Community Unionism in Canada and Labor's (Re)Organization of Space

The extensive restructuring of industrialized economies continues to challenge workers and their unions in the 1990s. Labor unions are trying to remain viable institutions in the face of globalization of economic production, deindustrialization, and technological change. These processes have increasingly challenged workers in traditionally highly unionized sectors of the economy such as manufacturing and resource extraction industries. At the same time, unions have failed to organize large numbers of workers, often young and female, in geographically fragmented workplaces in expanding sectors of the economy such as consumer services and subcontracted goods production. There has been a call for new "spatialized strategies" allowing unions to access these new sectors and spaces and to produce scales of organization compatible with post-industrial capital. One strategy being adopted by the labor movement is coalition building with non-labor community interest groups with common goals in order to shape geographies of production. The experience of two Canadian unions with "community unionism" is discussed as an example of a spatialized strategy still in early development.     

SOCIAL AND SPATIAL PATTERNS UNDER FORDISM AND FLEXIBLE ACCUMULATION

Current debate surrounding Fordism and flexible accumulation centers on explaining their transition and the implications for capital and labor. This article disagrees with the argument that technology and capital competition are the basis for transition and focuses instead on the labor process. Using a case study of the French automobile industry since the Second World War, the analysis examines the transition in production and the link between spatial organization and the labor process. Contradictions in the current phase of capitalist production are apparent in the divergent trends towards international dispersal and regional integration of automobile production, and the deepening social divisions of labor.     

Market Rules and Spatial Outcomes: Insights from the Corporate Restructuring of U.S. Food Retailing

In this paper a study of the corporate restructuring of the U.S. food retail industry, during and following the period of regulatory relaxation and high-leverage capital transformations of the 1980s, is used to interrogate the complex relationships between market regulation, investment regimes, corporate strategies, and spatial outcomes. It is shown that changes in the “rules” governing investment and competition in the United States in the 1980s triggered countervailing spatial processes in the food retail industry. Those processes took more than a decade to work themselves through, but by the late 1990s a radically altered corporate landscape was beginning to emerge. In particular, consolidation of the industry had finally gained momentum–creating an industry whose leading firms are likely by 2002 to have a market share double the level of the early 1990s. The paper concludes by considering the insights which a consideration of corporate restructuring and regulation in this U.S. industry offers for some important areas of conceptual debate in economic geography. In particular, it is argued that industries in which capital structure transformations of the firm must be confronted and treated as a central issue have an intrinsic, but until recently neglected, importance in theoretical debate in the discipline.     

资本、权力与空间:“空间的生产”解析

全球化时期的生产方式从根本上决定了资本和权力是城市空间产生和演化的主要动力。它们分别展现了不同的作用范围、形式及效果:资本主要作用于物质的、社会—经济空间的生产,而权力主要作用于抽象的、政治—制度空间的生产。这两个过程相互影响、相互交织。本文将"空间的生产"理论与城市空间实践结合起来进行转型中国语境下的解析,尝试提供一个研究我国城市与区域空间重构问题的马克思主义政治经济学视角。     

Optimizing the Spatial Structure of the Agricultural Production Function

Important characteristics of spatial agricultural production functions are derived by introducing a non‐negative curvilinear spatial demand function for production input intensities. Given the usual neoclassical rationale assumptions of spatial demand for capital and labor inputs under competitive environment of farming in developing agricultural economies, the optimal production levels are determined by optimizing spatial demand for production inputs. Decreasing price‐to‐transport costs ratio (that is, decrease in the prices of capital goods or increase in freight rates) and increasing wage‐to‐travel costs ratio (that is, increase in labor wages or decrease in the travel rate) expand the limits of the (spatial) optimal boundary of the demand for agricultural capital goods and labor input respectively. These effects occur on account of the operation of (positive) spatial price gradient and (negative) wage‐gradient in the market region. It may be noted that elasticities of demand for production factors are spatially variant and have significant effects on the alterations in the structure of agricultural production. However, the spatial optimal solution of production has a complicated relationship with them. The price elasticity has negative and wage elasticity has positive spatial gradients in the market region. Farmers located in the periphery of the market region are not much affected by the proportionate changes occurring in the prices of agricultural capital goods but are more sensitive to the proportional changes in labor wages. Because of a decreasing trend in capital input demand and increase in labor input with distance from the market, capital‐product diminishes with a decreasing rate and labor‐product increases with an increasing rate in the spatial structure of agricultural production. As a result, capital‐labor ratio falls toward zero, which raises profit rate per unit of capital investment especially in the outer part of the market region. The equilibria of optimal production with price elasticity as well as of capital intensity with labor employment (that is, capital‐labor ratio as unity) determine spatial limits of the optimal production zone which is shifted outward subject to the provision of cheap transportation, stabilizing market prices and/or increasing wage rate at the market center. It will help in extending outwardly the optimal spatial limits of capital investment and will mobilize capital resources of farmers in the periphery for efficient and competitive capital‐dominated farming.     

The geography of venture capital investments in the UK

The role of venture capital in economic development increasingly is recognized as central to the development of an entrepreneurial economy. However, the supply of venture capital is not distributed evenly across the space economy. In the UK, evidence for the 1980s demonstrated that venture capital investments were highly concentrated in Greater London and the South East, reinforcing the existing patterns of regional concentration of economic activity. This paper reviews the regional distribution of venture capital investments in the UK in the 1990s, a period of massive growth in venture capital investment activity. It concludes that the regional concentration of venture capital investment has been considerably reduced since the 1980s. However, more detailed analysis of the data demonstrates that this shift towards a less unequal regional distribution has been driven by so–called 'merchant' venture capital – investments in large–scale management buy–outs and buy–ins which facilitate corporate restructuring through ownership change and often have adverse consequences for employment. 'Classic' venture capital – investments in young entrepreneurial companies with high growth potential – remains highly concentrated in London and the South East, and also in Scotland. This reflects both supply– and demand–side factors. The Government's new regional venture capital funds are unlikely to be effective in closing this regional finance gap. An alternative approach to intervention, in the context of the increasing globalization of venture capital investments, is to seek to attract venture capital money and expertise from elsewhere.     

新中国成立初期的劳资协商会议制度——以郑州市为例

劳资协商会议是党和政府调解劳资关系的重要制度,它以“发展生产,繁荣经济,公私兼顾,劳资两利”为基本原则,对调解劳资关系、恢复发展经济起到了积极作用。根据中央和河南省的指示精神,1950年,郑州市积极设立劳资协商会议,为私营工商业发展做出了贡献。“五反”运动后,郑州市的劳资协商会议对缓和劳资关系、恢复生产、稳定社会秩序起到了一定的作用。     

Regulating Investment Abroad: The Political Economy of the Regionalization of Singaporean Firms

This paper attempts to understand the regionalization of national firms from Singapore within the methodological construct of the regulationist perspective. It aims to demonstrate the usefulness of some concepts in the regulationist perspective for explaining restructuring processes in developing countries, and to evaluate critically the role of some of these concepts—such as regimes of accumulation and modes of social regulation—in illuminating the internationalization of capital through transnational corporations and their associated foreign direct investment. In particular, the paper argues that Singapore's export-led regime of accumulation manifests inherent contradictions in its dependence on foreign capital, the domination of the domestic economy by state-owned enterprises, and the relative underdevelopment of indigenous entrepreneurship. While this accumulation process was embedded in an earlier set of social and institutional mechanisms, its contradictions and tensions were not appropriately regulated and contained. When Singapore experienced two major external economic crises in the mid-1970s and 1985, these shocks and their internal tensions triggered a continuous process of economic restructuring regulated by a distinct combination of social and institutional mechanisms, or "fixes." One such institutional fix in recent years has been the promotion of the regionalization of Singaporean firms through the social regulation of local labor markets and the state-led establishment of institutions to facilitate the regionalization drive.     

Structural change and the single market programme: The case of the UK automotive component industry

This paper examines the Single Market Programme's (SMP) effects on restructuring in the UK automotive component industry. The SMP is found to have failed to remove impediments to restructuring, because of areas the programme did not address and because of an inertia to restructuring caused by existing structures and strategies in the multinational dominated industry. However, restructuring is found to be driven by Japanese car transplants, whose initial location decisions are strongly linked to the influence of the programme. The probability that the Japanese will benefit most from the programme has serious consequences for the distribution of effects of the SMP, raising important issues for policy‐makers and the component industries of the EU and UK.     

EMPLOYMENT CYCLES AND PROCESS INNOVATION IN REGIONAL STRUCTURAL CHANGE*

Regional employment cycles, the demand for skilled and unskilled labor, and process innovations are analyzed in the context of an industry product cycle. Employment fluctuations caused by endogenous technological change lead to spatial decentralization of production facilities through capital relocation and spatial divisions of labor. A capital investment profile suggested by the product cycle scenario is related to employment cycles. A price system for output is outlined in terms of wages and profits over the product cycle.     

NEW PATRIARCHAL ECONOMIES IN THE AUSTRALIAN TEXTILE INDUSTRY

Analyses seriously considering the importance of gender in the process of restructuring have been scarce, yet altered gender relations have been integral to these changes at all geographical scales. Vital interconnections exist between a restructuring capitalism and a reconstituting patriarchy. Initially, I clarify the concepts and the feminist politics which inform the analysis, and then I situate the Australian textile industry in a global context of new divisions of labour and capital. Connecting these global changes to a particular national economy provides the necessary background to understanding the transformations which have occurred in one textile plant in Geelong, Victoria over the last twenty years. At all scales, patriarchy and capitalism have interconnected in such a way as to ensure that renewed profitability and reasserted male authority are linked during restructuring. Restoration of capital accumulation in the Australian textile industry has thus been built on a redefined but also reaffirmed patriarchal economy.     

新国家空间理论的内涵与评价

新国家空间理论是对国家空间重构的系统性描述,它将国家空间看作动态的"过程",而非预定的、固定的"容器"。其核心观点为：①以社会建构的国家空间为研究对象,并关注其多维重构,尤其是尺度重组过程;②关注资本积累方式的转变、国家管制模式转型和行动者的社会政治斗争等多重动因;③关注国家空间选择性及其演变趋势,以及国家空间重构的分层特征。不过,该理论也存在若干不足,如缺乏对行动者的详细探讨、缺乏对尺度和领域以外的空间维度的分析、重构趋势仍有待验证等。尽管如此,新国家空间理论有效整合了人文地理学关于国家治理与空间关系的相关理论,对于全球化研究、城市和区域治理研究以及行政结构重组研究等仍具有重要的借鉴意义。     

From a Geography of Labor to a Labor Geography: Labor's Spatial Fix and theGeography of Capitalism

Mainstream neoclassical economic geography and its Marxist critique have largely failed to incorporate active conceptions of working class people in their explanations of the location of economic activities. Neoclassical approaches tend to conceive of workers simply as factors of location, whereas Marxist approaches primarily focus on how capital structures the economic landscape in its search for profit and frequently relegate labor to the status of "variable capital." Both approaches present Geographies of Labor. They have not really examined how workers try to make industrial landscapes. In contrast, I argue that workers have an interest in how the economic geography of capitalism is made; consequently, they seek to impose what we might call "labor's spatial fix" and so play an active role in the unevenly developed geography of capitalism. Examining how workers try to develop their own spatial fixes allows us to incorporate a more active sense of workers as geographical agents into understandings of the production of space under capitalism. Recognizing that workers' efforts to create "labor's spatial fix" are significant allows us to theorize how workers attempt to make space as an integral part of their social existence (a Labor Geography ) and so to write less capital-oriented economic geographies.     

Revenge and Injustice in the Neoliberal City: Uncovering Masculinist Agendas

The literature on the Western city as a site of "actually existing neoliberalism" has done much to expose the injustices wrought by new modes of urban governance. In particular, this literature has highlighted the increasing exclusion of minority groups from the spaces of the central city. To date, however, there has been little sustained exploration of the gendered dimensions of this process. In this paper I offer such a gendered reading, suggesting that neoliberal policy serves to recentre masculinity in the cityscape at the same time that it encourages capital accumulation. I demonstrate this by noting some of the forms of revenge currently being exacted on prostitute women in Western cities, reading such actions as symptomatic of urban policies that serve both capital and the phallus. In conclusion, I suggest that the conceptual framework of neoliberalism is useful for making sense of contemporary urban restructuring, but only if we recognise that the resulting city can be mapped along axes other than those fixated on capital and class.     

西方现代劳动力地理学研究进展及对中国研究的意义

劳动力地理学研究有助于理解全球化背景下劳动力作为当前国际国内经济转型和产业区位的一个重要因素及其发生作用的内在机制,对指导劳动力市场调节、促进地方劳动力市场发展具有重要意义。本文总结了国外劳动力地理学理论研究的起源,认为其理论演变经历了由新古典经济地理学区位理论,到马克思主义新经济地理理论,到近年来"文化、制度转向"的劳动力市场地理发展历程。介绍了近年来地方化劳动力市场地理理论和实证研究领域,及其对产业空间组织的影响等方面所取得的最新进展。在对当前的研究进行评述的基础上,指出不足和未来方向。与西方学术界相比,我国相关理论研究较为欠缺,尤其是文化、制度等因素对我国劳动力市场影响的研究有待进一步加强。     

Capital accumulation and regional economic performance: the Australian experience

The accumulation of capital is the driving force of the capitalist economy. Various conditions are necessary for accumulation to proceed and each has important spatial aspects. The paper demonstrates that an analysis of these aspects provides a potentially useful framework for understanding the relationship between regional development and economic growth, with particular reference to the Australian experience. Moreover, it is shown that spatial restructuring plays an important role during periods of economic recession in re-establishing the conditions for further growth. This analysis also illuminates some of the limitations of more conventional regional growth theories and debates on convergence versus divergence in regional economic performance.     

Spaces of protest: gendered migration,social networks,and labor activism in West Java,Indonesia

This article examines the gender geography of labor activism through a comparative investigation of two communities in West Java, Indonesia. Based on in-depth interviews and a survey of workers carried out in 1995, 1998, and 2000 in the two sites, it explores the place-specific meanings attached to migrants’ social networks and gender relations, and their roles in mediating the gendered patterns of labor protest in the two villages. Previous analyses of labor protest in Indonesia have occluded scales and processes that are critical to understanding how gender dynamics are linked to the geography of protest. By contrast, attention to the gender- and place-based contexts of women’s activism illustrates the complex interactions between migrants’ local interpretations of gender norms, social network relations, household roles, state gender ideology, and global neo-liberal restructuring. Through examining these interactions, gender is conceptualized as ontologically inseparable from the production of specific activist spaces, rethinking the uni-directional spatial logic and deterministic views of gender and place put forth in theories of the New International Division of Labor.     

Whitewashed empire: Historical narrative and place marketing in Vienna

ABSTRACT

The historical narrative of Habsburg grandeur has played a decisive role in branding the Austrian capital of Vienna. While scholars have situated place-marketing strategies within de-historicized frameworks of the neoliberal city, the nostalgic framing of imperial spatial assemblages should be critically interpreted from a historical vantage point. In tourist spaces such as the Kaiserforum, urbanists, museum curators, right-wing groups, and real-estate investors employ the discourse of Habsburg patrimony to leverage past spatial inequalities for contemporary purposes. Such nostalgic narratives obfuscate the historical material conditions of their making. I argue that this very obfuscation constitutes a continuing legacy of empire. I call this process ‘whitewashed empire,’ the redeployment of imperial structures through the preservation, renovation and assemblage of material heritage. As a memorial assemblage of narrative selection and a political economic relation of exploitation, imperial nostalgia extends the work of Habsburg spatial production into the present.     

New State Spaces,Agency and Scale: Devolution and the Regionalisation of Transport Governance in Scotland

Abstract: New state spaces can be seen as products of the interaction between emerging initiatives and pre‐existing institutional arrangements ( Peck 1998 , Space and Polity 2:5–31). In the devolved territories of the UK devolution has created new political centres of policy formulation and this paper is concerned with how devolved policy initiatives are reshaping and rescaling sub‐national spaces of governance. We focus on the rescaling of transport governance in Scotland through a nationally orchestrated process of regionalisation involving the creation of Regional Transport Partnerships (RTPs), an initiative that has been shaped by tensions between changing national political objectives and local interests. Our approach draws on Neil Brenner's “new state spaces” (NSS) framework, which has value in emphasising the historically embedded and path‐dependent nature of restructuring processes. At the same time, its abstract nature leads the NSS approach to privilege the broad processes that generate new configurations of state power over the complex politics associated with the restructuring of particular spaces. In response, we suggest a new theoretical synthesis that draws NSS together with the ancillary notions of “regional armatures” and “the politics of scale” to provide a stronger purchase on the political agency and struggles that “form” and “mould” particular spaces.     

Class in a Glass: Capital,Neoliberalism and Social Space in the Global Wine Industry

Abstract: This paper explores the evolving relationship between class and capital in the neoliberalised global wine industry. Wine is a unique sector that is possessed of intricate and underexplored aspects of class formation. Having investigated the recent restructuring of the industry under neoliberalism the paper goes on to analyse class formations in the production and consumption spheres. In this discussion we note not only the concrete economic and social dynamics of change, in terms of the differing fortunes of consumers, investors, landowners and workers, but also the physical and symbolic expressions of class in and through the countryside, as manifested in changing landscapes, discourses and idylls. In conclusion we analyse relationship between capital, class formation and accumulation across and within different scales in the context of a rapidly globalising sector that is so rooted in place.