“This is a Montreal Issue”: Negotiating responsibility in global production and investment networks

While geographers have increasingly focused on how global commodity and production networks create new ‘geographies of responsibility’ there has been little empirical work considering how responsibility is worked into management systems and social activism in such networks. Drawing on literature from global production networks, geographies of responsibility and other literatures, this paper explores the dynamic and contested ways in which concepts of responsibility can play a role in network regulation. Both foreign direct investment and commodity networks (here referred to as ‘global production and investment networks’) are subject to complex negotiations and compromises involving corporate social responsibility and sustainability initiatives as well as shareholder activist, human rights, labor, and environmental activism. This is illustrated by reference to conflicts in Canada over Alcan, Inc.’s investments from 1993 to 2007 in the Utkal Alumina Project in Orissa, India. The project involved significant socio-environmental conflict. In Canada, Alcan’s investment was met by civil society campaigns that tested the company’s commitments to sustainability and corporate social responsibility. The case study suggests revising theories of geographies of responsibility. While foreign direct investment can create new relationships between distant others, these are fluid and contingent and not necessarily desirable. Rather than see networks as a source of responsibility we should work to ensure that the relationships that networks foster be structured to ensure our deeper values are respected.