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.     

When Was Post‐Fordism? The Uneven Institution of New Work Practices in a Multinational

This paper considers the lineage of flexible or post-Fordist work practices. It traces the introduction and diffusion of new work practices within a major multinational enterprise (MNE), Eaton Corporation. The case study illustrates an important discontinuity in the way in which, in the US, the company abandoned its older established production locations in order to introduce its new work practices and philosophy. However, it also illustrates some of the continuities apparent across continents within the corporation's workplace restructuring from the 1960s through the 1980s. In the absence of significant union responses, the paper highlights the temporally and geographically uneven effects of a unified corporate strategy to introduce a new workplace philosophy and practices, highlighting the need for sensitivity to national and subnational contexts.
The word "restructuring" is cold and abstract and perhaps fails to convey the explosive change which has been taking place in Eaton. (Eaton Corporation 1983:2)     

Globalizing China: The Rise of Mainland Firms in the Global Economy

Two economic geographers survey the changing trends of China's outward foreign direct investment. Based on materials derived from original field work as well as published studies, they shed light on the major mechanisms through which mainland China's leading firms have successfully ventured abroad, as evidenced by proposed or realized acquisitions of significant corporate entities in the United States, Africa, Europe, and elsewhere in Asia. The authors argue for a political-economy approach to understanding "globalizing China," a complex phenomenon whereby the Chinese state is strategically and intricately enmeshed with the corporate interests of its leading business firms. Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Numbers: F23, L21, L22, M16. 3 figures, 3 tables, 128 references.     

Shaping Women: National Identity Through the Use of Language in Franco'S Spain

In my article I show how a very particular identity was created for women during the period of Franco's Spain. I will draw upon a varied range of materials from official discourses, particularly the Sección Femenina (the women's branch of Falange); the Álvarez Enciclopedia and other texts such as songs, poems and the popular press. Following Foucault (1980: 30) I analyse an identity based on oppressive discourses whose power ‘reaches into the very grain of individuals, touches their bodies and inserts itself into their actions and attitudes, their discourses, learning process and everyday life’. The nationalistic stress of this discourse is one that encourages women to create a new image of Spanish femininity that should be ‘different’ from the liberated portrayal of women coming from Europe, mainly through the path of growing tourism. The language of these discourses is somehow baroque, elaborated, energetic and highly dramatic. It tries to seek attention through an unnecessary and badly misorientated dramatism. It is cryptic and manipulative and claims to be poetical, but its main intention is to confine women indoors and to make them look at the world through the curtains or from a closed window. On the other hand it made women feel they were the representation of a unique matriarchal nationalism making them appear as the heroines of an essentialist national metaphor: women mothers of the nation. Inherent in Franco's equation of women = femininity = nation is a contradiction that defines women as ‘indoor heroines’ and bases nationalism in a naturalised representation of gender where women are a gendered representation of this nationalism.     

Pushing the Boundaries of 1980s Feminism in a Northern English Town

During the 1980s, women youth workers in Wigan changed their male-orientated profession and communicated their feminist beliefs to young women in council estates. Through practical activities with young women feminism was lived rather than theorized, as they implemented the demands of the women’s liberation movement. A strong strand of personal development was woven throughout their work, driven by powerful emotion arising from the consciousness-raising process. After a decade of growth, cuts to local government services decimated the work with girls and young women. Notwithstanding their lasting reputation in the youth work profession, they were ultimately unrealistic about what was required to solidify, and therefore protect, their position within the council structure. The 1980s work with girls did, however, lay down a bedrock of practice which is acknowledged by youth work scholars to have filtered into mainstream youth work practice and training.     

Place and the Politics of Virtue: Clerical work,corporate anxiety,and changing meanings of public womanhood in early twentieth-century Montreal

Women's entrance into corporate offices in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century provided a focus for debate about changing meanings of public womanhood in the 'Modern' city. Working in the financial district, in the heart of downtown, women in clerical professions challenged formulations of respectability which posited public, urban space as threatening to female virtue. Yet the corporations for which these women worked traded quite literally on their reputations, and as such had a great need that their employees of both sexes be understood as respectable and upstanding citizens. Drawing on the popular press and employee files from a selection of key corporations in early twentieth-century Montreal, I examine how women's presence in, and use of urban space was mediated through ideas about 'respectability'. I submit that both corporations and women seeking clerical employment drew on ideas about respectable womanhood based in expectations of corporeal control and sexual restraint, even as these ideas were changing.     

FERTILITY CHANGES IN CENTRAL ASIA SINCE 1980

Limited studies document the fertility changes in Central Asia. Using survey and official data, this study describes the fertility changes since 1980 in Kazakhstan, the Kyrgyz Republic, and Uzbekistan. I first consider the swift decline in fertility in the 1980s and 1990s through the analysis of Synthetic Parity Progression Ratios (SPPRs). SPPRs show that women still have at least one child despite economic difficulties and that the end of communism affected more the transition to higher-order births. These results are however influenced by economic and demographic factors specific to each country. I investigate then the fertility upturn that is observed since the early 2000s—an issue neglected so far by demographers. Results from the analysis of official and household data show that in each country, the recent fertility increase resulted from the increase of distinct birth orders and was concentrated in specific ethnic groups.     

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.     

Shifting Environmental Governance in a Neoliberal World: US AID for Conservation

Abstract: By exploring the shifting and uneven power relations among state, market and civil society organizations in US environmental foreign aid policy‐making, this article forges new ground in conversations about conservation and neoliberalism. Since the 1970s, an evolving group of non‐governmental organizations (NGOs) has lobbied the US Congress to support environmental foreign assistance. However, the 1980s and 1990s rise of neoliberalism laid the conditions for the formation of a dynamic alliance among representatives of the US Congress, the US Agency for International Development, environmental NGOs and the private sector around biodiversity conservation. In this alliance, idealized visions of NGOs as civil society and a countering force to corporations have underpinned their influence, despite their contemporary corporate partnerships. Furthermore, by focusing on international biodiversity conservation, the group has attracted a broad spectrum of political and corporate support to shape public policy and in the process create new spaces for capital expansion.     

Black male: Advertising and the cultural politics of masculinity

During the 1980s, men's bodies began to appear with increasing frequency in television, cinema and billboard advertising. The advertisers’ preferred image of masculinity has generally been young, white, able‐bodied and staunchly heterosexual. This paper explores a partial exception to these generalisations: Ogilvy & Mather's highly successful relaunch of the soft drink, Lucozade. By using selected images of black male bodies and their popular associations with sporting and sexual prowess, Lucozade was able to shake off its long‐established associations with sickness and convalescence, becoming a popular ‘in‐health’ drink with a revitalised and revitalising image. The paper places contemporary representations of black men in British advertising in relation to wider changes in attitudes towards gender, sexuality and ‘race’, arguing that the success of the Lucozade campaign depended not so much on general associations between sport and ‘race’, manliness and muscularity, as on the reader's (socially constructed) knowledge of the particular personalities represented. This assumed knowledge effectively suppresses the more threatening aspects of a stereotypically anonymous and rapacious black male sexuality, provoking desire without evoking dread.     

Intersectional solidarity? The Armagh women,the British left and women’s liberation

In 1980, three Republican women prisoners held in Armagh prison in Northern Ireland joined the hunger strike being conducted by male Republican prisoners in Maze Prison. Overshadowed by the fatal 1981 strike, the 1980 strike involved these women in Armagh, who challenged the traditional nationalist notion of the strong male warrior, while generating sympathy and solidarity across the globe, including with the far left and the women’s liberation movement in Britain. This article will look at how the left and the women’s liberation movement in both Britain and Ireland looked to portray these women within their competing narratives.     

Gender and Witchcraft in Agrarian Transition: The Case of Kenyan Horticulture

This article examines the social effects of contract farming of export horticulture among smallholders in Meru District, Kenya. During the 1980s and 1990s, contracting was popularized by donors and governments alike as a way to reduce poverty and increase opportunities for self–employment in rural areas. Considerable research has documented the tensions in social relations that emerge in such cases, giving rise to gendered struggles over land, labour, and income in the face of new commodity systems. This article highlights similar tendencies. It suggests that men’s failure to compensate their wives for horticulture production has given rise to a string of witchcraft allegations and acts, as the wealth engendered by horticultural commodities comes up against cultural norms of marital obligation. While witchcraft accusations can expose women to risks of social alienation and financial deprivation, witchcraft nevertheless remains a powerful weapon through which women can level intra–household disparities and, more broadly, challenge the legitimacy of social practice. In Meru, witchcraft discourses are a vehicle through which gendered struggles over contract income are articulated and contested, and through which the social costs of agrarian transition become apparent.     

Reconceptualizing gender and reconstructing social life: Ugandan women and the path to national development

This article focuses on how women's responses to crisis and social change in Uganda signal attempts to achieve a more gender-equal social life while facilitating national development. After an introduction, the article reviews research on women's response to change and points out the limitations of this research. In the next section, the article provides a historical overview of Uganda's gender system and the political and economic changes that occurred during the 1970s and early 1980s. The third main section argues that while the social structural changes created widespread hardship, they also provided openings for women to advance their interests. Thus, the National Resistance Movement of the mid-1980s responded to the mobilization of women by creating new avenues for women to participate in political life and have control over financial resources. Traditional ideologies, divisions of labor, and the social construction of gender have also been altered by such factors as the involvement of women in the guerrilla movement and the key developmental role played by nongovernmental organizations and women's groups. The article continues by considering the effect of these changes on contemporary gender relations. Data from a sampling of women and men from two regions of the country and of small business owners provide the basis for a discussion of the different strategies (such as small scale entrepreneurship and networking) employed by women to meet their daily and longterm needs. It is concluded that women's attempts to change their lives have influenced macrolevel social structure. However, it remains to be seen whether these postinsurgency gains can be sustained.     

In the Valley of the Sweet Mother: Gendered metaphors,domestic lives and reproduction under a Brazilian state mining company

Metaphors have been studied by feminist geographers as examples of both power over and empowerment by women. In this article, the author takes three gendered metaphors used by people in the Brazilian mining town of Itabira as starting points to enlarge a discussion of the mining economy's effects on women's lives. One, the 'sweet mother,' describes the company's reskilling and cultural education of male workers from the 1940s to the early 1980s. Second, women react to these strategies with a contending image of the company as 'the rival.' Finally, the phase of company downsizing has created a new metaphor: 'the stepmother.' These metaphors elucidate ways that public and private spaces become intertwined in three moments of the state mining company's life: its arrival in the region in the mid-1940s; its expansion from the 1960s to the 1980s; and its restructuring in the last 10 years. The author suggests that women's ironic rewriting of the foundational metaphor of 'sweet mother' is central to their reconceptualization of economic change under the company. The alternative metaphors also reflect women's changing views on motherhood, sexuality and family partnership.     

Mourned Choices and Grievable Lives: The Anti‐Abortion Movement's Influence in Defining the Abortion Experience in Australia Since the 1960s

This article provides a genealogy of foetocentric grief, an emotion that permeates accounts of abortion in Australia across multiple discursive sites. Foetocentric grief represents women as indelibly mourning their ‘unborn children’ after abortion. The emotion first came to prominence in anti‐abortion activism of the mid‐1980s. Focus on the purported consequences of abortion for women enabled anti‐abortionists to respond to charges that they were unsympathetic towards women who have abortions. Foetocentric grief also transcribes the primary claim of the anti‐abortion movement – that abortion entails a mother's destruction of her unborn child – onto the very experience of abortion. Since the mid‐1980s, foetocentric grief has moved outside the anti‐abortion movement to dominate accounts of the abortion experience in the print media as well as, surprisingly, mainstream pro‐choice activism. This article maps the convergence of these trends and examines the political and regulatory effects of foetocentric grief. It argues that foetocentric grief is a culturally enforced emotion that discursively recuperates the figure of the aborting woman to normative regimes of pregnancy and femininity, where pregnant women are envisaged as already mothers to autonomous foetal‐subjects.     

Gains by women reversed in economic downturn

The impact of globalization on women was discussed by the Women in Development Section of the Social Development Division of the UN Economic and Social Commission for Asia and the Pacific (ESCAP). Feminization of work in much of the Asian region occurred in the context of overall economic growth in the 1980s and the first half of the 1990s. However, the recent economic crisis has led to a downturn in the positive aspects of this change in women's position, although gender gaps will be reduced through the worsening conditions of male workers. The current deflationary adjustment policies of reducing government expenditures will adversely affect women in the workplace and the household. Since women have been forced to earn additional income outside the home, the girl-children are expected to perform household and child care duties that would otherwise be performed by their mothers. Incidence of child labor and dropout rates among girls has increased. Many social and cultural norms also allow cuts in the food supply for women and girl-children when household per-capita access to food declines. These circumstances invite domestic violence against women. Hence, institutions such as ESCAP should assume a more active advocacy role with the governments as they confront the economic crisis and its repercussions.     

A Women's Health Issue?: Framing Post-Abortion Syndrome in the 1980s

In the 1980s, a subset of anti-abortion activists in the US claimed the existence of ‘post-abortion syndrome’ (PAS), a mental illness resulting from the trauma of abortion. Appropriating vocabulary from 1970s feminist health activism, these anti-abortion activists argued against the main goal of that movement, reproductive justice. Instead, conservative and essentialist PAS activists argued ‘aborted women’ needed to take control of their health by telling their stories of victimisation. Using interviews, congressional hearings and contemporary texts, this article uses PAS to discuss tensions over women's mental health amid the 1980s' backlash.     

Security,secularism and gender: the Turkish military’s security discourse in relation to political Islam

This article examines the sexual and corporeal constructions of risk within the security discourses of the Turkish military in response to the rise of political Islam and Islamist identities in Turkey. I look at the Turkish military as the self-proclaimed guardian of the secular Republic, which, until recently, has actively configured political Islam as a risk to national security and ingrained such risk onto the body of the headscarved woman. My analysis covers a time frame from 1980s to late 2000s when the military issued memorandums and public statements against the rise of political Islam and pursued a belligerent campaign to erase ‘Islamist’ identities both from civilian politics and its own structure. The military implemented security regulations and dress codes to detect the ‘Islamist’ military personnel who are most conspicuously identified with the dress style of the women in their families. I explore these security regulations through women’s everyday and personal experiences in relation to their dress, headscarf style and comportment in military spaces and try to understand how ‘Islamism’ is constructed as a security threat in sexually and corporeally specific ways. I demonstrate how secularism is constructed, and needs to be protected, on the basis of a particular regime of gender and sexuality at the merger of traditional gender norms and secular Western modernity.     

The Company Owns the Mine but They Don't Own Us: Feminist Critiques of Capitalism in the Coalfields of Kentucky in the 1970s

This article examines women's involvement in the Brookside Mine strike of 1974, which captivated US audiences and provided women with an unprecedented public platform to challenge the class and gender system undergirding coalfield capitalism. During the strike, female kin of miners in Harlan County, Kentucky, started a club to support striking miners and their families and to organise picket lines; they were joined by women from across the region and country. With the strike as their foundation these women generated a women's movement that revealed the specific ways class and gender inequality shaped their lives, defined by the heavy‐duty care work characteristic of the coalfields. This article argues that the Brookside women's support of striking miners was fundamentally about gendered class inequality: the denigration of working‐class, female caregivers alongside the devaluing of men's labour. Using collective memory and individual experience as their interpretive devices, the Brookside women forged a class‐conscious feminism. In it they exposed the traumas of coalfield capitalism, shone a light on women's unpaid care work (one of the foundations of corporate capitalism) and destabilised the gender and class hierarchies that defined coalfield communities.     

从异地空间到异质空间——90后中国女性旅游者身体的自我建构

旅游作为休闲活动为空间中的身体实践提供了特定情境,且伴随技术迭代,旅游者可“置身”于地理实体空间与数字虚拟空间。本文选取90后中国女性为研究对象,探究其身体于旅游异地空间和虚拟异质空间中的自我建构;采用深度访谈法并对访谈文本进行扎根理论分析,研究发现：①90后女性具身化模型由内外两个维度构成,身体唤醒、身体建构等构成内部维度,场域空间、自他认知等构成外部维度;②尽管90后女性逐步唤起身体的自我意识,打破女性身体在消费主义影响下产生的“商品化”“神话化”现象,但其身体仍受到日常审美标准与他者监视的压迫。