Chinese manufacturing entrepreneurship capital: evidence from Italian industrial districts

The purpose of this paper is to obtain a better understanding of the presence of Chinese manufacturing entrepreneurship in industrial districts compared to other Italian local economies. Statistical data are used to uncover where Chinese manufacturing entrepreneurs localize their businesses and to what extent this localization is an innovation within the geographical pattern of industrial districts. Data on Chinese manufacturing micro-enterprises (i.e. with less than 10 persons employed) started up in years 2005–2007 and 2008–2010 are cross-tabulated by industrial districts and other local economies to investigate their change over time. The empirical findings show a dominance of industrial districts: those located in Tuscany are on top and Prato district ranks first.     

意大利工业区与华人的双重挑战

论文分析了全球性竞争压力对工业区适应机制的影响及工业区的竞争优势以及工业区内部形成的华人经济的潜在威胁,探讨了在新的条件下将这种威胁转化为新的发展机遇的可能性。认为华人经济的特殊优势使华人企业越来越活跃,但却使当地企业日益萎缩。这反过来又促使当地经济整体进行转型;华人企业家的某些优势在于其跨地区和跨国网络;华人移民对其祖籍国潜在商业伙伴的能力和品德有深度了解,如果能发挥中介作用,意大利当地企业就能使其工业生产及产品销售国际化。     

On the evolution of the Castel Goffredo hosiery cluster: a life cycle perspective

The ‘life cycle’ approach has become popular in studies on industrial clusters. However, some concerns have been raised over the inherent determinism of this approach and its tendencies to focus exclusively on cluster internal dynamics while neglecting the role of external factors and socio-economic contingencies. This paper addresses these criticisms by investigating the long-term development of Castel Goffredo, a traditional textile cluster in Italy. In our analysis, we identify and characterize the main stages of the life cycle and its antecedents. We single out the main triggering factors behind each of these stages and show that a variety of factors, both external and internal to the cluster, contributed to its development. Our findings confirm that an ‘adaptive’ cycle approach, which focuses also on contingencies and external factors, appear to be appropriate for investigating the long-term evolution of clusters.     

The Saga of the ‘Second industrial divide’ and the history of the ‘third Italy’: Evidence from export data

The idea of the Third Italy has achieved an iconic status in geography. It has come to represent one of the main geographical manifestations of the so‐called second industrial divide between Fordist mass production and flexible specialisation. Yet the idea has received limited critical attention since acquiring its elevated status. It deserves to do so, because it involves confusing a localised model of economic development with the economic character of a larger geographic region. Examining province level export data for the years 1985, 1991, 1995 and 1999 for both total exports and two key sectors using exploratory spatial data analysis, provincial rankings and LISAs (local indicators of spatial association) suggests that the export‐based homogeneity and dynamism of the Third Italy can be exaggerated. Italy's urban hierarchy, particularly the centrality of Milan, continues to play a significant role in the Italian economy. Common use of the term ‘Third Italy’ confuses an economic process with a specific geographical configuration.     

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。     

Labour Migration and the Swedish Labour Market Model: a case study of recruitment of Yugoslav workers to Svenska Fläktfabriken in Växjö, 1969–1970

This essay deals with active labour recruitment from Yugoslavia to Sweden at the end of the 1960s and early 1970s. It is a case study of recruitments of foreign-born workers to one particular manufacturing industry. It focuses primarily on trade-union actions and strategies in connection with the recruitments, analysed in the light of the power relations within the corporatist Swedish labour market model. This approach illuminates how the Swedish labour market model dealt with an issue involving both conflicting and coincident interests between labour and capital, with the state as an intermediary. But the recruitments are also analysed from the recruited workers' points of view. The essay reveals great union influence in the process of labour recruitment, and suggests that the national Swedish labour market authority only approved as many work permits for non-Nordic workers as the trade union concerned accepted. This power, in combination with the shortage of workers, could be used by the unions as a forceful instrument in their struggle to transform working life according to their members' interests. Accordingly, the labour recruitments to Sweden were framed by the power relations and the corporative practices within the Swedish labour market model.     

Intergenerational Inequality? Labour,Capital, and Housing Through the Ages

This article examines the relevance of generational relations to emerging patterns of inequality in advanced capitalist societies, with a particular focus on inequalities related to housing wealth. At its heart is a critique of the increasingly prevalent argument that generational difference is a crucial axis of inequality today. It argues that while contemporary capitalist societies are certainly characterized by marked inequalities between generations and that the latter are manifested inter alia in housing ownership, understanding such inequalities principally in generational terms is problematic because they reflect deeper, more fundamental, structural inequalities and should therefore be conceptualized as such. The article suggests that the principal significance of generational relations to contemporary inequality dynamics actually concerns economic transfers rather than differences between generations. Within‐family transfers of wealth, especially housing‐related wealth, from older generations to younger ones tend to reproduce pronounced, structurally generated existing patterns of intra‐generational inequality.     

雇主团体与劳资关系——近代工商同业公会与劳资纠纷的处理

近代工商同业公会与工会都是劳资分立的产物,二者在组建之后均加强了各自阶级的组织整合,也使劳资关系更具有阶级政治的特点.不过,工商同业公会作为行业性的雇主组织,并非如一般所认为的与工人及其工会处于完全对立的位置,在政府的劳资处理机制、劳资合作之中也占有重要地位.     

Ten Square Miles Surrounded By Reality? Materialising Alternative Economies Using Local Currencies

This article examines the success of paper‐based alternative currencies in facilitating convivial, sustainable localised economies. Based on fieldwork in the United States, the United Kingdom and Germany, it discusses the capacity of activists to create alternative forms of currency that communicate the organisers’ visions of a localised economy, before examining material practices: for whom do the currencies work, and who struggles to use them? Using insights from a diverse economies perspective, the article argues that we cannot read off the likelihood of an economic actor using the currency from the extent of their local economic embeddedness: economic actors in similar positions respond to the same stimuli in different ways, and local business owners and activists can form productive alliances to develop their shared project. The article concludes by arguing that local currencies should be used more proactively to stimulate new forms of concrete local production to meet locally identified needs.