scarce, and highly regulated, hardwoods. Such conditions have spawned new actors in resource phases, in both established and new geographic locations, and dynamic responses among downstream resource-dependent manufacturers. Regulation intended to thwart extinctions simultaneously responds to and heightens consumer concern for (and fascination with) charismatic timbers. Environmental protection thus creates conditions for accumulation throughout the GPN, based on rarity value, in both resource and manufacturing phases. ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

As we demonstrate below, the material affordances and agentic capacities of resources enchant commodities from which they are made. But also, extending Bridge and Smith’s earlier (2003) work on commodity production, materiality actively influences processes of industrial transformation throughout GPNs, across time, being shaped by cultural as well as economic relations (Hudson 2012; Crang et al. 2013). The specific downstream product being made and sold, its constituent materials, and shifting cultural significance, matter deeply. The acoustic guitar illustrates par excel- lence Bridge and Smith’s(2003, 258) argument that “commodities embody emotional value in the meanings and attachments bestowed upon them by cognizant consumers.” That emotional value entails both the finished commodity and cherished constituent materials. Musicians are strongly attached to their instruments, and deeply committed to tradition, celebrating select materials and socially constructing quality based on perceptions of timber’s “sonic and tonal agentic force” (Martinez-Reyes 2015, 313). But musicians are also now aware of and concerned about the environmental impacts associated with instrument manufacture. Augmenting the emotional value of select tonewoods is another source of value in a more resource-sensitive era: as consumers 436 gain credibility among fellow musicians by being able to tell a story of rare, salvaged or sustainable woods from which their instrument was made. Issues of extraction, use, and scarcity are thus accompanied by “complex historical, geopolitical and socio-material relations” (Hobson 2016, 4) that bind upstream resource actors with downstream manufacturing sectors, and with final consumers (Mayes 2015). As Mansfield (2003a, 329) argues, “cultural notions about the biophysical world play key roles in political economic conflicts.” The concerns of consumers for quality, transparency in stewardship, and provenance work iteratively with legal requirements imposed on the timber trade to drive innovation in resource extraction, processing, certification, and regulation, as well as product design and manufacturing (cf. Mansfield 2003b). There is heightened legal scrutiny of procurement practices (exemplified in US federal raids on Gibson Guitar Corp. in 2009 and 2011, discussed below) and increased consumer debate (for instance, in online guitar forums) about origins and impacts of timber present in musical instruments. That acoustic guitar manufacturing is deeply informed by cultural norms, meanings, and expectations shapes upstream procurement practices. Material resources and the biophysical environment are not merely the start and end points of GPNs—as resource “reserves” or “sinks” for waste (Crang et al. 2013, 12). In evolving and as yet under-acknowledged ways, material resources bind the business of manufacture with upstream extraction, processing, certification, and environmental regulation, along with downstream consumer cultures. In this context, new lead firms may not dominate market share, but rather lead trends in creating value through innovation in materials use and stewardship, defining quality (cf. Mansfield 2003b), and influencing broader production processes and market dynamics. Legal scrutiny and growing awareness among musicians of timber provenance have encouraged firms willing to take risks (at both resource extraction and manufacturing stages) to seek alternative materials. This has in turn rescaled relations and diversified geographies of resource extraction. Opportunities have opened for salvagers and new specialist tonewood supply firms beyond larger traditional timber mills. These actors source smaller stocks of high-grade tonewoods from unusual sources, establishing distinctive routes for alternative species, salvaged and recycled wood. Moreover, such niche resource suppliers now exert influence over downstream manufacturing, through resource innovation (e.g., advancing alternative species) and by favoring procurement to certain sectors and firms over others. For instance, Vol. 92 No. 4 2016 specialist timber suppliers now exclusively sell restricted quantities of instrument- grade timbers to niche guitar makers (at elevated prices) rather than seek larger volume sales at lower prices to either mass manufacturers, or to other potential buyers in the furniture or construction industries. Specialist consultancy firms also track timber and certify supply chains. New players in traditional forestry and guitar manufacturing regions, and in emergent, dispersed places internationally, have concentrated influence over the GPN. Key actors shaping the acoustic guitar GPN now encompass a broader set of firms, including nontraditional market leaders (specialist tonewood procurers, millers and traders, niche manufacturers unbound by “tradition”), new resource actors (agroforesters salvagers, resource managers, certifiers, DNA testers, customs agents), and consumers who covet particular woods over others (Martinez-Reyes 2015). Lead firms in resource-sensitive GPNs, such as guitars, drive market trends in materials use and marketing, and factor in dynamically evolving systems of environmental governance, “wield[ing] power and authority over environmental policies and decisions” (Liverman 2004, 436). Comprehensive theorization of resource-sensitive GPNs thus requires not just an analysis of manufacturers’ strategies to diffuse capital, processes, and assembly meth- 437 ods. Also needed are the increasingly dispersed, sophisticated, regulated, and dynamic geographies of resource extraction, regulation, certification, and processing on which GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE manufacture depends; cognizance of the physical qualities and capacities of input materials; and the cultural interactions consumers pursue with them, via finished commodities. Once the frame of GPN analysis is widened to incorporate more diverse resource actors (with resource geographies in turn connected to downstream competitive dynamics and consumers), questions of longer-run transformation and change associated with scarcity and regulation are brought into clearer view.

Industry Context and Research Methods Acoustic steel-string guitar making is relatively new. It builds on centuries of lutherie craft, making stringed musical instruments such as violins, mandolins, and lutes, linked to distinctive regional folk idioms. The acoustic guitar’s stable “type form” (Molotch 2005, 97)—its model design, shape, dimensions, materials, and layout of strings—only settled into a formula in the late 1800s and early 1900s, at the onset of industrialization. Construction methods, parts, and preferences for certain materials were inherited from previous traditions making mandolins and violins (cf. Gibson 2016). Comparatively unregulated international timber import–export flows (typical of the mercantile/colonial era) in combination with regional timber milling (for domestic timber species) fed a craft operating in artisanal mode, for local, elite consumers. The production network incorporating resource extraction, cutting, and trade, was global even in this preindustrial era (in that it depended on international sourcing, shipping, and processing), preempting later fragmented and complex iterations. In time, one manufacturer, C .F. Martin, became the lead firm, establishing the stable type form for the modern steel-stringed acoustic guitar, along with industrial scale production. The 1920s to 1960s saw guitar making shift from a craft practice where luthiers handmade guitars, one at a time, for classically trained musicians, to a manufacturing industry with factories housing squadrons of workers of varying skill, assigned split tasks, making standard models for folk, hillbilly, and later rock “n” roll, musicians. The shift began in the United States, which by World War II became the dominant country of production globally. The industry in time segmented along lines of product quality, production method, and location: solo luthiers maintaining the artisanal ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

tradition; mass manufacturers selling high-end, medium-priced and budget guitars (the latter increasingly subcontracted to OEMs in low-cost labor locations); and—following resource scarcity and regulation discussed below—new niche manufacturing firms innovating material resource use in concert with specialist resource extraction and supply firms (see Table 1). Critical to later resource scarcity and its influence on guitar manufacturing GPNs were the material qualities of select tonewoods that became locked in to the type form with the onset of mass manufacturing. Timbers used for acoustic guitar production narrowed into a standard combination; materials once procured via mercantile trade for luthiers making violins or mandolins became default choices for acoustic guitar workshops (and later for factories). For guitar tops (soundboards) Adirondack red spruce (Picea rubens) and Sitka spruce (Picea sitchensis), sourced in North America, were favored. For backs, sides, necks, and fretboards, tropical hardwoods, such as mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla), sourced generally from Central America), Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra), and ebony (Diospyros spp., Central America, Africa) were staples. 438 There were sound reasons for these choices. To make guitars, straight-grained woods of certain dimensions are needed, from trees that grow tall and straight, with minimal branching and thus knotting. To ensure consistent strength, grain, and cell structure across the soundboard, trees are needed that are sufficiently old to produce wide enough logs. Tropical and temperate rainforests provide such logs, generally from trees 200–300 years old. Acoustic properties were also critical: the tonewood’s vitreousness or resonant qualities under vibration. Brazilian rosewood was prized for its warm tones and often matched with European or Sitka Spruce soundboards (brighter timbers). Guitar makers balanced acoustic qualities of tonewoods with stiffness and strength. Guitars hold enormous tension in their strings (350,000–450,000 pounds per square inch), placing soundboards under significant strain. Yet, understood culturally as heirloom objects, structural integrity must be maintained across the product’s entire life (several generations). If the timber used is too thick (to ensure strength) acoustics are dull; acoustically rich thin woods risk soundboard collapse and destruction of the instrument. As industrialization ensued, very few species could reconcile these com- peting variables. Spruce, for instance, both sounded good and was stronger on a pound- for-pound comparison than steel. For fretboards, aesthetics and feel as well as tonal qualities were key: an ability to play with precision and speed required timber under the fingers that felt smooth and that minimized friction. Ebony and rosewood were preferred. Finally, visual appeal helped sell guitars to emotionally invested musicians: they had to play and look good. Hence for fretboards the best ebony was used—dark and unblemished; for backs and sides, Brazilian rosewood with attractive grain and consistent grain direction. A particular combination of timbers thus defined the stable type form, with compelling physical properties and aesthetics. Around these material resources seemingly intractable traditions formed in guitar making and playing frater- nities (cf. Martinez-Reyes 2015). When the industry transformed from workshops to factories, only those firms seeking the budget and beginner market were willing to compromise and use cheaper timbers, veneers, or plywoods. For industrializing lead firms, baseline expectations of tone and strength prevailed from the craft tradition— effectively locking in a type form with select input materials that would later constrain substitution possibilities and thus sow the seeds for a resource scarcity crisis.

Table 1 Market segmentation in acoustic guitar production Production volume per Example Relationship with Price Point annum 2014 Sales Type firms Employees Market niche/strategy customers Production method/s (indicative) (p.a.) (US$Mil) Luthiers Collings; 1–3 High-end, heirloom guitars Direct and personal, Hand-crafted US$5,000– 6–120 11.2 (Collings) Gurian; Luxurious materials (e.g., vintage stocks of custom/bespoke production 30,000 guitars Trevor CITES-listed timbers; fossilized mammoth Archaic techniques p.a. Gore; ivory bridges) and tools Gallagher; Authentic reproductions of medieval, Rare and historic Goodall; renaissance, classic modern designs. inventory of Bourgeois Aimed at wealthy collectors, professional materials musicians Haptic skill Highly labor intensive New lead Bedell 12–70 High-end professional-grade guitars Direct custom orders Mix of traditional $US1,500– 300–7000 11.2 (Larrivée) firms Breedlove Limited edition runs; high quality materials; and indirect (stock lutherie & 6000 p.a. (niche) Cole Clark new and salvaged timber varieties; in select production line Huss and emphasize materials provenance; aimed at authorized retail methods Dalton professional musicians, collectors outlets) Computer-numeric- Larrivée control (CNC) Maton cutting, inlay, Santa Cruz soundhole routing Traditional Gibson 500–1000 Mass market Indirect (stock in Mix of traditional US$1,000– 12,000– 2089.7 (Gibson) market Martin High-end professional guitars made in USA; mainstream retail lutherie & 5000 100,000 125.9 (Martin) o.9 o 2016 4 No. 92 Vol. leaders Taylor budget lines made in Asia & Mexico outlets) production line p.a. 107.6 (Taylor) Traditional product designs and timbers methods Emphasize continuity of tradition & CNC cutting, inlay, authenticity soundhole routing Some use of alternative & FSC timbers Robotics (Taylor) (Taylor, Martin)

(continued) EORESNIIEGPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE 439

440

Table 1

(Continued) GEOGRAPHY ECONOMIC

Production volume per Example Relationship with Price Point annum 2014 Sales Type firms Employees Market niche/strategy customers Production method/s (indicative) (p.a.) (US$Mil) Other mass Dean 500–1000 Mass market, stratified: lines at all price Indirect (stock in CNC cutting and US$250– Up to 1 675 (Fender) manufactur- Fender points mainstream retail routing; $5000 million 577.8 (Yamaha) ing Cordoba High-end products made in USA outlets) production line guitars companies (including Budget lines made by subcontracted OEMs Low-wage labor in p.a. Guild) in Asia & Mexico OEM facilities Yamaha Aim for complete market coverage from (including alleged Cort beginners to professional musicians; worker occasional limited edition runs & historic mistreatment & reproductions anti-union policies) Source: Adapted from NAMM data supplied to authors; and Music Trades (2015). Vol. 92 No. 4 2016

In this distinctive industry context, our research methods included a combination of primary and desktop/secondary investigations. Primary fieldwork involved 65 semi-structured interviews in 2014–2016 with actors across the acoustic guitar GPN: timber harvesters and salvagers, forestry experts, managers of generalist timber yards, specialist tonewood suppliers, solo luthiers, guitar manufacturing firms, musical instrument manufacturing industry advocacy organizations, and retailers. Interviews were conducted in the United States, Australia, and Canada —important source countries for traditional and alternative tonewoods and for niche manufacturing of acoustic guitars. Where possible, interviews were conducted face-to-face in workplaces (mills, timber yards, factories, shops), but because of physical distances, and in some cases inaccessibility (for instance, tonewood salvagers in places as distant as Alaska, Hawai’i, and Tasmania), some interviews were also conducted via telephone. Most interviews were recorded and transcribed, though in some cases, where highly sensitive legal or commercial-in- confidence information was discussed, no formal recordings were made. Interviews were interpreted using narrative analysis, which requires the organization of parti- cipant responses into relevant themes (see Warren and Gibson 2014). Factory tours 441 frequently accompanied interviews undertaken with prominent guitar firms in the United States and Australia. They revealed details of manufacturing and labor GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE process, and provided opportunities to track timber procurement precisely. Secondary research involved consulting longitudinal industry data on firms and export–import data on the musical instrument trade (provided by the US-based National Association of Music Merchants [NAMM]), and a wide range of industry- related reports and publications including trade journals, company histories, guitar magazines, and technical appraisals of timber species (undertaken by conservation biologists and forestry experts).

Resource Scarcity and Regulation Early signs of exhausting tropical hardwood supplies emerged in the mid-1960s, in concert with the rise of mass manufactured guitars. The folk music boom (spearheaded by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell) fueled spiraling demand. Guitar firms moved to larger factories, upscaling and refining production methods. In 1965, leading manufacturer C. F. Martin was unable to meet demand for their guitars despite having moved to a larger factory the previous year. Seeking to fill orders, and anticipating impending shortages of Brazilian rosewood, Martin introduced its workhorse D-35 model, incorporating a three-part back (rather than the standard two) to allow use of smaller cuts of timber with knots and defects (Di Perna 2015). In 1969, Martin shifted production from Brazilian to Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia), foretelling resource shortages, and growing regulation triggered by international concern for endangered tree species and loss of tropical forest habitats. By 1971, Martin were manufacturing 20,000 guitars annually (Shaw 2008). The folk music boom coincided with the genesis of the modern environmental movement. Growing public awareness of deforestation and importance of biodiversity conservation, coupled with growing multilateral cooperation, fueled new forms of interstate regulation. Transnational discussions commenced in the 1960s toward restricting trade in endangered species. A 1963 resolution of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) triggered the establishment of the CITES, which was eventually signed in 1973 and came into full effect in 1975. It now covers over 35,000 species of animals and plants, across three levels of ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

protection. Individual species are listed in Appendices I, II, and III of the convention, depending on the degree of threat to their survival.1 This transnational system of regulation subsequently impacted on the timber trade, producing new scarcities (cf. Smith 2007) that in turn transformed downstream acoustic guitar manufacturing. Globally sourced timbers, on which the manufacturing of guitars depended throughout the twentieth century, were under increasing scrutiny. Several were subject to escalating regulation requirements, and in some cases, eventually prohibited from trade (Genova 2013). The vanguard was Brazilian rosewood. Concerns over Amazonian deforestation escalated in concert with rapid moder- nization and national developmental projects of the Brazilian economic miracle following the inauguration of the Trans-Amazonian Highway in 1972 (Fearnside 2005). Accelerating rates of forest loss for agriculture, urban development, and forestry were accompanied by rising conservation awareness and science. Brazil’s government introduced the first threatened plant species lists (1968–1973; revised in 1989) and tightened regulation of timber export (Blundell 2007). Converging 442 with international momentum around CITES, Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) was listed on CITES Appendix I in 1992. The timber used ubiquitously by the guitar-making industry for fretboards, backs, and sides had in effect become an illicit commodity, akin to ivory. Regulation of other standard acoustic guitar timbers followed. Big-leaf mahogany (Swietenia macrophylla) was listed on CITES (Appendix III) first by Costa Rica, in 1995, effectively sounding an alarm bell for the species. Subsequent Appendix III listings (in Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru between 1998 and 2001) and Appendix II listing (in 2002) followed (Blundell 2007). It was the first listing of a high-volume, high- value tree on Appendix II (Table 2).

Emergence of a Resource-Sensitive GPN Such regulation has, since the 1990s, transformed both tonewood procurement and guitar making. A resource-sensitive GPN has emerged (see Figure 1), in which upstream resource actors are increasingly important, with manufacturing firms responding differently to scarcity and regulation. Other industries dependent on timber, such as paper milling, furniture, and the construction industry are not as species dependent and have been able to switch more easily to substitutes, including quick-growing plantation species sourced locally (see Beresford 2015). Guitar manufacturers for the most part remained bound by the guitar’s type form, requiring timbers with tensile strength, aesthetics of color and grain, and rich acoustic

1 Appendix I species are those “threatened with extinction which are or may be affected by trade” (CITES 1973, arts. II). Trade in such species is only authorized in exceptional circumstances. Examples include ivory and Brazilian rosewood. Appendix II species are “not necessarily now threatened with extinction” but “may become so unless trade in specimens of such species is subject to strict regulation in order to avoid utilization incompatible with their survival” (CITES 1973, arts. II–V). Trade is regulated via a permit system requiring government authorization, and verification by all actors along the extraction– procurement–manufacture chain. Appendix III species are those “which any Party [nation] identifies as being subject to regulation in its jurisdiction for the purpose of preventing or restricting exploitation, and as needing the co-operation of other Parties in the control of trade” (CITES 1973, arts. II–V). Trade is regulated via a similar permit system to Appendix II species with state authorities adjudicating based on evidence that specimens weren’t obtained in contravention of national biodiversity conservation laws.

Table 2 Guitar timbers and environmental status/regulations CITES Range countries Species IUCN statusi Listing (examples) Firms (examples) Price (US$ m3)Ii Traditional Tropical Timbers Brazilian rosewood (Dalbergia nigra) Red List: Threatened Appendix I Brazil Martin, luthiers N/A Ebony (Diospyros crassiflora) Red List: Endangered Appendix III Gabon, Nigeria, Martin, Taylor 70,000–90,000 (fretboards) Cameroon Honduran/big-leaf Mahogany (Swietenia Red List: Vulnerable Appendix II Costa Rica, Honduras Gibson, Martin, Taylor N/A macrophylla) Alternative Timbers Koa (Acacia koa) Species of least Not listed Hawai’i Breedlove, Larrivée, Taylor 42,000–125,000 (soundboards, back & concern sides) Australian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon) Not listed Not listed Australia Cole Clark, Maton, Taylor 29,000–85,000 (soundboards, back & sides) Bunya pine (araucaria bidwilli) Species of least Not listed Queensland, Australia Cole Clark, Maton 18,000–30,000 (soundboards) concern East Indian Rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia) Red List: Vulnerable Not listed India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia Larrivée 34,000–60,000 (back & sides) Cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa) Red List: Vulnerable Appendix II Mexico Breedlove, Martin 51,000–128,000 (back & sides) Amazon rosewood (Dalgeria spruceana) Not listed Not listed Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia Sadowsky, Martin N/A Honduran rosewood (Dalbergia stevensonii) Near Threatened Appendix II Belize Goodall, Lowden 60,000–78,000 (back & sides) Macassar ebony (Diospyros celebica) Red List: Vulnerable Not listed Indonesia Breedlove, Goodall, Taylor 68,000–90,000 (fretboards) Sapele (Entandrophragma cylindricum) Red List: Vulnerable Not listed Tropical Africa Martin 30,000 (back & sides) African mahogany (Khaya spp.) Red List: Vulnerable Not listed West tropical Africa Larrivée, Cole Clark 21,000–55,000 (back & sides) (plantation) Queensland maple (Flindersia brayleyana) Not listed Not listed Queensland, Australia Maton, Cole Clark 25,000–59,000 (back & sides) Black bean (Castanospermum australe) Not listed Not listed NSW/Queensland, Cole Clark N/A

Australia 2016 4 No. 92 Vol. Korina (Terminalia superba) Not listed Not listed Tropical west Africa Reverend 21,000 (back & sides) i IUCN Red List of Threatened Species; “Endangered,” very high risk of extinction in the wild in the near future; experienced a population reduction of over 50 percent over three generations; “Vulnerable,” high risk of extinction in the wild in the medium-term future; experienced a population reduction of over 20 percent over three generations; “Near Threatened,” close to, or likely in the future, meeting the Red List criteria as a vulnerable or endangered species; “Least concern,” not near threatened or dependent on conservation efforts (Source: CITES; IUCN; http://www.wood-database.com). ii—Price range is for finished component sizes (value-added from sawn logs). By comparison, the price of timbers commonly used in construction are (A-grade): radiata pine (Pinus

radiata) US$1000; American white ash $2000; Tasmanian oak (Eucalyptus obliqua) $2800 (Source: Authors’ analysis). EORESNIIEGPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE 443 ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

444

Figure 1. A resource-sensitive GPN for acoustic guitars.

resonance.2 Moreover, as a form of manufacturing appealing to consumers for whom emotional value and identity-affirming qualities were intrinsic, the industry was encumbered with strong traditions and customer expectations (cf. Mansfield 2003b). As Dick Boak, from C. F. Martin & Co., explained, convincing guitarists to switch to instruments made from sustainable materials proved difficult: “musicians, who represent some of the most savvy, ecologically minded people around, are resistant to anything about changing the tone of their guitars” (quoted in Felten 2011,1).Putsimply,“musicians cling to the old materials” (ibid.). All the key woods—ebony, mahogany, and Brazilian rosewood—came under increased scrutiny from environmental scientists and conservationists, and were subject to tightened regulation. Even Sitka spruce, which could still be sourced from within North America, and was not listed on either CITES or IUCN threatened species lists, became scarcer in log sizes necessary for soundboard construction. Direct and perfect substitution of these timbers was neither technically straightforward nor aesthetically desirable. Traditional lead firms that traded on their heritage tended initially to persist with attempts to source conventional woods, regardless of changing regulatory conditions. Yet increasingly, CITES documentation became necessary, and compliance enforced (Blundell 2007). Manufacturers hired a novel breed of expert—timber verification and

2 For lower-priced, entry-level guitars made from OEM factories in Asia and Mexico (several owned or subcontracted by giants of American guitar making such as Gibson and Fender), more plentiful and cheap timbers such as maple, basswood, and nato wood were used. Laminates and veneers also helped stretch rare supplies. Vol. 92 No. 4 2016 environmental law consultants—and turned to a new crop of specialist tonewood suppliers (who in turn developed more complex procurement from timber harvesters, salvagers, and foresters) rather than use traditional sawmills and timber traders that could not verify provenance. C. F. Martin sought Forest Stewardship Council (FSC) accreditation for lines of guitars where responsible stewardship could be verified. Restricted resource availability, and the emergence of new nodes of extraction, processing, certification, regulation, and trade, gradually reshaped and rescaled the GPN at a deeper level, both in and much further upstream from manufacturing itself. There were new players and legal processes, and closer binding relationships between guitar manufacturers and timber suppliers, traders, and certifiers. Manufacturers had to meet legal conditions and complete burdensome customs paperwork for CITES and Lacey Act regulations (see below), becoming conversant with systems of accreditation such as FSC (that involved annual fees and rigorous inspections) (Genova 2013). Each of these adjustments entailed new expertise and engagements with existing and new resource actors: specialist procurers, verification and certification consultants who seized opportunities to establish themselves in the market for resource stewardship, and government environmental protection agencies and customs agents who wielded 445 heightened regulatory powers. New specialist tonewood firms such as Madinter (Spain), Pacific Rim Tonewoods (Washington), and Kirby Fine Timbers and GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE Tasmanian Tonewoods (Australia) supplied guitar-making firms with precut boards, processed from uncut billets and logs sourced either directly through their own salvage and selective harvesting activities or from increasingly dispersed geographic networks. They also developed expertise in CITES and Lacey Act paperwork, signed preferential contracts with forestry agencies to secure instrument-grade logs prior to any potential plantation clear-felling, and handled customs processes and certification requirements. Such actors consolidated activity in regions of existing resource and manufacturing/ crafting expertise (e.g., Spain, Pacific Northwest) but made connections to new regions and players—such as the emerging Australian and Canadian manufacturers and timber suppliers. CITES listings and political responses to them shifted geographies of timber sourcing, particularly for rosewood and mahogany, with implications for further resource availability. Following Brazil’s 2001 ban on mahogany harvest and export, traders shifted to other nations with weak regulatory regimes, and manufacturers phased in guitars made from genetically related species that were not yet protected by CITES and Lacey Act provisions (Table 2). After Costa Rica’s early Appendix III listing, Peru, for example, experienced spikes in export volumes of mahogany (Grogan and Barreto 2005), followed by other countries. After Brazilian rosewood became effectively off- limits, an increasing array of other Dalbergia species was sourced from other countries —timbers where the association with the rosewood tradition could be maintained: East Indian rosewood (Dalbergia latifolia), Madagascar rosewood (Dalbergia baronii and maritima sp.), Honduran rosewood (Dalbergia stevensonii), Amazon rosewood (Dalbergia spruceana), Yucatan rosewood (Dalbergia tucurensis), and cocobolo (Dalbergia retusa). Other Brazilian rosewood substitutes emerging on the market included ziricote (Cordia dodecandra), padauk (Pterocarpus soyauxii), and wenge (Millettia laurentii). Similarly, as genuine mahogany became further restricted, guitar manufacturers sought alternatives such as Khaya spp. (marketed as African mahogany), sapele (Entandrophragma cylindricum), and korina (Terminalia superba). The unfur- ling dilemma was that alternative timbers became highly sought after, valuable, and overharvested. Once threatened ecologically, they too were more tightly regulated. Even alternative species listed by IUCN as of least concern became difficult to source ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

and faced dwindling supplies (Hawaiian koa (Acacia koa), for example). Cascading resource security risks spawned increasingly diverse and multinational resource networks (in the sense of a much larger number of source countries), often funneled through emergent specialist tonewood dealers. Some guitar manufacturing firms gambled on flying under the radar, persisting with sourcing timbers globally of unknown or questionable provenance, increasingly from intermediary timber barons operating without FSC or other certification. Notoriously, in some cases, such intermediaries were forging closer ties with illegal logging in countries suffering geopolitical conflict and instability—exemplified in the rosewood trade emanating from Madagascar following its 2009 military coup (Innes 2010). Unregulated trade in restricted timber species has been estimated as high as 50 percent of total harvests in certain countries—and 5–15 percent of total global trade (Cerutti et al. 2013). Analysis shows illegal logging reduces global timber prices by up to 16 percent (Wyler and Sheikh 2013). Implementation and enforcement of regulation requires “proper functioning and integration of complex production, regulatory, and enforcement chains of command” (Grogan and Barreto 2005, 974). Timber dealers 446 (and, by association if not directly, some downstream manufacturers) exploited loop- holes, weaknesses, and blind spots in trading certain CITES-listed species. Nonetheless, continued use of tonewoods with scant regard to provenance became increasingly risky. One luthier described how “flying under the radar may have worked for decades, but with intensified governmental focus on guitar industry activities, doing things the old way involves risks that can easily result in both the loss of a business and personal bankruptcy” (Interview 2015). No more was this vividly illustrated than in raids undertaken by federal agents on Gibson Guitar Co. premises in 2009 and 2011, investigating alleged use of illegally traded timbers. In this first investigation of corporate violation of the Lacey Act, the US Fish and Wildlife Service placed Gibson’s production plants under investigation (Shelley 2012). Federal Justice Department marshals raided the Nashville factory (in 2009) and seized a shipment of timbers from Madagascar; then in 2011 raided both Nashville and Memphis plants over shipments of Indian-sourced rosewood allegedly mislabeled on a US Customs declaration. Marshals seized timber, electronic files, and guitars. The raids were watershed moments for the industry. One allegation was that Gibson had knowingly sourced contraband Madagascan timbers and had actively “taken steps to maintain a supply chain that’s been connected to illegal timber harvests” (Havighurst 2011, 1). According to one anonymous source for this research, representatives from Gibson, Taylor, and Martin had all traveled to Madagascar to explore legal wood sources, but after concluding that provenance was questionable, Martin and Taylor refused to deal with intermediaries (allegedly a German wood dealer who obtained the timber from a disreputable Madagascan supplier). However, Gibson allegedly agreed to purchase the timbers in question. Later, company e-mails were presented as evidence discussing the gray market nature of the timbers. The allegedly incriminating detail was that although receiving advice such supplies might be illegal, Gibson continued with the purchase. The Lacey Act requires that end users of endangered timber species (such as guitar builders) verify the legality of their supply chain “all the way to the trees” (Havighurst 2011, 1). Failing to act on information that the timber may have violated relevant laws in other countries covered by CITES contravened this. The raids and accompanying media coverage sent shockwaves through the guitar-building and playing community; musicians and workers were quoted as feeling stunned Vol. 92 No. 4 2016 to be “treated like criminals” (Gibson Guitar Corporation 2011); and guitarists in possession of vintage instruments panicked about their legal status and whether taking their guitar on a world tour would risk confiscation (Thomas 2011). Gibson vehemently denied the allegations, and accused the Obama administration of var- iously protecting foreign environmental interests over local manufacturers and engaging in stealth protectionism (on behalf of US forestry workers). Irrespective of the evidence and veracity of the raids, in August 2012, Gibson settled out of court, effectively admitting to violating the Lacey Act, and agreed to a $300,000 fine. Following the Gibson raids, nervy traders, suppliers, and guitar makers all scrambled for legal clarity (Genova 2013; Dudley 2014). Here, the materiality of input materials would again prove catalytic. The new regulatory environment spurred by CITES and the Lacey Act applied universally, and retroactively, to guitar makers and players— whose timber supplies and cherished instruments alike were now subject to customs checks and prospects of confiscation without appropriate paperwork. 447 The “New Normal”: Lead Firms, Regulation, and Alternative Resource Networks GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE Dependence on traditional materials and supply networks came to most threaten the older mass manufacturers (especially Martin and Gibson, reliant on their heritage models), and—at the other end of the spectrum—solo luthiers who use tiny quantities of timbers annually, but who maintain collections of rare and valuable traditional tonewoods, sometimes in lifetime quantities, including antique stocks of now Appendix I timbers sourced before bans were implemented (Dudley 2014). Much quicker to adapt were a cohort of small manufacturing firms—some relatively young, others well established, but nevertheless niche players—that developed strategies to respond in more agile fashion to scarcity and regulation, and established novel relationships with upstream resource actors. Among them were American, as well as Canadian and Australian, firms that quickly adopted the mentality of full compliance—amatterof assessing escalating legal risk. As the timber industry increased support for CITES monitoring, scientific assessment of inventories and chain-of-custody auditing opportunities were generated for new niche resource stewardship firms and organizations (accreditors, certifiers, verifiers, timber trackers, and DNA testing consultancies (see, e.g., http:// www.doublehelixtracking.com and http://www.scsglobalservices.com) and for those manufacturers exploring new options. Demand for the products and services of new resource actors was driven by fear of being held up in bureaucratic delays stemming from uncertainty of provenance amid the permit process (Grogan and Barreto 2005). Following the Gibson raids, even more significant for guitar makers was fear of confiscation of supplies retroactively deemed to have been illegally or unsustainably sourced. Where risks were present, or where there was “strong evidence that nearly all of what we see entering the United States now are poached and/or illegally exported” (Luthiers Mercantile International 2015, 1) tonewood suppliers reexamined supply chain paperwork (including that from new importers claiming a clean paper trail), and in extreme cases, where provenance and compliance could not be assured, discontinued lines and culled supplies from catalogs. In 2011, C. F. Martin ceased procurement of timbers from Madagascar and sought alternative supplies with legitimate and verifiable paperwork. In short, material scarcity in combination with higher degrees of CITES/Lacey Act enforcement made legally sound international procurement of traditional timbers more difficult, inconsistent in quality, and expensive (Genova 2013). Accordingly, product ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

innovation ensued, entailing new models that shifted away from rosewoods, ebonies, and mahoganies of potentially suspicious provenance, toward new alternative timbers that satisfied strength, resonance, and aesthetic benchmarks, and that could be sourced either locally or more transparently from countries with robust regulation, certification, and enforcement. One strategy was to revisit domestic timber sources, eschewing tropical hardwoods and accompanying opaque provenance and certification complex- ities. This further reconfigured the geographies of resource supply informing GPNs, compelling adjustment in guitar designs as well as expectations among consumers. Martin and Taylor both shifted to more plentiful North American timbers, often FSC certified, such as cherry, maple, and birch, developing new designs that adapted to these species’ material capacities, and embarking on marketing campaigns to educate consumers over the need to change timbers. Emergent lead firms included new, smaller but more agile players in an increasingly global market for musical instruments shaped by Internet forums, specialist guitar aficionado magazines, a revival in custom orders and limited editions, and online trading of new and vintage guitars. Both Canada and Australia became sources for 448 new lead firms in tonewood supply and manufacturing. Firms in both countries developed reputations for novel combinations of tonewoods unfamiliar to American and European guitar makers and players, taking advantage of viable domestic timbers made available from new niche tonewood suppliers, and avoiding legally complex raw material importation. Australian firms Maton (established 1946) and Cole Clark (established in 2001) pioneered use of Australian timbers supplied by expert individual tonewoods specialists: Tasmanian blackwood (Acacia melanoxylon); Bunya pine (Araucaria bidwilli, a plantation timber, stronger than spruce and growing to maturity in eighty years); and Queensland maple (Flindersia breyleyana). Following the Australian lead, North American tonewood suppliers and manufacturers began import- ing Australian blackwood to use in high-end production guitars. A species considered invasive in some areas (unlike practically all other tonewoods), Australian blackwood is harvested in small volumes from farms and mixed-forest plantations without the need for invasive harvesting techniques or CITES paperwork (Reid 2006). Cole Clark has also introduced Australian-grown Californian Redwood and African Mahogany into guitar production—circumventing anxieties associated with international timber trading regulation and legal compliance, through reshoring timber sourcing. Most recently Cole Clark has offered the world’s first entirely eco guitar, made of timber species not CITES listed, or registered as threatened or endangered on the IUCN Red List. To achieve this, Cole Clark replaced rosewood and ebony for fretboards and bridges (previously considered impossible) with blackbean (Castanospermum australe). Currently, a plentiful Australian rainforest tree often grown in public parks, blackbean, was suggested to Cole Clark’s CEO in casual conversation by one of their specialist timber salvagers/suppliers—emblematic of the tighter social and technical binding of upstream resource actors and downstream niche manufacturers in a resource-sensitive GPN. Similarly, one author attended a guitar industry workshop in California in 2016 and witnessed several niche manufacturers and luthiers being introduced to a new hybrid spruce species developed by a leading North American tonewood supply firm. That species has a more plastic genetic profile and geographic range that should enable ongoing timber supply amid escalating climate change (D. Olsen, Interview 2016). Relatively new sources of specialist expertise and research and development in resource extraction and processing stages are being brought to bear, through international social networks, on what tonewoods are reliably and legally available, and what kind of guitars get made by manufacturers. Vol. 92 No. 4 2016

Meanwhile, US-based Taylor Guitars (making much higher volumes than the niche firms) pursued global vertical integration upstream to timber cultivation, harvesting and milling. Comparable with other cases of resource-sensitive industry, such as minerals extraction (cf. Ó hUallacháin and Matthews 1996), vertical integration was a tactic to secure consistency of material resource supply. But integration also secured control over transparent provenance of timber, aiding Taylor Guitar’s compliance, and marketing of stewardship credentials. In late 2011, in partnership with tonewood distributor Madinter, Taylor bought Crelicam, an ebony mill located outside of Yaoundé, Cameroon, to source ebony for fingerboards (White 2012). Vertical integration in partnership with a tonewood supply firm afforded direct control over supply chains and thus stronger capacity to record and demonstrate compliance, unlike previously—with the Gibson raids the exemplar—relying on third party traders to do the right thing as well as maintain all relevant paperwork. Conscious of environmental and labor issues associated with Cameroonian forestry (see Cerutti et al. 2013), and in a deft “performance of green capitalism” (Prudham 2009, 1594), company founder and CEO Bob Taylor then filmed a series of popular online videos outlining the firm’s vision for a safer, more reliable, and sustainable pathway for ebony harvesting. 449 A third variant on alternative forestry practices pursued by smaller lead firms— notably Bedell, Cole Clark, and Santa Cruz Guitar Co.—was to build relationships with GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE solo salvagers: often called timber hunters in the industry. The process involves use of portable sawmills, rather than traditional, larger centralized milling facilities, to access individual fallen, dead, or storm-damaged trees—often on private land rather than in state forestry reserves. This salvage culture has spawned another suite of resource actors: solo timber hunters who source individual logs purely for musical instrument manufacture and market their services based on environmental stewardship. Alaska Specialty Woods began in 1995 and sources woods exclusively from salvage or reclamation (fallen trees) using chainsaws and portable sawmills. Similarly, the owner of Tasmanian Salvaged Timbers explained in an interview how he “only works with private land owners with the same environmental views to ensure I’m only harvesting a few selective logs in a more sustainable manner” (Interview 2016). Manufacturers securing the services of salvagers also made limited run guitars using sinker logs that remained underwater for decades after river valleys were flooded for dam construction. Salvagers even sourced directly from public parks, reserves, and church yards in one-off circumstances, negotiating terms of sale with local communities. Use of salvaged and reclaimed timbers has enhanced abilities for niche manufacturers to sell a unique product with charismatic provenance beyond the traditional type form as well as satisfy musicians’ growing desires to exhibit green citizenship. Seizing opportunities to market rarity value—and profiting from rather than resisting the new normal of variability of supply and raw material inconsistency—firms switched to smaller batch runs and limited editions at a higher price point. To detail provenance, Bedell Guitars developed a Wood Library code system using DNA tracking, to “track chain-of-custody and legal documentation for every piece of wood in our library” (Bedell Guitars 2015). Such efforts allowed Bedell to track each product back to the individual log. The purchased instrument is thus accompanied with biographical information for the constituent tree (cf. Bridge and Smith 2003). Santa Cruz empha- sized the uniqueness of every instrument—turning inconsistency of material supply from a problem into a marketing opportunity and a point of differentiation from higher volume firms. Their CEO, Richard Hoover, explained: “we’ll make 500 or 600 guitars this year [2016], which is coincidentally the same amount of guitars that Taylor or ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY

Martin make . . . in one day. It’s a different scale of building and the reason we keep it that small is to get this quality of materials, which are a limited resource, and not the regular food chain that those guys buy from” (Interview 2016). Such new actors in salvage, tonewood supply, and manufacturing, have pursued stronger relationships and mutual innovations. Sourcing methods are diversifying as regulation tightens, and the geography of production has shifted, in divergent ways (cf. Mansfield 2003b). Expertise has concentrated, encouraging coordination, domestic timbers, and reshoring, although supply chains have pluralized for imported species and incorporated new actors and locations. Smaller lead firms in both existing and new locations attuned to variability and inconsistent supply deploy strategies relating to emotionally attached customers, marketing rarity as a source of exchange value, and promoting forms of environmental stewardship. Supplementary tactics of accumulation and profit making have emerged among new actors across harvesting, procurement, verification, and manufacturing, generating a closely bound, and yet more geographi- cally complex, resource-sensitive GPN fueled by uncertainty over material resource supply and regulation. 450 Conclusions—Toward a Dynamic Theory of Resource- Sensitive GPNs We have sought to show here the value of exploring nature-facing elements of GPNs, and how these evolve temporally in response to heightened regulation and increased consumer concern over provenance and material stewardship. Analysis of resource-sensitive GPNs accounts for upstream processes and actors linked to input resources, and the manner in which manufacturers are bound into deepening relationships with them, and with consumers, in novel ways. The GPN approach gives conceptual weight to institutional processes and regulatory pressures. As regulation produces new resource supply security risks, actors in resource extraction, procurement, and regulation have emerged, consolidated expertise, and influenced downstream global networks dependent on those input materials. At the same time, agile smaller manufacturers, more closely coproducing markets with passionate consumers (cf. Bridge and Smith 2003), have assumed a lead role in innovation once played by older, larger, firms. In GPN research, deeper theorization across a longer time horizon is required. Industrial transformation results from shifts in resource availability, growing consumer environmental concern and emotional values, tightening regulation and evolving complexity in, and fragmentation across, extraction and processing, prior to incorporation into downstream manufacturing and assembly of finished goods. We examined a resource-sensitive GPN for acoustic guitar production, as one such example, binding salvagers, harvesters, materials processors, verifiers, certifiers, and government agents with guitar manufacturing firms, luthiers, and final consumers. Equally, the need for, and use of resources with certain physical material qualities in manufacturing industries—in this case hardwood timbers in acoustic guitar building— were shown to influence upstream resource geographies (cf. Hudson 2012). The question is not of scarcity generally but of how scarcities for specific materials are produced and regulated, spawning new dynamics. In guitar making, the need for alternatives created opportunities for new resource actors to reconfigure markets, and find, procure, or salvage substitute materials in more dispersed and unlikely places. Geographic concentrations of domestic resource and manufacturing expertise intensified (e.g., Pacific Northwest, Australia, and Canada), although more complex, global networks of resource supply and manufacturing emerged (e.g., rosewood substitutes). Vol. 92 No. 4 2016

Scarcity and regulation fueled both greater coordination and fragmentation (Mansfield 2003b). There are many more such resource-sensitive GPNs that would warrant similar analysis, though using differentiated raw materials, they are unlikely to simply repli- cate the story presented here (cf. Mansfield 2003a). Rare earth minerals and fisheries are just two visible examples that involve considerably different relations between extractors, regulators, processors, manufacturers, and consumers. As a produced rather than natural circumstance (Bakker 2000), resource scarcity induces rearrangement of GPNs, firm tactics, and geographies of resource extraction. Shaping adaptation to resource scarcity are the interplay of the material qualities of raw materials and their specific geographies of availability, and the accompanying geopolitical dynamics of resource scarcity and regulatory response (cf. Bakker and Bridge 2006). Resource-sensitive GPNs are unlikely to reconfigure predictably. Firms dependent on plant and animal species increasingly governed by conservation protection (e.g., leather, paper, plant genetic materials, cosmetics, bio-patents) with business models based on perfect supply or large volumes, or firms willing to forsake compliance to secure short-term cheap supply, may face increased legal scrutiny (Shelley 2012; Beresford 2015). Meanwhile smaller firms may find themselves in positions of strategic 451 advantage forging cooperative relationships with resource procurement specialists, literate with environmental regulations, and/or who embrace intermittent supply and GPNS RESOURCE-SENSITIVE green capitalist marketing tactics (cf. Prudham 2009). Firms in resource-sensitive industries that come to terms with supply security risks develop expertise in verification and legal procurement, and appropriate the logic of inconsistent supply, transforming it from a problem into an opportunity for market strategy (cf. Yeung and Coe 2015). Such themes, previously neglected in GPN research, warrant sustained analysis. How firms are able (or indeed unable) to adapt to resource scarcity and environmental regulation remains an imperative question for ongoing theorization of GPNs.

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