Globalisation Lived Locally: A Labour Geography Perspective on Control,Conflict and Response among Workers in Kerala

Abstract: Supported by the labour geography framework, I analyse how spatial practices of labour shape the economic geography of capitalism, by looking into a model not at a global but at a very local scale of organisation and showing its effectiveness while confronting social actors organised at global or extra‐local scales. Questioning global stereotypes on economic responses to globalisation, I argue that labour becomes actively involved in the very process of globalisation and the expansion of capital, empirically demonstrating the relevance of this in the globalisation literature. I deal with one region—Kerala—and processes in its labour markets, taking the case of apparel workers in an export‐promoting industrial park.     

CONCEPTUAL PROBLEMS IN NEO-MARXIST INDUSTRIAL GEOGRAPHY. A CRITIQUE OF THEMES FROM SCOTT AND STORPER'S: PRODUCTION, WORK, TERRITORY

The publication of Scott and Storper's Production, Work, Territory symbolizes the intellectual maturation of the new industrial geography. But problems of relating human action to structural necessity and local events to global processes continue to plague the discourse. This paper critically examines these related themes in the work of Scott and Storper, and Lipietz, pointing to the uneasy relation between structural inevitability and contingent spatial outcomes, and offers an alternative reading of structuralism as a contribution to the ongoing debate.     

中国交通运输地理学近十年研究进展

目前中国交通运输地理学的研究集中在六个大的方面:交通运输与发展研究、港口地理研究、航空运输地理起步、物流地理、城市交通运输地理以及新技术、新方法的引进与创新。中国交通运输地理学在逐步与国际交通运输地理研究接轨,但研究的深度与广度仍有一定的差距,特别是乡村交通运输地理、港口服务业地理、城市交通运输地理与物流地理的研究尚有较多工作要开展。     

Current Literature

A noted specialist on China's urban and economic geography investigates the processes underlying the massive and occasionally wasteful practice of land development that has accompanied China's rapid economic advance. By critically juxtaposing elements of conventional neoliberal economic theory (e.g., the so-called "tragedy of the commons") with the actual exercise of land property rights and the practice of land development in transitional China, he argues that, contrary to Western experience, land property rights have evolved from the bottom up and thus functioned not as a bundle of standardized and uniform legal prerogatives but rather as a diverse set of local practices adaptable to regional conditions. The author illustrates these processes though a thorough review of Chinese laws and regulations as well as a case study of land development in a province (Guangdong) in which land development has been allowed to proceed more rapidly under a special economic regime and exposure to global forces. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: P260, Q150, R140, R520. 2 figures, 1 table, 95 references.     

MATTER(S) OF INTEREST: ARTEFACTS, SPACING AND TIMING

This paper argues that time‐geography can make a contribution to contemporary ‘rematerialized’ geographies, because the interconnections among social processes, human corporeality and inanimate material artefacts within the landscape were among Hägerstrand's central concerns. Time‐geography needs none the less to be extended in several ways to make it more reconcilable with current thinking about materiality in geography. The possibility of combining Hägerstrand's framework with notions from (post) actor‐network approaches is therefore explored. It is suggested that concepts and notions from the latter may contribute to the advancement of the conceptualization of action at a distance and agency in general in time‐geography, as well as the incorporation of the immaterial realm into space—time diagrams. The resulting materially heterogeneous time‐geography is a framework for studying the spacing and timing of different material entities that is sensitive to the role of artefacts and their local connectedness with other material forms. Some of its elements are illustrated briefly through an empirical study of the roles played by a few mundane artefacts in working parents ‘coping with child‐care responsibilities on working days. The case study suggest that these artefacts not only enable goal fulfilment and routinization but also result in further spacing and timing practices, and can introduce uncertainty and novelty to existing orders.     

国外交通地理学研究的知识图谱与进展

交通地理学作为人文地理学的重要分支,一直充满着活力与多样性,获得人文地理学者的广泛关注。本文基于CiteSpace可视化软件,采用Web of Science中收录1982-2014年的4840篇交通地理学论文作为原始数据,梳理了近30年的研究脉络,绘制了学科发展的知识图谱,系统地归纳了学科的研究热点与发展趋势,以期为中国交通地理学研究提供借鉴。研究发现:国外交通地理学研究方法和研究内容日趋多元化,研究视角趋向微观化,质性研究突显;初步形成城市规划学派、理论地理学派、时间地理学派等六大学术共同体;出现社会、行为、文化和流动的诸多转向,呈现出人本导向、信息导向和交叉化的发展趋势。     

The Geographer as Itinerant: Peter Scott in Flight, 1952–1996

Mobility is the keystone of the ‘new’ regional geography. Attention is drawn to the outpouring of work on travellers throughout history. Surprisingly, little mention is made of geographers who have crossed borders, been immigrants and have engaged in writing about movement. As is evident from Peter Scott's pocket log diary of air travel and airports, there is scope for a study of the whole range of spatial practices of individual geographers through an examination of maps, diaries, stories, books and television programs. As all geographers are travellers, it is perhaps more appropriate to create the spirit of the time so that we can position ourselves in the bigger picture and enjoy our private reveries. This paper, therefore, seeks to recreate the air transport geography of the mid-1960s and to list key changes over the following thirty years, before examining air transport geography in the mid-1990s. Attention is paid to advertising signs and images of each period.     

Land Transport Reforms and the Economic Geography of the Northern Territory

Agreements at the special Premiers' Conferences in October 1990 and July 1991 removed Northern Territory Government control over the setting of heavy vehicle registration charges and arrangements for local roads funding on Aboriginal land. In relating the way in which the Northern Territory Government has traditionally administered these policy areas and reacted to the Premiers' Conference agreements, it is shown how land transport policy has been used to facilitate a preferred direction for development of the Territory's economic geography, namely, one in which costs to the private sector are subsidised and activities on privately-owned Aboriginal land are controlled. The agreements should result in a more equitable administration of land transport pol icy in the Territory. Changes to the administration of land transport reflect a broader shift in Australian Federal relations, in which the Commonwealth has sought greater national uniformity of transport policy. This has major implications for the future economic geography of the Northern Territory.     

A sweet and amnesic present: the postcolonial landscape and memory makings in Cape Verde

The construction of memory in landscapes is a complex process which is embedded in webs of political and economic power. Often history is twisted and bended to better serve the current interests of the hegemonic forces at play. In this paper I attempt to explore how memory is at work in three different sites in Santiago Island, Cape Verde: an old fort and a historical town; a concentration camp; and a global resort. The three sites participate in the erasure, maintenance and creation of memory in different ways, forging new forms of collective identity, which are embedded in local as well as global forces and processes. Through an analysis of the changes taking place on these sites, this paper suggests that while the country lives on foreign aid and attempts to embrace neo-liberal practices, it fails not only to provide basic services to the population but to engage critically with its history and geography.     

Education for citizenship: community engagement between the Global South and the Global North

This paper discusses a fieldwork exercise in development geography undertaken by students in the UK. Based on community engagement in partnership with refugee and black minority communities in Liverpool, it explores how such fieldwork can deepen understanding of development geography, contribute to global citizenship and nurture personal skills. Students of development geography engaged in real-world experiential learning about the complexity of the social, economic and cultural issues facing refugees and black and racial minority groups, and the processes by which these change and evolve. The challenges of the fieldwork were positively received as students gained relevant and useful insights from their interaction with community stakeholders.     

MONEY FLOWS LIKE MERCURY: THE GEOGRAPHY OF GLOBAL FINANCE

ABSTRACT. If the social relations and inherited configuration of production were at the core of economic geography a decade ago, these aspects of the world are increasingly taken for granted. The global scope of industry and corporate strategy has claimed increasing attention over the past decade. And while any 'new' economic geography must have something to say about the nature of human agency and the role of institutions in structuring the landscape, care must be taken not to exaggerate their significance for constructive interaction. In point of fact, the global finance industry is an essential lens through which to study contemporary capitalism from the top-down and the bottom-up. If we are to understand the economic landscape of twenty-first century capitalism, it should be understood through global financial institutions, its social formations and investment practices. This argument is developed by reference to the recent literature on the geography of finance and a metaphor – money flows like mercury – designed to explicate the spatial and temporal logic of global capital flows. Some may dispute this argument, but in doing so they lament the passing of an era rather than advancing a convincing counterclaim about how the world is and what it might become. All this means that we have to rethink the significance of geographical scale and organizational processes as opposed to an unquestioned commitment to localities.     

Communities and Other Social Actors: Rethinking Commodities and Consumption in Global Historical Archaeology

The relationships between people and commodities, and the processes through which goods are entangled with people's lives can be better understood with a focus on the community. The concept of community offers a way to understand the entanglement of individuals and small groups with global processes. In addition, a focus on the community allows historical archaeologists a scale of analysis to consider the links between people, communities, and global networks of exchange, as commodities are exchanged in and out of local, regional, or global arenas.     

Health geography in New Zealand and Australia: global integration or Antipodean exceptionalism?

This paper examines the hallmarks of an emergent and distinctive Australian and New Zealand health geography over the last 30 years. Building on an assessment of the early development of the sub‐discipline in the two countries, a review of published work reveals the co‐presence of local themes alongside connections to more global perspectives associated notably with health behaviour. Further common themes are the influence of year‐round exposure to outdoor spaces and the proximity of “blue spaces” to urban centres. However, there are divergences in the evolution of the sub‐discipline. A comparison of attendance at the biennial International Medical Geography Symposia (held since 1985) with publications in the journal Health & Place reveals differentially globalised characters. A steady flow of international visitors and appointments to New Zealand universities as well as more apparent connections to the wider discipline of geography contrast with more applied geospatial and public health connections in Australian health geography.     

From infrastructure to digital networks: accessibility and connectivity in transport geography research at Aberdeen

ABSTRACT

This paper considers the contribution made to transport geography research at the University of Aberdeen over the last century. In section one, the earliest work in transport geography emphasised the physical connectivity provided by transport through infrastructure networks. Section 2 discusses the contribution made at Aberdeen to debates around accessibility and connectivity. This work had a strong rural dimension and evidenced a growing recognition of the importance of technology in transport. It provided the springboard for research on digital connectivity with important contributions to the wider domain of transport studies in the fields of flexible transport, rural connectivity, transport and energy and social media and big data as reported in Section 3. Section 4 brings the story of transport research at Aberdeen up to the present. It frames research under the banner of intelligent mobility (IM), which links technology and mobility to the wider societal objective of enabling the smarter, greener and more efficient movement of people and goods. Contributions are reported to the fields of shared mobility, smart rural mobility, transport security and privacy and accessibility. Finally, a return to the theme of infrastructure networks and connectivity is highlighted in work on global production networks in aviation.     

The Local Shape of Revolution: Reflections on Quantitative Geography at Cambridge in the 1950s and 1960s

The "quantitative revolution" in human geography which swept across so many universities in the 1950s and 1960s had its main diffusion centers in a few locations which were to have global significance. Two critical early centers were the University of Washington in the Pacific Northwest and Lund University in southern Sweden. But the experience of change was different in different locations as the general forces of perturbation sweeping around academia were translated into local eddies with local repercussions. Here, small and somewhat random quirks at the outset, led eventually to fundamental divergences between adoption and rejection. The theme is illustrated by reference to changes which occurred at Cambridge, one of England's two oldest universities, as seen from the perspective of someone who—as undergraduate, graduate student, and later, faculty member—was caught up in these changes and took some small part in propagating them. Special attention is given to the role of two environmental scientists, Vaughan Lewis and Richard Chorley, in introducing changes and the way in which later developments in human geography drew on preceding experiences in physical geography. The reasons behind the "Cambridge variant" and the questions of how intellectual DNA is passed across the generations are discussed.     

复杂理论视角下城市健康地理学探析

城市公共健康问题是根植于所依托的地域空间背景下的复杂问题,因而,目前学界主要以还原论的模型假设来分析影响城市健康的复杂多因子关系时存在一定局限。本文在分析城市健康地理问题的"地方"复杂性基础上,提出用复杂理论认识城市的健康问题,将城市健康地理系统看作为具有开放性、组分的知识局限性、自组织性、路径依赖、涌现性、正反馈和锁定特征的复杂系统。从复杂理论视角探讨了当前城市健康地理学研究的三个主要议题,进而提出复杂理论视角下城市健康地理学研究框架及未来研究展望。     

W(h)ither Development Geography in Australia?

This paper explores the changing focus and role of development geography in Australian university teaching and research. It is based primarily on interviews with Emeritus Professors Harold Brookfield and David Lea and Professor John Connell, which were conducted as part of the Institute of Australian Geographers’ Millennium Project on Geography and Geographers. Drawing on the collective wisdom of these geographers, the evolution and characteristics of development geography in Australia and the reasons for its past strength are outlined. Additionally, the contributions made by this branch of the discipline to Geography are described, reasons for the parlous state of development geography in Australia today are presented and a number of issues related to its future survival are raised. The paper argues that, for the discipline of Geography in Australia to retain social relevance, a continuing focus on global inequality and its impacts at the local scale is essential.     

From Informal Recreation to a Geography of Achievement: Women's Soccer in South Australia

Since its inclusion amongst Olympic sports in the 1990s, women's soccer has grown impressively worldwide. Despite its rapid global expansion and growth in the number of playing participants, the sport has been neglected by geographers. In Australia, which is currently the fifth women's soccer country in the world as per registered players, the popularity of the sport has grown significantly in recent years. Perhaps even more strikingly, however, the approach to the sport has changed, to focus on the achievement of results. The shift in the purpose of women's soccer, from a solely social and recreational activity to an achievement sport, is a result of the increasing links between the local women's soccer systems and the global world of sport. The paper examines an exemplar of South Australia, and in particular the Adelaide metropolitan region. Here, in the last 30 years, women's soccer has evolved from a geography of foundation, defined by informal organisation and localised scope, to a geography of achievement, characterised by an institutionalised focus on the production of players, the introduction of higher-profile ‘sportscapes’, a broader pattern of clubs distribution, and a new set of connections with global women's soccer. The current geography of achievement links local and global women's soccer scenes. On the other hand, it funnels access to the achievement level of South Australian women's soccer to a limited central area of Adelaide's metropolitan region. The paper also draws attention to the part that social capital, and especially ‘bridging’ social capital, played in enabling the evolution of Adelaide women's soccer. The role of social capital as a contributing element of the development of sporting systems is a topic that deserves further investigation.     

Special issue: managing and adapting to global change in tourism places

The focus of the articles in this special issue of Tourism Geographies is global change. Global change incorporates social and economic globalization, which is arguably the most important process to have shaped the development of modern tourism since the nineteenth century, and climate change, which is likely to be the most significant factor influencing human behavior and livelihood in the coming decades. The organization of these articles reflects a traditional geography approach, emphasizing the physical geography foundation of the human condition, especially through the issue of climate change. This is broadened by a series of insightful comparative studies of how communities relate to their changing natural and social environments through tourism.     

西方经济地理学关于全球化经济的理论演化综述

清晰的理解全球化经济如何演化是一项非常紧迫和艰巨的任务。传统的经济地理学主要通过国际劳动分工理论解释全球化经济。但二十世纪九十年代以来的外购和及时生产等新的生产组织方式的出现,使得全球经济体系变得愈加复杂。西方经济地理学家开始将其他相关学科的理论和方法论(如资源基础理论、嵌入理论、行为者网络理论等),应用于全球化的研究中,构建了一些新的全球经济的分析框架,例如全球价值链、全球商品链和全球生产网络,体现了经济地理学新的发展方向-"关系"经济地理学。这些链/网络的分析框架在多学科领域引起强大的反响,使得西方经济地理学的学科地位得到很大提升。