Production networks, place and development: Thinking through Global Production Networks in Cavite, Philippines

Global Production Networks (GPNs) offer the possibility of a nuanced and encompassing account of how value is created and distributed in productive systems that span the globe. This paper argues, however, that there are ultimately limits to the vision of even the most finely tuned 'network' approach, and these become especially apparent when the concept of development is introduced. Taking development to be a fundamentally areal idea, concerned with improvement of the human condition in specific places, questions arise about how effectively a focus on production networks can capture such processes of change. Using the case of Cavite in the Philippines, the paper explores the dimensions of rapid development in a place that are made visible using a GPN framework, and those that may remain hidden. Hidden processes may include landscape and environmental change, households and livelihoods, and social differentiation and uneven geographical development. The paper concludes that GPN approaches tend to subordinate the completeness of places by focusing on their role in firms' production networks. It suggests that instead of resolving the dialectic between place and network in favour of networks, a productive tension between two spatial imaginaries should be maintained. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.