{"title":"Sequined Styles, Intersectional Moves: Economic Geography, Let’s Dress Up!","authors":"Caroline V. Faria, Dominica Whitesell, Kasfah Birungi, Annie Elledge, Jovah Katushabe, Catherine Kyotowadde","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2022.2030215","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2030215","url":null,"abstract":"abstract In this article, we build on the vital insights of feminist thought in economic geography, extending this body of work via a global Black feminist geographic lens. To do so, we center two moments of the Ugandan bridal industry: the international trade of imported dresses and their design and refashioning there. Via the journeys of these dresses, we make visible how connected racial-gendered and classed power relations structure, drive, and manifest global trade networks. We provide geographically contextualized accounts of the gendered-racialization of economies, while always tracing the ties between varied forms of that racialization across place and through history. And we demonstrate the agency and crucial economic worldmaking of African women who labor within and fashion economic geographies. More broadly, we use dress, and the act of dressing up, in two ways. First, via a global Black feminist lens, we show how dress can be a deeply instructive material object that tells us much about the geographies of economies. Second, we use dress as a metaphor for urgent and playful connection, helping us to refashion the subfield of economic geography as feminist, antiracist, and critically transformative.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-21","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42391837","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-18DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2022.2032637
C. Veldhuizen, Lars Coenen
{"title":"Smart Specialization in Australia: Between Policy Mobility and Regional Experimentalism?","authors":"C. Veldhuizen, Lars Coenen","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2022.2032637","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2032637","url":null,"abstract":"abstract This article describes and analyzes the transfer of smart specialization (S3) from Europe, where it originated, to Gippsland, Australia. It identifies factors that are likely to enhance and, on the other hand, diminish the contribution of S3 to development in this region, and, more generally, to peripheral regions around the world. The policy mobility literature provides the analytical framework. It is used to explore how the validity of assumptions that underlie the efficacy of S3, in a destination site, and the institutional and political factors that must be accounted for through adaptation and reflexive policy learning, impact on the viability of policy transfer. This discussion demonstrates the links between geography, and entrepreneurship and innovation, and the challenges of linking the originally more or less homogenous framework to one concerned with development in heterogenous regions. An action research, constructivist approach is adopted. It yields fine-grained ethnographic data that reflects the importance, for effective evaluation of such transfer, of conceiving of a region as a relational space, where social interaction and connectivity drive and define the nature of change. The concomitant focus on process reveals that the intertemporal interchange between the means and ends of policy makers, must be carefully observed before proceeding to ex post evaluation of outcomes. Consequently, the article adds to the theoretical understanding of the complex processes involved in transferring regional policy approaches across spatial contexts. It provides valuable insights relevant to economic geographers, scholars, and practitioners concerned with regional development and innovation policy, and those exploring concepts and ideas associated with the policy mobility literature.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"48834510","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-18DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2021.2019010
H. Yeung
{"title":"Explaining Geographic Shifts of Chip Making toward East Asia and Market Dynamics in Semiconductor Global Production Networks","authors":"H. Yeung","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2021.2019010","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2021.2019010","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Few recent geographic studies have focused on how market dynamics might explain macroregional shifts in industrial production. This article examines the pivoting of semiconductor manufacturing toward East Asia during the 2010s, drawing upon proprietary data sets and interviews with leading semiconductor firms. Building on the existing conceptions of user-producer collaborations in economic geography, I conceptualize the relevance of market dynamics for explaining industrial-geographic change. In particular, I specify how customer intimacy in intermediate markets and demand responsiveness in end markets, as two critical dimensions of market dynamics, create strong demand for new chip-making capacity, and how spatial and relational proximity can strengthen interfirm collaboration and customer intimacy in semiconductor production networks. Empirically, market dynamics prompting massive growth in East Asian chip-making capacity are manifested in new product transition and chip demand from global lead firms in the information and communications technology sector and their manufacturing partners mostly located in East Asia. Demand responsiveness to new lead firms and end markets within East Asia has also induced chip design and new capacity to be colocated in the region. Customer intimacy between chip design firms and their foundry providers has led to massive growth of outsourced wafer fabrication in East Asia. Complementing supply-side explanations, such as state support and technological leveraging, this article’s core findings on demand-led market dynamics in explaining geographic shifts in semiconductor manufacturing contribute not only to the studies of global production networks in high-tech industries but also to the renewed interest among geographers in market dynamics and their consequences for uneven development.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49636891","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-18DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2022.2030216
Ilias Alami, Adam D. Dixon
{"title":"“Expropriation of Capitalist by State Capitalist:” Organizational Change and the Centralization of Capital as State Property","authors":"Ilias Alami, Adam D. Dixon","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2022.2030216","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2030216","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract State enterprises, sovereign funds, and other state–capital hybrids have become major engines of global capitalism. How can we explain their global rise and organizational transformation into increasingly sophisticated and globally competitive forms? Why do they increasingly emulate the practices and organizational goals of comparable private-sector entities, adopt the techniques of modern finance, resort to mixed ownership, and extend their operations across geographic space? After critically engaging with arguments that emphasize the role of firm strategies, developmentalist logics, financialized norms, and Polanyian double movements, we develop an explanatory model of organizational change grounded in historic–geographic materialism and economic geographies of the firm. We locate the expansion of state ownership (the role of states as owners) in the historic development and geographic remaking of global capitalism and, in particular, the emergence of a new constellation of international divisions of labor. This created the conditions for a massive round of centralization of capital as state property (the mass of capital controlled by states) since the early 2000s. The modern, marketized, globally spread state–capital hybrid emerged as an organizational fix to mediate the geographic contradictions and imperatives associated with this process. Purposive organizational adaption consisted in developing new skills, operational capabilities, and mixed-ownership structures in order to leverage the financial system, allow for the development of liquid forms of state property, and facilitate the expansion of the latter into global circuits of capital. As such, the article contributes to debates on the role of the state in global value chains, the firm-state nexus, and state capitalism.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-18","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47401476","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2021.2020090
Sarah Hughes-McLure, E. Mawdsley
{"title":"Innovative Finance for Development? Vaccine Bonds and the Hidden Costs of Financialization","authors":"Sarah Hughes-McLure, E. Mawdsley","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2021.2020090","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2021.2020090","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract Innovative finance is now considered essential to mobilize the trillions projected as required to meet the sustainable development goals. The International Finance Facility for Immunisation (IFFIm), which issues vaccine bonds, is an emblematic example of innovative finance in global health and development. Since its launch in 2006, IFFIm has played a leading role in developing social bonds and funding global health, securing over $8 billion in donor commitments, and disbursing over $3 billion to date to Gavi, the Vaccine Alliance. Adopting a follow the money approach, we set out a significant, evidence-based challenge to some of the dominant development claims around innovative development finance more widely and IFFIm in particular. We find evidence of nontrivial private profit making, hiding in plain sight, at the expense of beneficiaries and donors. Through advanced critical financial analysis, we reveal precisely who benefits and by how much. Furthermore, our analysis shows in detail how financialization reduces political control over aid, and the uneven spatial distribution of material rewards and political power. While IFFIm delivers on its claim to front-load aid commitments and makes a significant contribution to global health, the article asks whether the economic and political costs of innovative financing mechanisms are worth it. We finish by showing that alternative models for vaccine finance are possible. A postscript provides a brief account of how IFFIm has responded to the COVID-19 pandemic.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45685253","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-15DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2021.2009336
Robert Panitz, Johannes Glückler
{"title":"Relocation Decisions in Uncertain Times: Brexit and Financial Services","authors":"Robert Panitz, Johannes Glückler","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2021.2009336","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2021.2009336","url":null,"abstract":"abstract This article examines the impact of uncertainty and profound political, economic, and regulatory changes on the process of geographic reorganization of the financial industry in the course of Brexit. It draws on historic lessons of massive relocations within the financial industry in Europe to conjecture three scenarios: (1) concentrated relocation to build a new European lead financial center (FC), (2) least necessary relocation to meet regulatory requirements for operation in the EU single market, and (3) selective relocation and cumulative functional specialization of regional FCs. Drawing on official statistics, corporate and media reports, as well as on qualitative interviews and participant observation in the field, we build an original database of published plans and confirmed practices of geographic reorganization. Our analysis of the relocations of financial service firms from London to five leading FCs on the European continent supports the least necessary relocation as well as selective relocation scenarios. We conclude that Brexit-induced reorganization actually reproduces the existing geographic architecture while simultaneously deepening the divisions of labor among the established European FCs.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-15","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47865065","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-14DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2021.2010535
D. Wójcik, Liam Keenan, Vladímir Pažitka, Michael Urban, Wei Wu
{"title":"The Changing Landscape of International Financial Centers in the Twenty-First Century: Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions in the Global Financial Network","authors":"D. Wójcik, Liam Keenan, Vladímir Pažitka, Michael Urban, Wei Wu","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2021.2010535","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2021.2010535","url":null,"abstract":"abstract We conduct an analysis of cross-border financial sector mergers and acquisitions (M&As) between 2000 and 2017 to explore the changing landscape of international financial centers (IFCs) and the spatial concentration of decision-making power in the Global Financial Network (GFN). Our analysis starts with time zones, showing a slow rise of IFCs in the Asia-Pacific, decline in Europe, the Middle East, and Africa, and resilience in the Americas. We then identify which IFCs are net targets and net acquirers in M&As before and after the global financial crisis as well as which IFCs switch position between net target and net acquirer. Homing in on key groups of IFCs in the GFN, we show the persistent high profile of the New York and London axis of global finance, the important roles of Singapore and Hong Kong as mid-shore IFCs in Asia, and the continued significance of Gulf and offshore IFCs. These findings not only showcase M&A data as valuable analytical tools in exploring the geographies of finance but address a persistent theoretical gap concerning how power moves, concentrates, and is exercised as part of the GFN.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-14","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43933383","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-08DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2022.2030703
C. Hochstenbach
{"title":"Landlord Elites on the Dutch Housing Market: Private Landlordism, Class, and Social Inequality","authors":"C. Hochstenbach","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2022.2030703","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2030703","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The past decade has seen a revival of private renting across a wide range of countries and housing regimes. Economic and housing restructuring has enhanced rental housing’s appeal as an investment class. Apart from an increase in investment from firms, institutions, and trusts, this has triggered a revival of private landlordism among individuals and households. Yet, few detailed studies on the social, demographic, and economic profiles of landlords exist. To fill this gap and understand landlords’ class position, this article draws on Dutch register data with information on the entire Dutch population and housing stock. Analyses of their socioeconomic characteristics reveal the highly privileged class position of many landlords, with a substantial portion found in top income, wealth, and neighborhood positions. One-third of the top wealth percentile—the Dutch top 1 percent—consists of landlords, underscoring their vast economic power. Although landlords with larger housing portfolios are notably more affluent, small-scale landlords are also highly overrepresented in the upper economic strata. Fundamentally, this article’s findings urge us to consider landlordism specifically, and housing more broadly, in terms of class formation and delineation, with a class of landlord elites mobilizing multiple properties for the purpose of wealth accumulation and class reproduction.","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-08","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46327321","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Economic GeographyPub Date : 2022-03-07DOI: 10.1080/00130095.2022.2027144
J. Overton
{"title":"Farming as Financial Asset: Global Finance and the Making of Institutional Landscapes","authors":"J. Overton","doi":"10.1080/00130095.2022.2027144","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2022.2027144","url":null,"abstract":"The issue of large-scale financial investment in agriculture is of increasing concern. Land grabbing —the acquisition of large tracts of agricultural land in the Global South, often at the expense of dispossessed small farmers—and the almost ubiquitous rise of corporate farming—at the expense of family farms—are two supposed aspects of the way increasing global financial investment in agriculture are transforming rural geographies throughout the world. This is seen to be accompanied by rising foreign ownership of agricultural land and enterprises, and greater intensification of agriculture with consequent harmful environmental effects. This book by Stefan Ouma tackles the broad topic of the role of global finance in agriculture and does so in novel ways by seeking to follow the money and dig deep into the world of pension funds, equity investment, and assetization in agriculture. This is a welcome, important, and innova-tive approach that does much to extend our understandings of increasingly complex rural worlds. The book, at text, is for and one if navigate the ESG, GPs/LPs, HNWIs, MPMT. As a to understand how global finance is reshaping agriculture, excellent and accessible it moves beyond mere introduction to explore some complex themes raise some vital questions for future research. Its chapter structure reflects this objective. Successive chapters address optics (how we conceptualize the finance-farming nexus), history; data; the role of states, values and ethics; the complexity of the investment chains; the view from the farm gate; and food-finance futures. Throughout, the discussions draw on the author's engagement with the world of finance (attending investment seminars, reading investment data, interviews with fund managers etc.), and two detailed con-trasting case studies in Tanzania and Aotearoa New Zealand. These two places reveal quite different contexts for investment in agriculture in terms of history, environments, politics, social structures, and impacts. Yet","PeriodicalId":48225,"journal":{"name":"Economic Geography","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.0,"publicationDate":"2022-03-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47728560","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}