Transaction links through cities: ‘decision cities’ and ‘service cities’ in outsourcing by leading Brazilian firms

Most world city studies focus on where the provision of advanced producer services takes place, but in this study the location of the service clients are also taken into account. Production-service transactions are identified as links between ‘service city’ and ‘decision city’ (client HQ) and classified as intra-city (where a firms uses local (same city) services) and inter-city which may be domestic or foreign depending on whether the client uses services in or out of the country. Sampling the leading firms in Brazil, 218 transaction links are described and analysed in terms of cities, firm sectors, ownership and market. The analyses are used to inform a rereading of gateway city functions that takes into account the concentration/dispersal nexus in economic globalization. Thus, whereas the dominance of Sao Paulo in the Brazilian economy is confirmed, this is not interpreted as a simple gateway function with this one city ‘articulating’ the national economy into the world economy. A much more complex situation is revealed with by-passing of the gateway also much in evidence. The conclusion is that this shows concentration and dispersion of economic activity happening simultaneously in Brazil.     

Anticipating ubiquitous computing: Logics to forecast technological futures

Visions of the future predict spaces apparently teaming with ever more novel and pervasive technologies. Significant amongst such forecasts is the notion of ‘ubiquitous computing’ (ubicomp), understood as an affordance or capacity tied (in)to people, places and things. This article stages an encounter between the futurity of ubicomp and recent debates in geography around anticipation. So, first, the future orientation in ubicomp research and development (R&D) is investigated as a mode of anticipation. ‘Knowledges’, and ‘logics’ of anticipation are subsequently, and second, discussed as the conceptual apparatus that constructs and perpetuates the ‘proximate future’ of ubicomp. This analysis connects recent discussion about ‘anticipation’ in social sciences research with the methods of ubicomp research, which fits with an emergent agenda around futurity in human geography. Third, the conceptual articulation of ‘anticipatory logic’ is applied to the analysis of empirical investigations of ubicomp R&D to identify the specific logics of anticipation at play. This article accordingly examines the logics of anticipation that both support and destabilise the certainty with which the future is imagined within ubicomp. In conclusion, the multiple ways of anticipating a future world and the ways in which they discipline understandings of futurity are framed as a politics of anticipation.     

Failure and strategic projects: Australia’s Asia-Pacific vision

This paper uses Australia’s 1980s shift to a new accumulation strategy of ‘international competitiveness’ to examine the role of failure in shaping state strategic projects. The paper argues that the Australian strategy’s gradual shift from an interventionist to a market-led orientation played out in competing representations of failure. Whether particular policies were perceived as failures depended not only on their material effects, but also on the ways in which failure was defined and on the values underpinning those definitions. As representations of failure establish the boundaries between the incremental adaptations that stabilise an accumulation strategy and the more radical failures characteristic of crisis, they illuminate how processes of discursive selectivity ‘fix’ state projects’ temporal, scalar and spatial dimensions.     

Splintered networks: The colonial and contemporary waters of Jakarta

This paper queries the relevance of the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis to postcolonial cities of the South, and responds to calls for the production of a decentered theory of urbanization through a case study of Jakarta. Drawing on archival and interview data, the paper demonstrates that Jakarta has, since its inception, been characterized by a high degree of differentiation of access to water supply, and of fragmentation of water supply networks. We document the origins of this fragmentation in the colonial era, and trace the legacy of the colonial constructions within the postcolonial city. Moreover, we demonstrate that the introduction of private sector management (in 1988) has not significantly disrupted, and certainly not caused, this pattern. In short, we provide evidence to support our claim that Jakarta’s water supply system is ‘splintered’ rather than ‘splintering’, and demonstrate that this phenomenon was not caused by the rise (or fall) of the ‘modern infrastructural ideal’. In order to explain this sustained fragmentation of infrastructure and access, the paper develops a conceptual framework of postcolonial governmentality that emphasizes the interrelationship between materiality, governmentality, identity, and urbanization, in particular through demonstrating how contested and evolving process of social differentiation are linked to the differentiation of water supply infrastructures and of urban spaces. Although we are wary of any simplistic comparisons between the colonial past and present, we argue that the optic of postcolonial governmentality provides a powerful lens for dissecting the power relations that continue to structure access to water supply and urban space in cities in the South.     

Relational networks of knowledge production in transnational law firms

For geographers, debates surrounding the knowledge economy have reinvigorated interest in the geographies of learning and knowledge production. Particularly topical are discussions of the possibility of spatially stretched (global) learning, something especially relevant to professional service firms where the production and management of knowledge across transnational organizational networks is essential. Taking this as its starting point, the paper explores the way knowledge is produced and circulated in transnational legal professional service firms. Drawing on the ideas of relational economic geography to analyse original empirical material, it highlights the way relational networks are socially constructed to allow learning to be stretched across space. The paper then goes on to identify the ‘politics’ of inclusion in these networks and the exclusivity of membership. It also highlights the geographies of power that influence the nature and effect of the knowledge produced and circulated. It does this by examining the role of relational knowledge networks in the ‘Americanization’ of legal practice in Europe and the impacts of such changes on national institutional and regulatory contexts. It is, therefore, argued that transnational corporate networks need to be viewed as heterogeneous and ‘embedded spaces of social practice’. It is shown that studying the actors and their interactions across relational networks is vital to fully understand how global relational forms are constructed and to understand their structuring effects on the global economy.     

Investigating high zircon concentrations in the fine fraction of stream sediments draining the Pan-African Dahomeyan Terrane in Nigeria

Sixteen hundred stream sediments (<150 μm fraction) collected during regional geochemical surveys in central and SW Nigeria have high median and maximum concentrations of Zr that exceed corresponding Zr concentrations found in stream sediments collected from elsewhere in the World with similar bedrock geology. X-ray diffraction studies on a sub-set of the analysed stream sediments showed that Zr is predominantly found in detrital zircon grains. However, the main proximal source rocks (Pan-African ‘Older Granites’ of Nigeria and their Proterozoic migmatitic gneiss country rocks) are not enriched in zircon (or Zr). Nevertheless, U–Pb LA-ICP-MS dating with cathodoluminescence imaging on detrital zircons, both from stream sediment samples and underlying Pan-African ‘Older Granites’ confirms a local bedrock source for the stream sediment zircons. A combination of tropical/chemical weathering and continuous physical weathering, both by ‘wet season’ flash flooding and ‘dry season’ unidirectional winds are interpreted to have effectively broken down bedrock silicate minerals and removed much of the resultant clay phases, thereby increasing the Zr contents in stream sediments. The strong correlation between winnowing index (Th/Al) and Zr concentration across the study area support this interpretation. Therefore, ‘anomalous’ high values of Zr, as well as other elements concentrated in resistant ‘heavy’ minerals in Nigeria’s streams may not reflect proximal bedrock concentrations of these elements. This conclusion has important implications for using stream sediment chemistry as an exploration tool in Nigeria for primary metal deposits associated with heavy minerals.     

Network configurations and R&D activities of the ICT industry in Suzhou municipality, China

This paper analyzes the network structure and R&D activities of the information and communication technology (ICT) industry in Suzhou municipality, known previously for its local state-directed Sunan model of development. Suzhou, however, has been undergoing dramatic restructuring to remake itself into a globalizing production center. We highlight the significance of the Chinese state and local/regional assets in shaping the trajectories of globalization and regional development, and the increasing importance of domestic markets and regional clusters/agglomeration for foreign ventures. We have found that Suzhou’s development path, heavily dependent on external forces, has made Suzhou a TNC (transnational corporation) satellite district. We also find that the ICT industry in Suzhou has a dual-structure, segmented between foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) and domestic firms. TNCs tend to network among themselves and their interfirm networks are increasingly domestic and regionally embedded in the Yangtze River Delta, while the linkages between TNCs and local firms are weak. We argue that there is a series of technological, structural, spatial, and institutional “mismatches” that limits the establishment of “global pipelines” of knowledge exchange. We hold that the nature of global-local networks is contingent upon regional endogenous capacities and the specific ways in which global capital interacts with local institutions. Therefore, perspectives on TNCs’ local embeddedness must be positioned in their regional/external networks. We also analyze the constraints placed on Suzhou’s development into an innovative city and promote the integration of global and local/regional assets through development of indigenous capacities.     

On knowing what trees to plant: local and expert perspectives in the Western Ghats of Karnataka

This paper investigates the ways in which different groups of people arrive at decisions regarding what tree species to plant. Data is drawn from a case study of afforestation that is taking place under the policy of Joint Forest Planning and Management in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, India. Whilst there is a clear disparity between villager and Forest Department preferences, this difference is not simply a case of Forest Department ‘science’ pitted against villagers’ ‘local knowledge’. On the one hand, both villagers and the Forest Department employ empirical evidence to inform their preferences; on the other hand, decision making goes beyond this, being influenced by a range of institutional and cultural issues. This paper identifies obstacles to a complementary working relationship between local and expert knowledge and considers the resulting management implications.     

Unbundling Stockholm: The networks, planning and social welfare nexus beyond the unitary city

This paper focuses on the extent to which recent infrastructure-oriented urban developments in Stockholm concord with various aspects of the ‘splintering urbanism’ thesis of Graham and Marvin. This contextualisation allows us to extend their work empirically and conceptually. In the first instance, we study a particular case of the decline of a unitary networked city (in an urban context largely absent from their book). In the second instance, we develop their notion of ‘unbundling’ to capture not just core changes in the organisation of infrastructure provision, but an overarching disjunction of the established nexus between networks, planning and social welfare in the city. This disjunction operates through interlinked transformations concerning, for example, privatisation and outsourcing in network services, separation of infrastructure planning from broader urban planning, contradictions between the environmental and social mandates of infrastructure, and a (prospective) curtailment of the redistributive, social role of essential network service provision. We conclude nonetheless that this ‘destructive’ moment of unbundling has not so far been pursued by more explicitly ‘creative’ urban fragmentation strategies, due largely to the vestiges of a socio-political consensus based around redistribution and equality. In this respect, the Stockholm case pleads for a conception of ‘splintering’ as a dynamic and multi-stage process which is not only always ongoing, unstable and incomplete, but also non-linear and open to resistance/regulation.     

Creative industries, creative class and competitiveness: Expert opinions critically appraised

In the debate on urban and regional competitiveness, it has become fashionable to stress the growing importance of creativity for economic development. Especially scientist-consultants with a keen eye for what politicians and business people want to hear have taken centre stage in this discussion. Each city and region in the advanced capitalist world seems to prefer a label as creative city or region, and all look after the same type of industries and try to produce the same set of conditions, while investing in higher education and research institutes, networking and lobbying institutions, and the promotion of spin-off companies. A vast number of leaders and spokesmen of local and regional (quasi) governments believe that a major thing to do is to become more attractive places to live for creative knowledge workers or the ‘creative class’, as it is euphemistically labelled.However, in academia there is a lot of scepticism with regard to the use of these concepts and their meaning for urban and regional competitiveness. Also citizen movements and NGOs, and some political parties, voice their concern about the extent to which policies that apply these concepts and ideas might only benefit an elite of higher educated, well- paid professionals while at the same time these policies might result in decline of other activities and in social polarisation and poverty as well.In this paper we contribute to the critical discussion through a critical appraisal of local experts’ views on developments in seven European city-regions, first with regard to policies towards the development of creative and knowledge-intensive industries; and secondly with regard to the impact the development of ‘creative knowledge regions’ may have in social and other respects. In contrast to the rather homogeneous yet dominant advice to facilitate ‘the creative class’, in this paper we will argue that a range of parameters related to the firms and regional institutional, geographical and historical contexts promote a much more diversified view on urban economic development.     

The importance and quality of governance in the Chilean wine industry

The central theme of this paper is the issue of the governance of cooperation within the Chilean wine industry. The effects of the internationalization of this industry for the importance and the quality of governance of intra-cluster cooperation involving firms and other actors are analysed. Two questions stand central. First, what has been the relative importance of external and internal factors in improving the export performance of the Chilean wine industry over the past 20 years? Second, to what extent have collective actions and investments played a part in this growth, and what has been the quality of the various governance regimes dealing with the associated collective action problems? Empirical evidence suggests that world-market developments and upgrading efforts by individual wineries largely explain the good export performance of the Chilean wine industry until the year 2000. The evidence also shows that the industry’s success in world markets is stimulating cooperation between firms and other actors in areas where the industry needs to improve: marketing and promotion, internationalization, innovation and training. The enhanced cooperation has not only stimulated cluster development, but has also turned the quality of cluster governance into a central variable for future export growth. Nevertheless, several collective action problems await resolution before essential intra-cluster cooperation can develop. Overall, the evidence suggests that, in the case of the Chilean wine industry, industrial and cluster development do not automatically follow enhanced integration in world markets, but depend on the strategic skills of actors within the industry, in particular their ability to identify, prioritize, and realize collective investments while effectively managing the associated collective action problems. Internationalization stimulates firms to consider such investments, however, and provides them with an incentive to upgrade strategic skills at the local level as new opportunities arise and the pressure is there to exploit them in world markets.     

Environmental governance and the hybrid regime of Australian natural resource management

In this paper we explore hybridity in Australian natural resource governance, both ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of neoliberalism. We develop an understanding of this governance regime as an assemblage of subjects, ethics, ends and techniques that constitute a hybrid of practices directed by three mentalities of government: neoliberalism, localism and ecocentrism. This three-way parentage engenders particularly complex internal dynamics - tensions and congruencies, grounds for contest and opportunities for collaboration - that shape and transform the regime. Our analysis clarifies the formative roles of the three logics and in so doing offers a new perspective of tripartite governance dynamics. We conclude by showing how the co-existing mentalities compete to establish NRM policy that is in accord with their respective ends and ethics, subjectify problems and other actors to fit with their own agendas, and attempt to secure primacy for those technologies congruent with their logics. At the same time, as mutually constitutive forces of the regime, they exhibit varying degrees of adaptivity as they co-opt or accommodate technologies favoured by their competitors.     

The limits to good governance and the state of exception: A case study of North Sea fisheries

This paper explores a series of maxims, widely known in policy and academic circles as the ‘principles of good governance’, which state that policymaking in the European Union (EU) should be participatory, conducted as close to citizens as practicable, transparent, accountable, effective and coherent. These maxims were introduced into EU fisheries management as part of a radical reform of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) in 2002. This reform was instituted in response to criticisms of a prevailing management regime alleged to be inefficient, undemocratic, and potentially responsible for an environmental crisis: the exhaustion of key fish stocks. The research for this work has found that there are limits to the actual achievement of good governance in EU fisheries. In practice governance innovations are very often contradictory and rife with tensions. I reason that such problems result not merely from policy implementation failures; they constitute a more endemic feature of the CFP reforms. We can begin to understand these limits to good governance principles by looking to Agamben’s permanent state of exception thesis. Agamben’s theory helps to show how these contradictions and tensions occur under new governance regimes, because the relationship between democratic norms (like good governance) and political power is no longer clear. I argue that this blurring has been exploited by groups seeking influence in these new regimes. They do this through citing a supposed need for emergency measures to mitigate crisis. Although this research broadly supports the state of exception thesis, my analysis leads me to question some aspects of its application in contemporary governance spaces.     

Making autonomous geographies: Argentina’s popular uprising and the ‘Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados’ (Unemployed Workers Movement)

This paper addresses the idea of autonomy—the desire for freedom, self-organisation and mutual aid. Through challenging economic neoliberalism, state repression, a powerful transnational elite, and the commodification of nature and resources, many communities, especially in the global south, are trying to manage their own affairs. Using the example of the Movement of Unemployed Workers (El Movimiento de Trabajadores Desocupados) in Argentina, I explore the idea of autonomous geographies and how they are made and remade at three overlapping levels: the territorial, through the emergence of networked autonomous neighbourhoods which are selectively open and closed to translocal links; the material, through the development of a solidarity economy where immediate needs are met and work is redefined, and; the social, where collective action and daily practice helps constitute more collective, autonomous forms of social interactions. In their desire to manage connections with the outside world while at the same time inspire autonomous place projects elsewhere, the MTDs represent both a ‘militant localism’ and ‘militant pluriversalism’. Moreover, while such experiments in making and embedding ‘autonomous geographies’ face limits and have few widespread examples on which to draw, it is through constant questioning and collective struggle at the everyday level that autonomy is made real.     

Pragmatic localism uncovered: The search for locally contingent solutions to national reform agendas

This paper analyses the complexity and attempted pragmatism of current practices surrounding the management of current local government policy reform in England. In particular, it focuses on the tensions and contradictions between a national policy dynamic which seeks to encourage locally contingent solutions to be developed for localised problems, and the centralising tendencies of the national state which result in ‘blueprints’ and ‘models’ being developed for local policy delivery and a requirement to meet centrally derived targets. These assumptions are explored through the experiences of local government attempts to introduce innovative and experimental praxis in line with the complex cultural and political changes of ‘modernisation’ agendas advanced by the UK government. This is being rolled out by an overarching project of ‘new localism’ - an attempt to devolve power and resources from the central state to front line local managers, sub-local structures and partnerships and to deliver ‘what works’. It is argued that new attempts at subsidiarity should be more flexible to local conditions rather than directed by national policy and that greater discretion and freedom should be given to local managers to achieve this task. Using the concept of ‘pragmatic localism’ and grounded examples from a recent initiative - Local Area Agreements - it is highlighted that there are signs that local state management of national policy could be becoming increasingly adaptable, enabling managers to deal with the fluid nature of ongoing public policy reform, although this is far from a completed project with many factors still constraining this change process.     

Retailing local food in the Scottish-English borders: A supply chain perspective

Local food is championed as one alternative response to industrial systems of food production and supply. While advocacy for local food is high, there is a lack of empirical evidence about the actual shape and scale of such food supply chains, especially from a retail perspective. Using supply chain diagrams, this paper presents a summary of ‘new’ agro-food geographies for five different retail types—farm shops, butchers, caterers, specialist shops, supermarkets/department stores—that all source local food from suppliers in the Scottish-English borders. Presented as five separate ‘shopping trips’, the paper examines where, how and why retailers source local food. Results reveal the complex nature of local food systems, especially in terms of intra-sector competitive dynamics (with a notable tension between direct forms of retail and established (independent) retailers), links and overlaps with ‘normal’ food retail systems and elastic notions of the ‘local’. The paper also draws a key distinction between locally produced and locally supplied food products.     

Globalizing retail and the ‘new e-conomy’: The organizational challenge of e-commerce for the retail TNCs

This paper examines the organizational challenge of e-commerce for emerging retail transnational corporations (TNCs). The paper begins by scoping and conceptualizing the retail TNCs and in the process, draws attention to the high level of territorial embeddedness of these firms. This provides the framework for the remainder of the paper, where the organizational challenge of a ‘multi-channel’ paradigm (blending online and offline forms of retail distribution) is evaluated. Specifically, the paper argues that place, space and embeddedness continue to matter in the ‘new e-conomy’ of multi-channel distribution.     

Conspicuous redemption? Reflections on the promises and perils of the ‘Celebritization’ of climate change

With rising public awareness of climate change, celebrities have become an increasingly important community of non nation-state ‘actors’ influencing discourse and action, thereby comprising an emergent climate science-policy-celebrity complex. Some feel that these amplified and prominent voices contribute to greater public understanding of climate change science, as well as potentially catalyze climate policy cooperation. However, critics posit that increased involvement from the entertainment industry has not served to influence substantive long-term advancements in these arenas; rather, it has instead reduced the politics of climate change to the domain of fashion and fad, devoid of political and public saliency. Through tracking media coverage in Australia, Canada, the United States, and United Kingdom, we map out the terrain of a ‘Politicized Celebrity System’ in attempts to cut through dualistic characterizations of celebrity involvement in politics. We develop a classification system of the various types of climate change celebrity activities, and situate movements in contemporary consumer- and spectacle-driven carbon-based society. Through these analyses, we place dynamic and contested interactions in a spatially and temporally-sensitive ‘Cultural Circuits of Climate Change Celebrities’ model. In so doing, first we explore how these newly ‘authorized’ speakers and ‘experts’ might open up spaces in the public sphere and the science/policy nexus through ‘celebritization’ effects. Second, we examine how the celebrity as the ‘heroic individual’ seeking ‘conspicuous redemption’ may focus climate change actions through individualist frames. Overall, this paper explores potential promises, pitfalls and contradictions of this increasingly entrenched set of ‘agents’ in the cultural politics of climate change. Thus, as a form of climate change action, we consider whether it is more effective to ‘plant’ celebrities instead of trees.     

Market triumphalism and the CBNRM ‘crises’ at the South African section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park

Transfrontier conservation has taken Southern Africa by storm, where the modus operandi remains simple and intuitive: by dissolving boundaries, local benefits grow as conservation and development spread regionally. However, in the case of South Africa’s section of the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park, political and economic change redirects benefits to support ‘modern’ economies at the expense of rural livelihoods through community-based natural resources management (CBNRM). Neo-liberal agendas promoted by government and the transfrontier park derail efforts at decentralizing CBNRM initiatives beyond markets and state control. This paper argues that ‘hybrid neoliberal’ CBNRM has arisen in private and public sector delivery of devolved conservation and poverty relief projects as ‘tertiary production’ for regional development. As a result, ‘CBNRM’ projects related to and independent of transfrontier conservation support private sector interests rather than the resource base of rural livelihoods. Concluding sections assert that CBNRM can counter this neoliberal trend by supporting the land-based economy of local users living near the Great Limpopo Transfrontier Park.