The territorialization of the shoes industry in Jau, São Paulo State: An analysis of governance in local productive arrangements

Abstract

This article aims to identify the key elements of the Local Productive Arrangement (APL) specializing in Jau region manufacturing women's shoes, a number of municipalities located in the central part of the São Paulo state. Works with the hypothesis that the formation of this productive concentration (cluster) is tied to a its own governance structure involving actors and institutions in interrelation and ranked in terms of economic and political powers, mixing cooperation and conflict. The APL leather and shoes consists of Jau, second largest individual producer of shoes in the state of São Paulo, and nine small municipalities in their surroundings and have links in the shoes chain in its territory (final production and / or supply of inputs in the production chain). The main industrial concentration, infrastructure and specialized services in this region focuses on Jau, a tradition that harks back to the first workshops of shoemakers 1920s and 1930s of the last century. The constitution of an APL begins in the late 1990s, and delves into the early 2000s, with the inclusion of the region producers in the state program to strengthen the competitiveness clusters. The territorialization of the footwear industry in Jau refers to the frame composed of public and private actors involved in governance of the state policy of APLs in regional and local spatial level, and in this sense, gave the construction of a network of socio-territorial power guided in constant relationship of cooperation and conflict involving actors, norms, institutions and conventions articulated wrapped in plans and programs of action.