Class, Agency and Resistance in the Old Industrial City

Abstract:  Recent left academic work on the consequences of economic restructuring and local labour market change in old industrial cities has been important in emphasising the role of local context and contingency in the shaping of labour market outcomes. However, in such accounts agency is often limited to capital and state actors, albeit working across scales from the local upwards. There is little sense of agency for individuals and communities in the midst of economic restructuring. Instead, they are usually treated as passive victims of deeper underlying processes. In this paper, our purpose is to highlight the autonomy and agency of workers, people and communities in old industrial cities. Rather than starting from the perspective of capital, our starting point is to emphasise how those experiencing economic change forge strategies and practices for "getting by". This leads us to call for a re-theorisation of labour agency, drawing upon the Autonomous Marxist tradition and the more recent work of Cindi Katz, in order to offer fresh insight into the agency of labour and the prospect for recovering a class politics based upon lived experience over reified abstractions.     

Industrial Warriors: South Korea’s First Generation of Industrial Workers in Post-Developmental Korea

This study analyses the skills upgrading programmes of South Korea’s first generation of skilled workers, focusing on their political and social trajectories from bulwarks of the developmental regimes up until 1987, to a “labour aristocracy” of regular workers employed mainly in large companies in heavy industries in South Korea. The term “labour aristocracy” highlights how the “regular workers”, employed mostly in monopolistic large enterprises in heavy industries, have better wages, job security and other social benefits than “non-regular workers” and other regular workers employed in small and medium companies. It argues that these “Industrial Warriors” were the product of the Korean developmental state’s creation of an egalitarian social contract, and that the political and social trajectories since then must be seen in its totality. This is necessary because it manifests the profound change in Korea’s political economy from state-grassroots synergistic developmentalism to neoliberal industrial capitalism, wherein having a regular job has become a substantial asset in an era of non-regular employment. This study contributes to the literature on the political economy and to sociological discussion of the Korean developmental state that continues to this day and is far from over.     

Negotiating Neoliberal Empowerment: Aboriginal People,Educational Restructuring,and Academic Labour in the North of British Columbia,Canada

Aboriginal peoples in Canada are gaining influence in post‐secondary education through Aboriginal‐directed programs and policies in non‐Aboriginal institutions. However, these gains have occurred alongside, and in some cases through, neoliberal reforms to higher education. This article explores the political consequences of the neoliberal institutionalization of First Nations empowerment for public sector unions and workers. We examine a case where the indigenization of a community college in British Columbia was embedded in neoliberal reforms that ran counter to the interests of academic instructors. Although many union members supported indigenization, many also possessed a deep ambivalence about the change. Neoliberal indigenization increased work intensity, decreased worker autonomy and promoted an educational philosophy that prioritized labour market needs over liberal arts. This example demonstrates how the integration of Aboriginal aspirations into neoliberal processes of reform works to rationalize public sector restructuring, constricting labour agency and the possibilities for alliances between labour and Aboriginal peoples.     

基于生命历程视角的郊区居民迁居行为重构——以北京回龙观居住区为例

城市居民迁居行为是城市地理学的重要课题,但以微观手法研究郊区居民迁居行为重构尚不多见。本文基于质性研究方法,以位于北京郊区的回龙观居住区为例,以微观的手法对城区拆迁居民、经历体制转型的中老年人、北京本地年轻人以及外地来京年轻人的迁居历程进行解读,寻找经济、社会和制度变革与个体生命历程的交集,进而洞察郊区居民迁居的一般性特征。在此基础上,从迁居机会供给、住房需求、住房获取能力、迁居决策4个方面归纳郊区居民迁居行为重构特征,并从宏观、中观、微观3个层面阐释重构机制。对郊区居民迁居行为重构的研究,有助于理解北京城市空间重构及郊区化进程。     

The Changing Geographies of Power and Control in Rural Service Provision: Recent Restructuring Within the Australian Tractor Dealership System

Over the past few years a considerable body of research has illuminated the changing geographies of service provision in rural Australia. Mostly, this work has emphasised the quantitative aspects of restructuring, by way of documenting numerical reductions in service delivery points and their implications for local employment and service access. In this paper, an examination of recent restructuring within the dealership system for high‐horsepower tractors underlines that these quantitative changes also intersect with qualitative shifts to the character of service delivery. Interviews with 31 participants in the tractor dealership system of Central‐West New South Wales reveal the recent evolution of a producer‐driven supply chain in which two dominant, multinational, tractor‐machinery companies have sought to exercise tighter control over customer relations through the restructuring of franchise agreements with dealers. There has been a resultant demise of the independent dealership, and its replacement by a system of standardised, company‐affiliated outlets operated by franchise holders. Hence, the spatial restructuring of this industry represents the surface manifestations of corporate strategies in which large economic entities are re‐organising their interests in light of globalised theatres of competition and profit. In this sense, the tractor‐dealership system is emblematic of changes to power and control in rural service provision as the franchise models propagated by large corporate interests increasingly subsume the small‐business sector activities of Australia's rural towns.     

沈阳铁西工业区改造的制度与文化因素

沈阳铁西区是在计划经济体制下形成的国内外著名的城市老工业区,1986年国务院批准为国家计划中唯一的区域性改造试点工程。但长期的技术改造为主策略并未使沈阳铁西工业区摆脱困境。2002年沈阳铁西区和沈阳经济技术开发区合署办公,为铁西工业区改造提供了新的制度动力。本文简要回顾了沈阳铁西区发展改造历程,重点分析了沈阳铁西工业区改造取得突破的制度和文化原因,讨论了"铁西模式"的内在逻辑和潜在问题及其对其它城市老工业区改造的启示。     

The urban in fragile,uncertain, neoliberal times: towards new geographies of social justice?

Canadian cities are at a crossroads. The neoliberalization of governance at multiple scales, inadequate re-investment in urban infrastructure, increasing reliance on continental and international trade, and the restructuring of the space economy have combined to weaken Canada's cities just as the global economic system is undergoing transformation. Canadian urban geographic scholarship has much to offer under current conditions, and is already making significant contributions in key areas. In particular, research on what might be called the contours and impacts of urban restructuring and the neoliberal city, immigration and cities of difference, and urban environmental justice show much promise and are likely to define the core of Canadian urban geography into the future.     

Discipline and Devolution: Constructions of Poverty, Race, and Criminality in the Politics of Rural Prison Development

Abstract:  The soaring expansion of the US prison population is transforming the geographies of both urban and rural landscapes. As the trend in mass incarceration persists, depressed rural spaces are increasingly associated with rising prison development and the increasing criminalization of rural communities of disadvantage. Drawing on in-depth archival and interview research in rural communities in the Northwestern states of Idaho and Montana, this paper explores how cultural productions of poverty and exclusion intersect with rural prison development. I examine how representations of poverty and criminality are entangled with processes of economic restructuring and the localization of economic development and social welfare. I explore the ways in which the rural prison geography of the Northwest is linked to the material and discursive construction of those in poverty and how these narratives are produced through local relations of race, ethnicity, and class. I suggest that the mobilization of these constructions legitimates rural prison expansion, increasingly punitive social and criminal justice policies, and the retrenchment of racialized and classed inequality. Further, I argue that these discursive imaginations of the poor work to obscure the central dynamics producing poverty under the neoliberal restructuring of rural economies and governance.     

Labour Geographies of Workplace Restructuring: An Intra‐Labour Analysis

Informed by labour geography's thrust to situate workers as active subjects of analysis, this article examines lived experiences of restructuring at Australia's single largest industrial workplace. Drawing on extended ethnographic research, the article traverses three restructuring outcomes faced by workers and their families: (1) job retention; (2) redundancy; and (3) re‐employment. Amid the turbulence and uncertainty of a major workplace restructuring episode, workers' different lived experiences illuminate uneven intra‐labour power relations. As capitalist workplaces are re‐organised and labour processes redefined, more conflictual and divisive relationships often develop among groups of workers differentially positioned within the hierarchical labour markets of large firms. Emphasising restructuring episodes as generative contexts for grounded labour geographies research, the article develops intra‐labour agency as a critical analytical frame to explore more deeply the agency implications of workplace structures, co‐worker relationships, and social life matters that shape workers' capacities for action inside and beyond workplaces.     

Households in place: socio-spatial (dis)advantage in energy-carbon restructuring

This paper advances a households-in-place perspective to understanding socio-spatial disadvantage in energy-carbon restructuring. This reflects evidence that the costs and benefits of low carbon restructuring will not be distributed evenly or fairly between people and places. Some households and localities will benefit from decarbonization but others will be disproportionately affected by rising energy costs and job loss. In this paper we use the example of England to explore different dimensions of advantage and disadvantage in low carbon restructuring and how they might be reinforced or mediated by intervention by governments, NGOs and citizens. The paper makes a distinctive contribution by linking different sites and policy areas in the distributional politics of decarbonization from the perspective of individuals and households. Emphasis is placed on understanding just energy-carbon transitions from a households-in-place perspective. The analytical framework is exemplified through case studies of the coming to ground of different strands of energy-carbon restructuring in England.