Capitalism, cities, and the production of symbolic forms

A striking characteristic of contemporary capitalism is the increasing importance (in terms of growth, employment, revenue, etc.) of sectors whose outputs are imbued with significant cultural or symbolic content. Sectors of these sorts are predominantly, though not exclusively, located in large cities. I describe how these cities function as creative fields generating streams of both cultural and technological innovations. Post-Fordist cities are shown to be especially fertile terrains of commodified cultural production. A number of these cities have become major centres of image-producing industries such as film, music recording, or fashion clothing, and this phenomenon is also often associated with profound transformations of their physical landscapes. I argue that the economic foundations of these trends reside, in part, in the structural characteristics of image-producing industries, marked as they frequently are by modularized, network structures of production and a strong proclivity to geographic agglomeration. At the same time, the main centres of the contemporary cultural economy are caught up in insistent processes of globalization. I suggest that after an initial phase of product standardization and concentrated development in only a few major centres, the cultural economy of capitalism now appears to be entering a new phase marked by increasingly high levels of product differentiation and polycentric production sites. I also submit that the contemporary cultural economy of capitalism constitutes a historical shift beyond consumer society as such.     

对全球化资本主义本质的一种认识——反全球化的合理性意义评析

全球化是全球范围内大多数国家不得不面对和进入的大趋势。我们在承认和肯定全球化的益处与合理性的同时,不能忽略或轻视了全球化潮流下的片面性和陷阱,尤其是深藏于全球化之中的资本主义本质特性。时下势头凶猛的反全球化运动为我们深层次地认识资本主义力求统治世界的险恶用心创造、提供了一个有益视角。     

Creativity gaps and gender gaps: women,men and place in the United States

This article situates Florida's (2002) work on creative regions in the United States in the context of a critical discussion of place and gender and investigates the gender–class structure of his most and least creative regions. It analyzes the distribution of creative class, working class and service class occupations by gender within those 21 regions as well as earnings, household income, poverty and educational attainment using data from the US Census 2000. Women and men are compared within and across the two categories of most and least creative regions. The major finding is that the gender gap in earnings within categories of regions is larger than the creativity gap, i.e. the earnings gap within genders across regions. As new technology industries have been layered over old industries, altering spatial divisions of labor, gendered labor remains integrated in largely traditional ways.     

ANALYSIS OF REGIONAL DIFFERENCES IN MATERIAL WELFARE OF THE POPULATION: THE GEORGIAN SSR

Spatial differences in the material welfare of the population of the Georgian SSR are evaluated on the basis of five per capita indices (monetary income, total savings, number of motor vehicles, retail trade turnover, and provision of basic services) for 61 administrative units of varying type, including ASSRs, rayons, and cities under union republic jurisdiction. Rankings on individual indices are then aggregated into a summary rating. Major cities and areas of commercial agriculture (tea, citrus) tended to have higher summary ratings than mountainous areas with difficult topography and climate and remote from major markets (translated by Jay Mitchell; PlanEcon, Inc.; Washington, DC 20005).     

‘Innovation is a dirty word’: contesting innovation in the creative industries

Innovation is a term that is used and defined in many different ways. This holds for innovation in general, but particularly for innovation in the creative industries. In cultural policy and in academic literature, the creative industries are often addressed in the relation to their innovative capacities, yet a shared conceptualisation of innovation in this sector is lacking. This paper seeks to develop a conceptualisation of innovation in the creative industries based on 43 interviews with creative workers about their views and practices. Results indicate that creative workers articulate numerous views on innovation, with three main approaches: innovation as something completely new, innovation as a contribution to society and innovation as a continuous recombination of new and existing elements, with the latter being most prevalent in the creative industries and considered a central (by-product of the) process of creative production that is highly contextual to specific localities and fields.     

上海创意产业园区的空间分异研究

创意产业园区是一种新的生产空间组织,90年代末以来在一些国际著名大都市中发展迅速。本文试图通过分析上海创意产业集聚园区的空间分布特点和形成机理,研究上海创意产业集聚的时空变化规律。研究表明,上海创意产业园区的分布具有以下两个特点:由黄浦江和内环线围合而成的半环状地带和苏州河沿岸地带,因传统的老工业区,老仓库、老厂房分布集中,伴随传统工业逐步迁出市区,这些旧城建筑为创意产业的发展提供了理想的地理空间;东北、西南地区是大学集中分布地带,是知识溢出的空间,知识型创意产业园区相对比较集中。上海创意产业集聚空间的规律,折射出上海创意产业发展的道路。     

劳工地理研究新进展评述

在经济地理学的研究中,劳工常常被看作是与自然资源、资金、技术等同类的经济要素,只重视劳动成本,忽视了劳工作为社会活动主要参与者的角色。近年来,劳工地理研究取得了长足的进展,弥补了传统地理学研究的不足。全球化背景下的工人运动、劳工组织和地方劳工控制体制,劳工市场的空间分割,不同政治、经济和文化背景下的农区劳工地方化逐渐成为劳工地理的重要研究方向。     

国外创意旅游内涵研究

创意旅游从旅游活动发展伊始便在实践层面一直存在,但直到近几年才由理查德(Greg Richards)和瑞蒙德(Crispin Raymond)首先在真正意义上提出。这一概念的提出,主要源于西方社会创意趋势(creative turn)的出现,并且逐渐蔓延到经济、社会的各个层面。创意旅游因创意趋势被正式提出,因源于创意而具有天然的独特内涵,这也使得它与\"传统的旅游形式\"相区别,首先表现为创意旅游具有极强的\"活动参与性\"。特别值得强调的是,这种区别更多的表现为本质上的差别而不仅仅是时间上的先后次序及形式上的改变。     

The global and regional constitution of nations: the view from East Asia

ABSTRACT. While the origins of nationalism are sought in global historical trends, few analysts have shown how nations themselves are constituted and re‐shaped by circulating global power, ideas and models. The view from East Asia shows that these circulations are mediated by regional developments and interactions which bind these nations together in rivalry and interdependence. The histories of China, Japan and Korea have been closely tied together since the end of the nineteenth century and, with a gap of about thirty years during the Cold War, have intensified once again. The global and regional constitution of nations produces a dialectic between its global form and aspirations and misrecognition of this constitution arising from the self‐perception of nationalism as historically immanent. This tension between the global constitution and national misrecognition contributes to the tenacity of nationalism. It also allows us to get a better grasp of the relationship between historical change and structure in nationalism and the relationship between state and popular nationalisms in the countries of the region.     

‘Many Nice People’: the nation‐state,post‐Fordism,and the policy norm of flexible ethnic relations in Estonia

This article uses historical research and ethnographic fieldwork to ask how policymakers interpret historical, political, and economic factors to construct inter‐ethnic communities that would bring security and economic growth to an enlarged European Union (EU). Focusing on post‐Soviet Estonia's ethnic integration policy, the article argues that ‘flexibility’ applies not only to post‐Fordist, individualized subjects, but also to relations between subjects of different nationalities that policymakers want to form organically in service sector employment. The article explains how this policy construction emerged in light of Estonia's historical trajectory from 1991 to 2001 and demonstrates how it conceptually resolved the fundamental tension between the territorialized nation‐state and deterritorialized global capitalism. A visual media campaign entitled ‘Many Nice People: Integrating Estonia’ captured the essence of this construction, which obscured how the Estonian nation‐state marginalized minorities while integrating into the EU.     

Geographers and 'globalization': (yet) another missed boat?

Over the years, geographers have developed a disturbing – even dysfunctional – habit of missing out on important intellectual and politically significant debates, even those in which geographers would seem to have a major role to play. The syndrome of processes currently bundled together within the term 'globalization' is intrinsically geographical, as are the outcomes of such processes. Yet, once again, it seems, we are not, as a discipline, centrally involved in what are clearly very 'big issues' indeed. The purpose of this paper is to explore, in the context of ongoing globalization debates, the bases of this undesirable situation and to consider what might be done to redress it in ways that could both enhance intra- and interdisciplinarity and also make a contribution towards building a better world.     

The collision of heritage and economy at Uxbenká, Belize

The relationship between the Mopan Maya community of Santa Cruz and the Classic period Maya site of Uxbenká in southern Belize has had a lasting impact on archaeological investigation and conservation at the site over the last generation. Community members, long the ‘stewards’ of Uxbenká, believe they have an economic right to the ruins that translates loosely into ‘ownership’. Although they seek to maintain the relationship between Santa Cruz and Uxbenká, archaeologists with the Uxbenká Archaeological Project (UAP) challenge the legitimacy of the community’s claim via the power vested in them by the state to conduct scholarly investigations at the site. For both the UAP and the state‐affiliated Institute of Archaeology, Uxbenká belongs not to one village but to all Belizeans. This paper is a data‐driven analysis of the interactions and expectations of community members, archaeologists, and the state as they interact within the archaeoscape of Uxbenká.