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ABSTRACT
This article foregrounds the variety and intertwining of legal components that inform the performance of global supply chains. It sheds light on the complexities of normative entanglements that are only cursorily addressed in conventional analyses of chain normativity, which can be divided into roughly three approaches: the first one addresses “voluntary” or “private” standards that are subsumed under the heading of “corporate social responsibility”. Second, there is chain law analysis proper as an emerging field in legal studies. Finally, there is a body of literature addressing the interactions between “public” and “private” regulation. In this article, I go beyond these approaches. I argue that, first, other-than-law components of a supply chain, such as technology, also exercise normative power and increase legal complexity inherent in chains. I suggest that the concept of infrastructure as developed in science and technology studies helps us to analyse the interaction of legal and non-legal chain components. Second, I demonstrate that all this chain normativity interacts with the plural legal environment in which chain activities are embedded. The specific case study involves the emergence of Moroccan argan oil on the world market and selectively explores steps in the construction of a “global argan value chain”.
Acknowledgement
Parts of this article were presented at the Law and Society Conference 2015 in Seattle and at a workshop on Extractive Economies in Africa at the Cluster of Excellence “Normative Orders”, University of Frankfurt in 2016. I am grateful for comments received on these occasions as well as from the special issue editors, Sue Farran and Niklas Hultin, and two anonymous reviewers. I am indebted to Richard Rottenburg and the LOST Group in Halle. Many aspects that found entry in this article have been discussed in LOST seminars. My thanks also go to Brian Donahoe, who did more than just the language editing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Literature overviews, research reviews, guidelines, handbooks, and other material dealing with the various research strands can be found on the websites of various global governance institutions (see e.g. FAO (Neven Citation2014)), GIZ/ILO (Schneemann and Vredeveld Citation2015), ILO (Nutz and Sievers Citation2015), OECD (Backer and Miroudot Citation2013), HRW (Human Rights Watch Citation2016), World Bank (Gonzales Citation2016), IMF (International Monetary Fund Citation2013), WTO (Elms and Low Citation2013).
2. For conceptual clarification and definition, see e.g. Sturgeon (Citation2001).
3. See, for example, for the World Bank: http://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/trade/publication/making-global-value-chains-work-for-development.
4. For a critical analysis of the value component in the economic and policy-oriented chain approach, see IGLP (Citation2016).
5. The agri-food and non-timber forest product chains constitute a specific format of supply chain, marked by a close connection between traceability and ethics and considered an important contribution to food safety (e.g. Coff et al. Citation2008; Stringer and Le Heron Citation2008; Arfini, Mancini, and Donati Citation2012). There are a number of strategies for creating ethical links between producers and consumers, such as those summarized in the economy of solidarity model (e.g. Santos and Rodríguez-Garavito Citation2005).
6. The connection between power, governance and law has been widely addressed in the literature on legal pluralism (e.g. von Benda-Beckmann, von Benda-Beckmann, and Eckert Citation2009; Zips and Weilenmann Citation2011).
7. See e.g. the contributions to the special issue on GVC and GPN, Ponte and Sturgeon Citation2014.
8. See Ponte and Sturgeon (Citation2014) who, with reference to convention theory (Boltanski and Thévenot Citation1991), postulate that economic action is always framed by systems of justification.
9. However, private regulations may also represent trade barriers and therefore run counter to international trade rules (e.g. Kaplinsky Citation2010). Food safety measures, for instance, are controversially discussed as being against free trade or hindering market access for smallholders (see e.g. Lee, Gereffi, and Beauvais Citation2012).
10. Another set of informal standards are internal to the establishment of governance structures and the self-regulation of the chain in the coproduction of various stakeholders’ interaction. Diversity in chain-inherent interests, and the question of the degree of autonomy partners must have in voluntary arrangements (cf. Brooks Citation2015, for fair trade) cannot be further explored here.
11. Davis, Kaplinsky, and Morris (Citation2016) suggest to focus on the interrelationship between public (government) private (corporation) and social (civil society).
12. The third dimension in the interdependent production of chain normativity and normative hybrids involves the global governance institutions mentioned at the transnational and international scales. Some of these tools are based on international agreements and designed to be integrated into domestic legislations. Thus they build on the existing international order of states while also integrating non-formality. Such public−private standards may exhibit complex multilayered structures and have, like treaties, international legal status and thus a binding character for states, not firms.
13. See Sobel-Read (Citation2014) for the context of developing countries’ rent seeking through chain integration.
14. Cf. Behrends and Rottenburg (Citation2014) on Merry's concept
15. For more empirical data, see Turner Citation2006 (Citation2009, Citation2013a, Citation2013b, Citation2014). Fieldwork on supply chain legal pluralism was carried out for several weeks each year between 1996 and 2005, in 2010, 2011, and between 2014 and 2016. From 2001 to 2010, the fieldwork was part of a project on ‘Sustainable Development and Exploitation of Natural Resources, Legal Pluralism, and Transnational Law in the “Arganeraie” Biosphere Reserve’ within the ‘Project Group Legal Pluralism’ at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle/Saale, Germany. Since 2012 I have continued my related work within MPI's more recently constituted Department of Law & Anthropology. The people and places referred to in this article have been kept anonymous.
16. Reference to the argan supply chain as a kind of role model case is made throughout the literature (see e.g. Ilbert and Petit Citation2009; Gautrey Citation2014; Martens Citation2014; Jonville et al. Citation2015; Haddouch Citation2015).
17. In interviews in May 2002, the directors of three of the newly established cooperatives all replied to my questions in the same wording. So did the main initiators of cooperative-based production I interviewed.
18. See COPAC, 2008, ‘Committee for the promotion and advancement of cooperatives,’ http://www.copac.coop/ (accessed 13 March 2016).
19. http://www.agriculture.gov.ma/pages/ organismes-sous-tutelle/andzoa.
20. See Bulletin Officiel N° 6166 du 25 Chaabane 1434 (4 July 2013): Dahir n° 1-13-58 du 8 chaabane 1434 (17 June 2013).
21. Quote from a conversation with the head of one of the leading organizations in the Moroccan part of the chain (October 2014).
22. In the French literature in particular there is a research tradition focusing on legal diversity and customary law (see e.g. Romagny and Guyon Citation2009; Genin and Simenel Citation2011; Chamich Citation2013; Aubert Citation2013).