Voices and silences: the problem of access to embeddedness

The economic geography literature invokes a broad range of socio-cultural factors in explaining the performance of economic actors. The Polanyian–Granovetterian notion of embeddedness is among those often used in this context. This paper discusses epistemological problems involved in doing empirical research on the embeddedness of business firms in the local context. The obvious group of actors addressed in such studies are corporate managers. They can be depicted as agents who derive their power from the corporate resources that they control as well as from the social capital that they gain through their connectedness to a range of social relations.Interviews between academic researchers and corporate managers are viewed as Bakhtinian dialogues. They are analysed in terms of voice and silence, multivoicedness, social language and speech genre. Voices represent managerial elites in their different roles as well as the social relationships in which they are involved. They are resonated in managers’ utterances in interview dialogues. What is not expressed at all or is expressed unclearly or inadequately is captured by the metaphor of silence. Managers’ embeddedness in multiple sets of social relations results in multivoicedness, which leads to the need for the researcher to try to identify the different voices and their social origins.The paper elaborates on the complexities involved in carrying out empirical research on embeddedness. It can also be read as a warning against pursuing such an endeavour without careful conceptual elaboration on the very notion of embeddedness.     

Is geographical proximity necessary in the innovation networks in the era of global economy?

In the analysis of geographical spillovers, a commonly accepted hypothesis is that the different actors of innovation need to be physically closed to one another because the transfer of tacit knowledge implies frequent face-to-face relations. This hypothesis is put under closer examination in this paper. The first section analyses the need for economic agents to be closely located to develop research and innovative activities, starting with the analysis of their need for co-ordination and using some case studies. Based on the example of three French regions, the second section examines the importance given by the local development policies to geographical proximity in order to support the rapid development of local networks favouring innovation. In both sections, nonlocal relations appear as a key factor to develop innovation. As a conclusion, nonlocal relations should be encouraged by local development policies in the same way as local relations.     

Migrants, markets and multinationals: competition among world cities for the highly skilled

Urban areas compete with one another for people, goods, capital, ideas and other inputs of economic activity. Under the rubric of globalization, instead of only maintaining or improving the initial stock of assets in a city, the power of a place to attract outside flows of economic activity from elsewhere is increasingly important to economic development. Similarly, global or world cities are characterized as the command and control points through which these global economic flows operate. In response to the heightened mobility of highly-skilled labor across national borders, research has begun to examine the role of international human capital as an economic flow. This paper will examine the role of places in determining where the highly-skilled go in the global economy by viewing global city command and control functions as requiring unique labor flows. By reviewing the evidence found in the literature, we can better understand the potential for urban areas to compete for highly-skilled labor in the global economy. Known indicators of place attractiveness are assessed to examine the relationship between the economic trajectories of cities and their labor requirements. Cities are situated between firms and states as the key place-based actors which influence the mobility of highly-skilled labor. Finally, the paper also examines measurement issues and methodological problems in creating indices of world cities as well as explores possibilities for new research.     

Activity-specificity in organizational learning: implications for analysing the role of proximity

By the late 1990s, learning became a key notion in explaining successful regional economic development outcomes. One of the key (implicit or explicit) assumptions in these explanations tends to be that regional – i.e., proximate – relations are most conducive for collective interactive learning. In consequence, accounting for the significance of spatial proximity appears to be at the heart of explaining learning and the creation of competitiveness at the level of regions as well as the firms that they host. A general claim about the role of proximity in learning seems too vague, however. This paper suggests that the significance of proximate relations for learning needs to be unveiled in the case of the various activities carried out in firms. Firms are depicted as utilising activity-specific resources in carrying out their various functions. While other factors obviously also influence processes of learning – such as sector, product and market strategies, type of organization, etc. – this paper puts its main focus on elaborating on the significance of understanding various organizational activities. It aims at pointing out that learning is likely to take place in all of them, regardless of whether proximate or more distant relations are involved. This is believed to provide one step further in an attempt to understand the difference that space makes in organizational learning.     

Spatialising the Melanesian Canarium industry: Understanding economic upgrading in an emerging industry among three Pacific small island states

This paper examines economic upgrading in the Canarium indicum (Canarium) nut industry in Vanuatu, the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea. Canarium is a tree that is indigenous to Melanesia, and has been the subject of several commercialisation attempts since 1988. The paper assesses the outcomes to various actors in the Canarium supply chain from attempts to upgrade industry products and processes by: (1) increasing the available resource in suitable locations; (2) improving nut products and processing techniques; (3) increasing actors’ knowledge and supply chain coordination; and (4) establishing product standards. A two-phase data generation process was implemented. Document analysis and participant observations of industry workshops initiated a set of four economic upgrading interventions that were adaptively implemented. A second stage of workshops and 76 interviews enabled outcomes to be assessed at the project’s end. Findings suggest that a small number of urban-based entrepreneurs benefit and subsequently are lead actors in industry development, but at the expense of benefits being distributed to a larger, more spatially disparate group of smallholder and small commercial growers. These economic upgrading outcomes are circumscribed by core-periphery relations in Pacific small island states and the scale of industry in each country. Thus, spatial inequalities are reproduced through the emerging Canarium industries. We argue that different routes to industry development are required in each country. Development initiatives that capitalise on the benefits of micro-enterprise clusters, joint action and regional institutional arrangements are proposed to overcome the impediments imposed by the particular geographies of Pacific island states.     

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.     

The social relations of catfish production in Vietnam

The growth of intensive export-oriented Pangasius catfish production in Vietnam’s Mekong Delta is unparalleled in terms of rapidity and scale by any other agricultural sector, with production climbing from a low base to more than 1 million tons in a single decade. This paper examines the effects of this remarkable change on the rural class structure in locations where catfish farming has boomed, and analyses the role of local state-society relations in mediating outcomes resulting from the integration of local actors into the global value chain. We conclude that private economic activity is deeply embedded in informal relations with the state bureaucracy in Vietnam, with the result that the expansion of catfish aquaculture has generally acted to reproduce and entrench existing class relations rather leading to a radical reconfiguration of the rural class structure.     

Unnoticed but important: revealing the hidden contribution of community-based religious institution of the mosque in disasters

The role of community-based religious institutions has been largely undocumented, underestimated and overshadowed in the disaster studies literature. This paper explores the role of the mosque, a community-based religious institution, in disaster management by documenting and analysing its role in rural settings in the aftermath of the 2005 earthquake in Pakistan. The study examines the role of the mosque in relation to key actors from the state, civil society and private sector during response, relief, recovery, reconstruction and rehabilitation phases of the Pakistan earthquake. Using qualitative research methods and a case study design, this article analyses primary data collected through 5 months of fieldwork (in 2009 and 2010). The findings demonstrate the multifaceted and distinct contribution of the mosque in cultural, economic, social and political aspects of the lives of the earthquake-affected communities. Possible challenges to engagement with the mosque, both gender inclusiveness and political controversy around its role, are also raised. This research suggests that state, civil society and private sector actors involved in disaster management need to understand complex relationships involving people and their religious institutions, and their impact on the social dimension of recovery. The findings of the study contribute to the scarce knowledge about the role of community-based religious institutions including churches, mosques, synagogues and temples and call for engagement: that is, acknowledging and valuing their role for building a synergy between secular and religious efforts for disaster risk reduction and post-disaster recovery.     

Special issue introduction: New research directions and critical perspectives on diaspora strategies

As more countries acknowledge the potential resources represented by their emigrant populations, the diaspora strategies of migrant sending countries are gaining policy and academic attention internationally. ‘Diaspora strategies’ describe initiatives aimed at mobilising emigrants for the purposes of economic development and/or nation building. This special issue in Geoforum identifies new research directions for the study of diaspora strategies. While extant scholarship has focused on state-driven diaspora strategies so far, this special issue introduction suggests that considering a wider range of social actors that engage in diaspora strategising across different spaces and scales will reveal new and productive insights for the study of diaspora strategies. Framing this introduction is an approach that deploys topological analyses as a way of keeping in view the variety of social actors involved in diaspora strategising, their connections to one another, and an evolving constellation of power relations ranging from contestation to collaboration. The special issue introduction draws attention to, first, the subjectivities constituted by diaspora strategies; second, the array of social actors found within webs of diaspora connections; and third, the ethical considerations arising from the power geometries of diaspora engagement. In so doing, it argues for the importance of studying diaspora formations dialogically which means deploying an analytical lens that is attentive to how the actions of different social actors and institutions from one country towards a diaspora population can influence the attitudes and actions of that diaspora towards another country that also claims their loyalty and contributions.     

State,capital and spaceships: A terrestrial geography of space tourism

Over the past decade, there has been a significant structural and geographical change in space travel. Following policy, budgetary and regulatory changes in the United States, space travel may now be conducted by private companies. This privatization has also led to some geographical competition and shifts between states within the US. In this paper, I respond to MacDonald’s (2007) call for more critical geographies of outer space activity. Building from his suggestion that we look more closely at the ways in which outer space activity is constituted by “numerous familiar operations” with respect to the practices of international relations and war and to the “basic infrastructural maintenance of the state and the lives of its citizenry”, this paper explores why the US Government has allowed for private space travel and why this privatization drove some states in the US to invest heavily in such a nascent industry sector. It argues that federal and state governments both saw private space travel as a means to fulfill their “basic infrastructural maintenance” with regard to economic expansion, development and competitiveness. The paper analyses these processes through the development of space tourism. In doing so, it provides more detail and geographical context to Dickens and Ormrod’s (2007) overview of the connections between outer space and the circuits of capital. It also demonstrates the many familiar political-economic processes involved in the privatization of space travel and, as such, the possibilities for further critical geographies of space activity.     

Industry market reaction to natural disasters: do firm characteristics and disaster magnitude matter?

This study investigates the factors that drive US industry sectors’ response to domestic natural disasters for the period 1987–2018. In general, our results show that not all local industry portfolios experience more negative impacts than non-local industries. We find that location does matter, but the nature of the industry itself is also important. Moreover, results for firm size show that big firms outperform small firms, across many industry settings. Finally, disaster severity analysis reveals that industries react differently to disasters of different magnitudes, and the response also varies across the different disaster measures. Our findings provide a basis for development of equity reaction prediction in the event of natural disasters, thus mitigating the disaster risk.

     

(Re)politicizing empowerment: Lessons from the South African wine industry

Despite being a poorly defined and vague concept, empowerment is currently of political and theoretical significance and nowhere more so than in South Africa, where it seen as central to post-apartheid transformation. This paper explores the ways in which empowerment has been understood, defined and deployed by post-apartheid governments in the context of a gradual shift from nation-building to neo-liberal governance. It examines the impact of legislation and government policy through a critical examination of empowerment initiatives in the wine industry. Drawing on research conducted in the Western Cape in 2004, the paper analyses how empowerment is interpreted and appropriated both within legislation and specifically within the wine industry. It explores what the wine industry reveals about the disempowering work of neo-liberalism, even as it is couched in the discourses of empowerment. Findings suggest that equating empowerment with economic empowerment threatens to reinforce structures of domination, rather than transforming them, while leaving power relations largely untouched. The case study reveals that until more radical understandings of power and empowerment are acknowledged and incorporated into government policies the failure to address broader issues of social and economic transformation will persist and policies aimed at the empowerment of marginalised individuals and communities will continue to have apparently pre-determined and depoliticised outcomes.     

Corridor development in Gauteng,South Africa

The development corridor concept has been regarded as an important development instrument in spatial planning and geography for many decades. Expanding literature on the theme indicates that development centres or nodes play an important role in the establishment of such corridors. Flows of goods and information between such centres are essential in creating conditions that are potentially favourable for further urban development along the communication axes connecting such centres. Combined, the various nodes form a unique flexible exchange environment allowing for dynamic synergies of interactive growth to achieve scope economies aided by fast and reliable corridors of transport and communication infrastructure. In the South African development sphere, there is strong belief that functional relationships between nodes can play a decisive role in the establishment of development corridors. The research showed that the degree to which economic activities are concentrated in the greater Gauteng region; the resulting current or emerging multinodal structural composition; and the flows of economic activities between the various nodes result in the creation of development corridors that channel and focus economic growth between networks of cities. This confirms the importance of corridors as spatial and economic development instruments. The research concluded that the core cities of Johannesburg and Pretoria are the central driving force in corridor development in Gauteng. They feature as the most dominant nodes, exerting great forces of attraction on the distribution of development and economic growth in the region. The research also suggests a degree of polycentrism whereby economic growth is channelled between networks of cities, however development potential is most favourable in areas in close proximity to primary centres and tends to be functionality driven.     

The Circle of Hydro-Hegemony between riparian states,development policies and borderlands: Evidence from the Talas waterscape (Kyrgyzstan-Kazakhstan)

Since the 1990s, transboundary water management has come to play a key role both in global environmental politics debates and in the shaping of international development policies, specifically in the Global South. As a consequence, a growing body of literature in the framework of critical hydropolitics has emerged reflecting on the role that power, discourses, and strategies play in shaping transboundary water policies and in influencing riparian relations. The focus on a state-centric perspective, however, often has led to neglect of the role of international development actors in shaping these policies. Through a critical application of the Circle of Hydro-Hegemony (CHH) and ethnographic qualitative field research in borderlands, this contribution aims to analyse how the establishment of a development initiative known as the Chu-Talas Commission, supported by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) and other donors, has influenced and shaped transboundary water politics in the Talas waterscape, which is shared by Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The evidence shows that despite the international narration of the Chu-Talas Commission as a success story for water cooperation in Central Asia, Kazakhstan, through the deployment of both material and bargaining power strategies, has been able to shape UNECE development policies in its favour, impose its agenda on Kyrgyzstan, and emerge as the basin hydro-hegemon.     

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.     

Neo-rural populations and their relations with local decision makers in rural Québec: collaboration or conflict?

The socio-demographic recomposition of the countryside is affecting local interactions and power relations. Understanding these relationships remains a challenge, as the studies to date are often limited to conflicts between neo-rural populations (newcomers) and long-time country residents over partial issues, without including decision makers. To go beyond this conflictual and fragmentary perspective, the objective of this article is to present an overall picture of both cooperative and oppositional relations between four groups, namely, newcomers, long-time rural residents, leaders of local organizations and municipal officials, in regard to all the issues that concern them. The data are based on interviews with these various actors in two contrasting rural areas of Québec (Canada). After looking at the newcomers’ mixed assessment of their participation in community life, we concentrate on areas of collaboration and/or conflict between all the actors regarding demographic, economic, sociocultural, political, environmental and agricultural issues. Three main trends emerge, revealing unexpected ways of interacting, complex power relations and antagonistic conceptions of rural spaces and their future development.     

The rise of strategic partner firms and reconfiguration of personal computer production networks in China: Insights from the emerging laptop cluster in Chongqing

In recent theorization of the Global Production Network (GPN) framework, viz. “GPN 2.0 theory” (Coe and Yeung, 2015), firm-specific strategies namely intra-firm coordination, inter-firm control, inter-firm partnership and extra-firm bargaining are conceptualized to understand the changing dynamics and reconfiguration of global production networks. Drawing upon the extra-firm strategies in the GPN 2.0 theory, this paper examines the spatial and organizational reconfiguration of personal computer production networks in China since late 2000s. Based on the information and data collected from years of observation and in-depth interviews with various firms and extra-firm actors, particularly government officials during June 2014 and December 2016, this study explores the emerging laptop cluster in Chongqing, a centrally-governed municipality in West China, which produced 40% of the world laptop computers in 2015. This paper argues that the rapid development in Chongqing in a short span has been attributed to the rising power of strategic partner firms of lead firms, primarily Taiwan-based contract manufacturers (e.g. Foxconn). It sheds light on the emerging strategic coupling between strategic partner firms and local government in Chongqing, which has brought about the reconfiguration of laptop production networks from the prevailed lead-firm centric to the emerging strategic partnership pattern. This study enriches the developing literature on the rise of strategic partner firms by extending the firm-centric analysis to extra-firm strategies, which echoes the extra-regional dynamics advocated recently by the Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) perspective.     

Private agri-food governance and greenhouse gas abatement: Constructing a corporate carbon economy

Private sector actors are playing an increasingly significant role in the definition and governance of ‘sustainable’ agri-food practices. Yet, to date little attention has been paid by social scientists to how greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions are addressed as part of private agri-food governance arrangements. This paper examines how private actors within agri-food supply chains respond to emerging pressure for measures to reduce GHG emissions from agriculture. Drawing upon the Anglo-Foucauldian governmentality literature, we introduce the notion of the corporate carbon economy to conceptualise the practical techniques that enable private agri-food actors to make GHG emissions thinkable and governable in the context of existing market, regulatory, and supply chain pressures. Using a case study of the Australian dairy industry, we argue that private agri-food actors utilise a range of techniques that enable them to respond to existing government environmental regulations, balance current market pressures with future supply chain requirements, and demonstrate improved eco-efficiency along food supply chains. These techniques – which include environmental self-assessment instruments, tools for measuring GHG emissions, and sustainability reporting – have little direct relevance to the ‘international climate regime’ of carbon trading, and carbon markets more broadly, yet individually and in combination they are crucial in enacting an alternative regime of GHG governance. In concluding, we contend that the growing use of sustainability metrics by international food companies is likely to have the most powerful implications for GHG governance in the agri-food sector, with potentially far-reaching consequences for how future action on climate change is rendered thinkable and practicable.     

International students as urban agents: International education and urban transformation in Auckland,New Zealand

This paper discusses connections between the internationalisation of education, and in particular the growth in international students, and processes of urban transformation. The research is centred in Auckland, New Zealand, a city where the number of international students has grown rapidly over the last decade leading to significant impacts on the urban form and experience of the city’s CBD. This includes growth in educational services such as language schools and other private training establishments, new residential geographies characterised by low-cost and low-quality high-rise developments, and new ethnic economies of food, service and entertainment businesses that explicitly target international students. The paper draws on research with South Korean international students and a range of secondary materials to interrogate the connections between student mobilities and changing urban form. In doing so the paper contributes to emerging scholarship on student geographies and the role of students as urban agents through the inclusion of an international dimension that has largely been absent in the extant literature. The findings illustrate that while international students themselves clearly play a significant role in the transformation of urban spaces their influence cannot easily be separated from the contribution of a range of other actors including educational businesses, property developers, transnational migrants and local and national state actors.     

From the regulation of space to the space of regulation

For about ten years, economic geography has enjoyed a renewal. Many researchers have found anchorage in different theoretical currents in order to analyse current economic changes. Regulation theory has been particularly inspirational in these considerations. This article represents a balance between different axes of research in regional economics, and their encounters with regulationist ideas. The main schools of thought are presented in chronological order with the prominent actors and the research results underlining the principal elements from each school. Finally, some prospects for the future are outlined. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.