(Re)producing gender cultures: Theorizing gender in investment banking recruitment

Recent work within human geography and the social sciences more generally has attempted to explore and theorise the unfavourable gender relations within organizations which continue to produce a disadvantageous position for women. This paper argues that there is a need to implement a more spatially aware epistemology in the production of such theory. It develops a theoretical approach to organizational gender relations centred around the concept of ‘gender culture’, arguing that to understand gender in the workplace more effectively, it needs to be theorized through the daily social practices which occur in specific organizations. This argument is explored through a case study of the way in which investment banks in the City of London reproduce masculine ‘gender cultures’ through the recruitment process. Building on the recent work of McDowell (Capital culture: gender at work in the city. Oxford: Blackwell, 1997), the research presented considers the way in which the ‘pre-organizational gender culture’ of investment banking recruits contributes to the reproduction of masculine gender cultures in those organizations. It also explores how the recruitment process itself—in the shape of interviews, assessment techniques and selection criteria—is also imbued with masculine cultural attributes, and thus aids the reproduction of hegemonic masculinities within the investment banking workplace.     

Mucky carrots and other proxies: Problematising the knowledge-fix for sustainable and ethical consumption

This paper uses evidence from focus groups in England to consider how consumers think about and, more importantly, distinguish foods by both primary and secondary qualities, using both their own judgement but also advice produced by various organisations acting as ‘knowledge intermediaries’, such as independent certification bodies. We thus consider the ‘sorting out’ that consumers do with food, particularly in developing typologies of ‘goodness’ and ‘badness’, and the cues on which they base these judgements, from the material immediacy of ‘mucky carrots’ to the abstract remoteness of organic certification. In particular, we problematise the ‘knowledge-fix’ that underlies attempts to provide knowledge to promote more sustainable and ethical consumption. This raises problems of how consumers give assurance schemes meaning, how ethical and sustainable schemes are subject to re-fetishization and how consumers tend towards increasing scepticism and distrust of such claims, thus making a ‘politics of reconnection’ far from easy.     

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.     

Intellectuals and geopolitics: The ‘cultural politicians’ of Central Europe

This paper investigates the role of intellectuals in the production of geopolitical discourses. It analyzes how the cultural capital of humanist credentials and artistic aura functions to authenticate and legitimate geopolitical claims. Drawing empirically from Central Europe and especially Estonia, I argue that intellectuals are central to the production of a particular ‘cultural’ concept of geopolitics - the notion that foreign policy expresses the state’s and the nation’s identity. As cultural capital gives intellectuals a special license to speak about culture, it constitutes an essential component in geopolitical discourses in Central Europe.The paper contributes to Europeanist geography by clarifying the mechanisms through which Central Europe is cast externally and internally as a place particularly imbued with culture and identity - a place whose integration with the EU and NATO represents its cultural ‘return’ to Europe. It takes us beyond the romanticized notion of intellectuals - especially the formerly dissident ones - as ‘speaking truth to power’, and offers a more subtle account of their role as producers of power discourses.Beyond Central Europe, the paper underscores the political and cultural milieu of geopolitical claims and the specific structures of legitimacy through which these claims are justified and normalized. A nuanced understanding of the role of ‘culture’ in geopolitical discourses requires that we closely examine the cultural and moral capital of intellectuals. This would also enable us to better delineate human agency in the production of geopolitics.     

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.     

Ontario’s Environmental Farm Plan: Evaluation and research agenda

This paper analyses the operation of the Environmental Farm Plan (EFP) scheme in Ontario, Canada, a voluntary agri-environment scheme established in 1993. Previously unpublished data and interviews with farmers, leaders of farmers’ organisations and government officials are used to detail participation rates, geographical spread and method of operation. Largely developed by farmers’ organisations, the scheme has focused on soil management, water quality and storage/disposal of agricultural wastes. The environmental actions associated with these activities are discussed, revealing both successes and limitations. Distinctions are drawn with agri-environmental schemes in the European Union, and a broader context for the EFP is provided with respect to the proposed post-productivist transition of agri-food systems and the need to examine the way these systems are regulated. A need for further systematic research is proposed, specifically with respect to barriers to participation, the voluntary nature of the scheme, financial incentives and the resultant environmental impacts.     

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.     

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 consolations of ‘neoliberalism’

Recent work on neoliberalism has sought to reconcile a Marxist understanding of hegemony with poststructuralist ideas of discourse and governmentality derived from Foucault. This paper argues that this convergence cannot resolve the limitations of Marxist theories of contemporary socio-economic change, and nor do they do justice to the degree to which Foucault’s work might be thought of as a supplement to liberal political thought. The turn to Foucault highlights the difficulty that theories of hegemony have in accounting for the suturing together of top-down programmes with the activities of everyday life. However, the prevalent interpretation of governmentality only compounds this problem, by supposing that the implied subject-effects of programmes of rule are either automatically realised, or more or less successfully ‘contested’ and ‘resisted’. Theories of hegemony and of governmentality both assume that subject-formation works through a circular process of recognition and subjection. Both approaches therefore treat ‘the social’ as a residual effect of hegemonic projects and/or governmental rationalities. This means that neither approach can acknowledge the proactive role that long-term rhythms of socio-cultural change can play in reshaping formal practices of politics, policy, and administration. The instrumental use of notions of governmentality to sustain theories of neoliberalism and neoliberalization supports a two-dimensional understanding of political power—which is understood in terms of relations of imposition and resistance—and of geographical space—which is understood in terms of the diffusion and contingent combination of hegemonic projects. Theories of neoliberalism provide a consoling image of how the world works, and in their simplistic reiteration of the idea that liberalism privileges the market and individual self-interest, they provide little assistance in thinking about how best to balance equally compelling imperatives to respect pluralistic difference and enable effective collective action.     

Manufacturing rural finance in Asia: Institutional assemblages, market societies, entrepreneurial subjects

This paper takes up the proposition that institutions mediate market formation, through a comparative study of rural finance in Nepal and Vietnam. It explores how microfinance, as an iconic institution of ‘roll-out neoliberalism’, articulates political-economic and cultural-political milieux—with particular emphasis given to the ways in which the Vietnamese Party-state has engaged rural finance to further the socialist transition even as it has undergone significant ‘economic renovation’. In so doing, the paper adopts a processual interpretation of institutions not as bounded structures, but as arenas of ongoing debate over culturally constructed meanings and ‘practices of assemblage’ [Li, T.M., 2007a. Practices of assemblage and community forest management. Economy and Society 36 (2), 263–293] that are inextricably linked with wider-scale political-economic and cultural-political formations. A comparative approach is pursued here to emphasize spatio-temporal contingencies in the articulation of a market-led development institution with specific national regulatory frameworks and political cultures. A critical-geographical orientation helps to deepen Polanyi’s proposition that the economy is an instituted process, to challenge the prevailing binary opposition between state- and market-led development, account for the multiple scales at which power and interest reside in the formation of markets, and highlight the variable ways in which markets are embodied and enacted in particular places.     

Power and the hierarchy of knowledge: A review of a decade of the World Bank’s relationship with South Africa

This article presents a case study of the World Bank’s relationship with South Africa to argue that the Bank uses its knowledge brokering role as a device to facilitate the development of a lending relationship with countries that may initially be reluctant to enter into this kind of engagement. This article reviews the World Bank’s 10-year effort to develop a lending relationship with South Africa. The Bank inserted itself into the country in the early 1990s at the outset of its democratic transformation. Throughout the decade, South Africa acceded to the Bank’s policy interventions through technical assistance rather than through a concerted lending programme. In doing so, South Africa internalized the Bank’s market-driven political economy framework underlying its technical assistance programme. The country’s application of the Bank’s knowledge has had questionable outcomes for its development agenda. While the Bank’s ‘expert’ interventions may have offered valuable technical insights, it neglected the politics of distribution that are embedded in a more localized knowledge formation process. The result has led to the instrumentalization of local governance and undermined the engagement of civil society actors in the construction of a democratic state at the local level.     

The complex mobilities of homeless people in rural England

This paper explores the interconnected issues of mobility, power and meaning in the context of rural homelessness. It explores two common assumptions relating to these interconnections: that rural homeless people move to cities thereby transposing homelessness into an urban problem; and that mobility is deeply implicated in the mapping of moral codes in rural areas. Drawing on a range of interviews with homeless people, and workers with homelessness agencies in the rural areas of Gloucestershire and Somerset, the paper discusses four types of movement: ‘local’ homeless people moving out of rural areas; ‘local’ homeless people moving within rural areas; homeless ‘incomers’ moving to rural areas; and itinerant/transient homeless people moving through rural areas. The complex mobilities of rural homeless people influence common ideas about where homelessness occurs and how it is experienced. These mobilities also affect how homelessness is ‘made known’ in rural areas, as different elements of the mobility of homeless people are discursively scattered amongst identity labels and policy arenas other than homelessness. Finally, homeless mobilities problematise the adequacy and nature of policy responses to homelessness in rural areas.     

Regions between imposed structure and internally developed response. Experiences with twin track regionalisation in post-socialist eastern Germany

This paper investigates the dual nature of regionalisation between imposed institutionalised territoriality and self-made ‘ad hoc’ collaborative regional arrangements between localities. This involves, as the paper sets out to show, different, but concurrent imagineerings of ‘regions’ to two audiences - within and without a defined region. They are applied to the same territory, albeit with different images and sets of actors for internal (local) and external (national/international) consumption. These developments are examined within the context of the ‘new regionalism’ debate, in particular the notion of a replacement of ‘old’ through ‘new’ regionalism as a sequence. This duality of region making challenges the frequently somewhat simplistic presumption of regions forming as one complete entity, ‘out there’ to compete on a global market. They also have to fight for their recognition internally, but with different arguments, rationales and policies. This means that the possibility of overlapping single purpose ad hoc formed regions, as postulated under the new regionalism, needs to take into account the likelihood of several meanings of one and the same territory. The examples demonstrate that the two possibilities overlap - multi-territoriality and multi-meanings of (new) regionalism. The paper uses the example of post-unification eastern Germany, where in 1990 a completely new set of traditional regions was established, implementing a 1960s-derived western German model. Since this common starting point, strong economic, cultural and geographic differences have emerged, leading not only to policy adjustments, but also changes to the understanding of regionalisation and regional policy, and the actors involved.     

Knowledge makes the money go round: Conflicts of interest and corporate finance in London’s financial district

This paper argues that the conflicts of interest cases brought against Wall Street investment banks in the early 2000s were neither geographically nor institutionally isolated events. Rather, by combining recent work on financial knowledges in both economic geography and the social studies of finance with the growing interest in topological spatial imaginaries, I explore how London’s corporate finance industry was unable to distance itself from both the conflicts of interest allegations and the ensuing regulatory changes of the ‘Global Settlement’ in the US. Analysis of 36 semi-structured interviews conducted in London in the early 2000s is used to explore how a range of individual interests, institutional demands and structural changes within London’s financial district affected analysts’ ability to produce ‘objective’ research. As well as pointing to the problematic nature of certain aspects of knowledge rich ‘communities of practice’ [Wenger, E., 1998. Communities of practice: learning, meaning and identity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge], I explore how the resulting contingent and situated nature of research practice is at odds with a weakly defined notion of ‘objective’ research that underpins the Financial Services Authority’s regulatory response.     

‘Imagineering’ Asian emerging markets: Financial knowledge networks in the fund management industry

This paper examines knowledge production networks in the fund management industry. Focusing on Asian emerging markets (EMs), I explore how fund managers, brokers and research analysts utilise a combination of texts, analytical structures, codified procedures, and social networks to generate interpretations and perspectives on Asian EMs. Utilising a process-based approach, I investigate how ‘EMs’ as an investment category is imagined and practiced by those in the fund management industry through knowledge networks and how such networks are produced and maintained. Discussions are drawn from interviews conducted with 22 EMs specialists in Singapore and London. I argue that Asian EMs have distinct characteristics that are acted upon and reproduced by finance workers in particular ways and that the acquisition and transfer of tacit knowledge takes on increased significance when codified knowledge structures are lacking. Actors in Singapore and London are also embedded in different knowledge networks, which offer different strategic advantages but, when taken together, form a complex and multi-layered knowledge production network of ‘imagineering’ Asian EMs from both within and outside of Asia.     

Defining the subject of speech - Constructions of authorship in post-unification German media discourse

This paper analyses how the authority of west German media workers to produce ‘truthful’ representations about unification and eastern Germany after 1989 was discursively constructed. Rather than simply assuming the superiority of western knowledge, I show that the right of western media producers to speak for and about east Germany had to be constructed and defended discursively on a number of registers. Western journalists, in particular, had to demonstrate their credibility towards west and east German audiences, evidence their ability to report objectively and authoritatively, and prove themselves superior in the production of knowledge. Their truth claims had to be negotiated in the midst of a range of competing discourses. The complicated constitution of audiences meant that western journalists had to cast themselves in various different roles to justify their position as ‘knowing subjects’: as explorers, surveyors, observers, commentators, mediators and/or educators. The paper explores, how the divergence between these different positions was reconciled through a number of discursive strategies. I highlight the ambivalences and internal contradictions produced within journalistic discourses as well as through the existence of differentiated audiences.     

Recombinant workfare, across the Americas: Transnationalizing “fast” social policy

The paper presents a genealogy of the Bloomberg administration’s Opportunity NYC program, launched in 2007 as part of New York City’s explicitly experimental anti-poverty strategy. Opportunity NYC was modeled on “conditional cash transfer” programs, currently operating in more than thirty countries across the Global South, drawing direct inspiration from Mexico’s widely touted Oportunidades program. This striking case of South-North policy emulation calls attention to some distinctive features of what is characterized here as a transnationalizing “fast-policy” regime, based on technocratic forms of program evaluation and development, dense expert networks, and orchestrated communities of practice, within which a range of policy intermediaries—particularly those connected with multilateral agencies—are assuming significant new roles. What appears to be a pragmatic form of policy learning in fact operates in the context of narrow ideological parameters, within which there is a concerted technocratic “push” toward favored solutions.     

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.     

Crossing boundaries: Interdisciplinarity in the context of urban environments

Drawing upon the discussions and insights provided by researchers and policy-makers during a seminar series, this paper explores the rationales for, and the practices and difficulties of, interdisciplinarity. The urban environment provides the problem context. Despite a consistent rhetoric and repeated attempts to promote interdisciplinary research, not least by the funding councils in response to policy imperatives, success appears to have been limited. The paper suggests that rather than viewing interdisciplinarity as a distinct, often difficult, category of research it is more useful to consider a continuum of research types from multi- to transdisciplinarity. The paper furthers the interdisciplinarity debate by characterising five categories of ‘border troubles’. These involve the relentless association of interdisciplinarity with ‘real world problems’, the epistemological structuring of disciplines, assumptions about the disciplinary division of labour and the privileging of certain frames and forms of enquiry, the increasing complexity of knowledge transfer, and the ‘hard wiring’ of the research funding and assessment system. However, we conclude optimistically in terms of the evident willingness of researchers to occupy hazardous disciplinary border zones to further urban environmental understanding and propose a set of ‘conditions for success’ encompassing both the approach and practices of participants in interdisciplinary work as well as operational and contextual factors.