Lecture slots important

1
Lecture slots important!

• 1. 21st March (today)
• 2. 25th April (Tuesday)
• 3. 28th April (Friday)
• 4. 2nd May (Tuesday)

2
Geographical Economies

• The new economic geography
• Service work
• Retail Geography
• Consumption

3
The new economic geography

• Economic geography dates back to commercial
  geography in the nineteenth century
• In early 1960s economic geography became a
  primary vehicle through which a new way of doing
  geography became popular
• The quantitative revolution refashioned geography
  as a theoretical discipline

4
The new economic geography

• Geographers sought to explain the spatial
  organisation of economic activity rather than
  just describe and map it.
• It developed as a positivist discipline which
  aimed to accurately predict observed spatial
  patterns.
• It seemed to suit this agenda well it could be
  easily quantified and there were well developed
  theories from economists and geographers such as
  von Thunen, Weber, Christaller and Losch) who
  were using models to predict the location of
  economic activity on the basis of rational
  economic decision making.

5
Economic Geography

• Initial research developed statistical methods to
  test location theories.
• A rich research programme developed and a new
  interdisciplinary field of study regional
  science

6
Early critique

• But many of the methods and assumptions on which
  this quantitative approach were based have been
  met with considerable critique
• Rational decision making?
• Least cost locations?
• Economic man?
• Based on manufacturing industry

7
1970s onwards

• Disillusionment with classical location models
  led to a growing influence of political economy
  approaches. Inspired by Karl Marx, this approach
  focused on how the political and economic forces
  of capitalism shape the geography of the economy.
• Geographical landscapes seen not as in harmonious
  equilibrium but as the outcome of class
  inequality (David Harvey, Doreen Massey, Michael
  Storper, Richard Peet). Emergence of a radical
  agenda in economic geography

8
Shift in methods too

• This shift towards political economy approaches
  was paralleled by a shift away from statistical
  modelling techniques and quantitative methods
  towards a more qualitative case study approach.

9
Late 1980s-1990s

• In turn this political economy approach came
  under fire too. It was criticised for
• 1. over-emphasising the importance of economic
  forces relative to culture
• 2. underplaying the importance of human agency in
  shaping socio-spatial structures
• 3. Not considering gender (Linda McDowell, Doreen
  Massey, Gibson-Graham)

10
Diversity of approaches

• This criticism resulted again in a new diversity
  of approaches in economic geography, including
  feminist approaches, cultural theoretic
  approaches and a focus on more anthropological
  methods (ethnography)

11
The new economic geography

• During the 2000s there is evidence of what we can
  call a new economic geography.
• The key questions we are posing are still
  remarkably similar
• Economic geographers have always been interested
  (and still are) in why, where, when, how and by
  whom things are produced and consumed food,
  commodities, clothes, music, landscapes.

12
New questions too

• What do we mean by the term production?
  Consumption? Work? Service?
• The boundaries of economic processes do not
  conveniently coincide with those of firms, or
  labour markets, or the census, or area
  boundaries. So, for example, a focus on wages
  work can obscure the role of the household as a
  place of production, and the role of social
  reproduction as (unpaid) work raising kids. It
  can neglect the role of women in the economy, and
  of hidden kinds of employment.

13
The new economic geography agenda

• Grew out of the redundancy and irrelevancy of
  much traditional economic geography location
  theory
• Grew too out of dissatisfaction with some of the
  positivist methods (statistics, modelling)
• Partly due to turbulent changes in the world
  globalisation, tertiarisation, multinationals,
  time space compression. A very different world,
  and thus needed very different ways to understand
  it.
• Finally, due to a problematisation of what the
  economic is it is as much concerned with
  cultural as with economic processes.

14
Contd.

• Increasing acknowledgement that the boundaries
  between the economic and the cultural are
  blurring. Often called the cultural turn in
  economic geography.
• Work, for example, isnt simply about exchanging
  our labour for money. It is also deeply social
  and cultural
• So a distinct sense of reappraisal

15
Key economic changes

• It is widely agreed that something dramatic has
  been happening in our economies since the late
  1970s. Rapid and far reaching changes including
• Globalisation (Peter Dicken, Amin Thrift)
  shrinking world, time-space compression, complex
  borderless world. McDonalds as iconic symbol

16
Relocalisation

• Occurring at the same time as globalisation a
  renewed emphasis on local places, embeddedness,
  agglomeration. Continued importance of world
  cities geography remains significant still

17
Large firms and multinationals

• International division of labour
• Global food and fashion
• Export Processing Zones
• Branch plants

18
Information economy

• Information society
• Clusters silicon valley, city of london
• Knowledge economy
• IT, internet, digital divide
• Call centres

19
Tertiarisation

• Growth of service work the dominant sector
• Feminisation of workforce
• Polarisation (top end jobs and poor service
  jobs servicing the middle classes).
• Importance of gender, embodiment and performance
  in the workplace (Linda McDowell)

20
Retailing

• At the forefront of many shifts
• Redefining our urban spaces malls, arcades,
  shopping centres
• New forms of consumption, mediated via technology
  ebay, amazon