Marco Denevi: An Argentine Anomaly

Hipotermia by the Mexican author Álvaro Enrigue was published in 2006. Even though it is considered an example of the most recent Latin American narrative, reflecting on the effects of globalization and neoliberalism in Mexico, the most evident effect of which is a blurring of the idea of nation, it has not been well acknowledged for depicting the incertitude of our days in a more social way. In this article I read Hipotermia as a novel where the Writer (as a social representation of the intellectual) deals with a creative block as a result of his anxiety regarding the traditional concept of an author in the boom period (1970s). The way he works through it consists in a fictional project about non-epic characters. As a result of this, the book creates a mosaic of voices that can be identified as experiences of the middle class in the context of a global society. I try to prove that the concept of “Global Class,” developed by Saskia Sassen, describes Enrigue’s conception of both the exile’s experience and the middle class’s subjectivity.     

From rural life to transnational wife: agrarian transition,gender mobility,and intimate globalization in transnational marriages in northeast Thailand

Popular and academic discourses of globalization are often gender biased, focusing on formal and impersonal realms of the market, politics, and technologies. This article explores an intimate dimension of globalization by analyzing the transnational marriage trend among women in northeast Thailand (Isan's) villages. The phua farang (foreign husband) phenomenon in Isan epitomizes the intimate link between the global political economy and individuals' desires, aspirations, and imagination in the private realm of personal and marital relationships. The phua farang phenomenon is embedded in a context of spatial and economic inequalities at the local, national, and global levels, and manifests classed and gendered strategies by which marginalized subjects attempt to transcend the limited opportunities for upward social mobility available to these women.     

North and south in the current crisis

The Italian Minister for Territorial Cohesion, Carlo Trigilia, reviews the current condition of the Italian south (the Mezzogiorno) and sets out the policies that the present government is seeking to implement. Underlining the need for long-term strategies and for close cooperation with European Union funding agencies, the Minister emphasizes the need to remove the political and institutional obstacles to development and promote human capital through measures designed to improve training, education and welfare programmes. He concludes the lack of economic growth in the southern regions poses serious dangers to the growth prospects of the national economy.     

全球化浸入中国城市的时空演化过程及影响因素分析——以8家大型跨国零售企业为例

本质为地理过程的全球化与跨国公司相伴而来,其浸入区域、城市具有时空差异性。本文以八家大型跨国零售企业为例,研究全球化浸入中国城市的时空演化过程及影响因素。研究发现:第一,全球化浸入表现出明显的空间推移规律,即稳定的"沿海-内陆"深度格局,以及"东广西疏"转向"南袤北稀"广度格局;第二,全球化浸入中国城市遵循规模等级推移规律,包括人口规模、经济发展水平以及行政等级;第三,人口规模、对外交流水平对全球化的浸入影响显著性稳定,开放政策、城市区位因素弱化,居民收入水平影响增强。     

Triangulating the borderless world: geographies of power in the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle

This paper argues that the Indonesia–Malaysia–Singapore Growth Triangle makes manifest the complex geographies of power that subvert efforts to read cross-border regionalization as a straightforward geographical corollary of 'globalization'. As such, the region needs to be examined not simply as a complementary transborder assemblage of land, labour and capital, but rather as a palimpsest in which the imagined geographies of cross-border development and the economic geographies of their uneven spatial fixing on the ground are mediated by complex cultural and political geographies. We seek to unpack these by triangulating how the geographies of capital (including its uneven development and its links to the geo-economics of intra-regional competition), land (including post-colonial relations across the region, the geopolitics of land reclamation and the enclaved landscapes of tourism) and labour (including the divergent itineraries of migrant workers) overlay and complicate one another in the region. By charting these complex triangulations of space and place, we seek to problematize narratives of the Growth Triangle as an exemplary embodiment of the 'borderless world'.     

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.     

'Globalizing' regional development: a global production networks perspective

Recent literature concerning regional development has placed significant emphasis on local institutional structures and their capacity to 'hold down' the global. Conversely, work on inter-firm networks – such as the global commodity chain approach – has highlighted the significance of the organizational structures of global firms' production systems and their relation to industrial upgrading. In this paper, drawing upon a global production networks perspective, we conceptualize the connections between 'globalizing' processes, as embodied in the production networks of transnational corporations, and regional development in specific territorial formations. We delimit the 'strategic coupling' of the global production networks of firms and regional economies which ultimately drives regional development through the processes of value creation, enhancement and capture. In doing so, we stress the multi-scalarity of the forces and processes underlying regional development, and thus do not privilege one particular geographical scale. By way of illustration, we introduce an example drawn from recent research into global production networks in East Asia and Europe. The example profiles the investments of car manufacturer BMW in Eastern Bavaria, Germany and Rayong, Thailand, and considers their implications for regional development.     

全球化环境中城市巨型工程的多维审视

在全球化竞争环境日益激烈的作用下,城市政府促进城市营销的需求与资本增殖的欲望共同催生了巨型工程在全球范围内的繁荣。然而城市巨型工程在为城市发展带来了新的机遇和荣耀的同时,也产生了很多的政治、经济与社会问题。在全球化的环境与语境中,我们必须从多维的视角来审视城市巨型工程背后的驱动机制和深刻影响。文章分析了全球化竞争导致的政府治理企业化转型,指出城市巨型工程迎合了政府促进城市增长的目标和治理转型的环境,促进形成了官商结合的城市增长联盟。文章进一步的分析指出,城市巨型工程是经济全球化的产物与符号,是政治与经济空间生产的工具和对象,城市巨型工程依托的增长联盟脆弱而功利,耀眼的巨型工程隐藏着巨大的经济风险,城市巨型工程也加剧了社会极化与空间分化。文章最后指出转型期中国城市巨型工程建设面临着更大的冲动和问题,应该进行更冷静的思考。     

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。     

重申全球化时代的空间观:后现代地理学的理论与实践

"空间"是人文地理学研究的核心概念。全球化时代,空间概念的内涵与外延都发生了重要变化。本文通过重述后现代主义哲学、当代城市与区域空间重构的社会实践、当代人文地理学前沿理论三者之间相互印证的理念与事实,重申全球化时代的空间观为空间与社会辨证统一的后现代空间观,并阐述了其对当代人文地理学研究的重要意义。