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Economic Geography
ContentsNEW To receive contents alert e-mails for future issues of Economic Geography, please sign up here. Please note that only Economic Geography subscribers can view the full text of articles. To subscribe, please see the subscription page. ArticlesDivision, Segmentation, and Interpellation: The Embodied Labors of
Migrant Workers in a Greater London Hotel Why Butterflies Don’t Leave: Locational Behavior of Entrepreneurial Firms Fluctuating Rounds of Inward Investment in Peripheral Regions:
Semiconductors in the North East of England “Spaces of Hope”? Fatalism, Trade Unionism, and the Uneven Geography of
Capital in White Goods Manufacturing Book ReviewsKnowing Capitalism, by Nigel Thrift On Hollywood: The Place, the Industry, by Allen J. Scott Seductions of Place: Geographical Perspectives on Globalization and
Touristed Landscapes, edited by Carolyn Cartier and Alan A. Lew Petty Capitalists and Globalization: Flexibility, Entrepreneurship, and
Economic Development, edited by Alan Smart and Josephine Smart AbstractsDivision, Segmentation, and Interpellation: The Embodied Labors of Migrant Workers in a Greater London Hotel, by Linda McDowell, Adina Batnitzky, and Sarah DyerAbstract: In this article, we explore the ways in which a divided and segmented migrant labor force is assembled to serve guests in a London hotel. We draw on previous studies of hotel work, as well as on cultural analyses of the ways in which employers and managers use stereotypical assumptions about the embodied attributes of workers to name workers as suitable for particular types of labor. We argue that a dual process of interpellation operates within service-sector workplaces that is reinforced and resisted in daily social practices and relationships between managers, workers, and guests in a hotel. The article, which draws on a case study of employment practices in a large London hotel, looks in detail at the micropolitics of everyday working lives, the representation of workers of different nationalities, and the performance of service work. Key words: service sector, migration, divisions of labor, hotel, Greater London, dual interpellation, performativity.  TopWhy Butterflies Don’t Leave: Locational Behavior of Entrepreneurial Firms, by Erik Stam Abstract: Entrepreneurship is an important process in regional economic development. Especially the growth of new firms is of major significance to the commercialization of new ideas and employment growth. These growing new firms are transforming structurally like caterpillars turning into butterflies. However, like butterflies, they are at risk of leaving their region of origin for better places. This article analyzes how and why the spatial organization of firms develops subsequent to their start-up. A new conceptual framework and an empirical study of the life course of entrepreneurial firms are used to construct a theory on the firms’ locational behavior that explains that behavior as the outcome of a process of initiatives by entrepreneurs, enabled and constrained by resources, capabilities, and relations with stakeholders within and outside the firms. The study shows that entrepreneurs decide whether to move their firms outside their region of origin for different reasons in distinct phases of the firms’ life course. Being embedded in social networks, for example, is an important constraint on locational behavior during the early life course of a firm, but over time it becomes less important, and other mechanisms, such as sunk costs, increasingly determine a firm’s locational behavior. The development of spatial organization is also of major importance: when a multilocational spatial organization has been realized, it is much easier to move the headquarters to another region. The spatial organization of entrepreneurial firms co-evolves with the accumulation of the firms’ capabilities. A developmental approach that incorporates evolutionary mechanisms and recognizes human agency provides new insights into the age-old study of the location of firms. Key words: location, locational behavior, spatial organization, theory of the firm, entrepreneurial firms, entrepreneurship, growth of firms, regional economic development. TopFluctuating Rounds of Inward Investment in Peripheral Regions: Semiconductors in the North East of England, by Stuart Dawley Abstract: This article extends economic geography research on foreign direct investment episodes by developing a historically grounded understanding of the socioinstitutional relations that shape and constrain different rounds of (dis)investment by multinational enterprises (MNEs) within a host region. Sensitive to the roles of contextuality, path dependency, and contingency, it argues that the temporal and spatial dynamics of volatile MNE (dis)investment are best tackled using a conceptual framework that accords a full and active role to the agency of the firm and its interrelations with the geographically variable socioinstitutional contexts that produce, regulate, and mediate investment decisions. The framework is used to interpret the brief but fluctuating history of the semiconductor fabrication industry in North Tyneside in the old industrial region of North East England. Within each investment episode, the empirical findings reveal the pivotal power and agency of the corporation in shaping and connecting processes across a variety of scales, places, and times. Contrasting corporate strategies illustrate the dynamic and contingent ways in which home and host national institutional contexts matter in mediating and regulating MNE investment decisions. Key words: multinational enterprises, inward investment, historical contexts, socioinstitutional contexts, corporation, home and host nations. Top“Spaces of Hope”? Fatalism, Trade Unionism, and the Uneven Geography of Capital in White Goods Manufacturing, by Rob Lambert and Michael Gillan Abstract: By engaging the “politics of scale,” the discourse of labor geography challenges the fatalism and consequent passivity that pervades much of the labor movement when it is confronted by corporate restructuring. An optimistic view of agency is central to this theoretical intervention. On the basis of empirical research on workers’ responses to a transnational corporation’s restructuring of a large refrigerator factory in rural Australia, this article highlights contradictory reactions to restructuring, thereby questioning the conception of agency that is at the heart of the labor geography project. Our data suggest a need to refine a theory that tends toward voluntarism in stressing workers’ autonomy by developing a more complex, contradictory, and embedded conception. The latter reveals the unpredictable, dynamic, and contested character of agency in which the strategic response of unionism is a critical variable. The results reveal the power of a new discourse on scale in transforming fatalism. Although this initiative in Australia is now in the first phase of evolving a new institutional expression of this discourse, the data reveal how the union’s policy decision to rescale and network globally within the corporation has empowered those who are determined to act, thereby undermining the passivity and fatalism of the majority. This transformation of social consciousness is a crucial trigger in the shift toward globally networked forms of unionism. To date, the labor geography literature has not adequately addressed the relationship between discourse, consciousness, and action. The article concludes that this new direction may have a wider significance in the global dynamic between corporations and civil society and may point to a more systematic, long-term change in the geographic scale of unionism. Key words: manufacturing, transnational corporations, restructuring, labor geography, discourse, agency, trade unions. Top |
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