Andrew Cumbers
Biographic Data
| ID | 306543 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Andrew Cumbers |
| GIVEN NAMES | Andrew |
| FAMILY NAME | Cumbers |
| SIGNATURE | CUMBERS A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Glasgow |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-9876-5241 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 62 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 1002 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 62 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1995 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 16 |
Remunicipalisation and the prospects for more equitable place-based development
The last two and a half decades have witnessed a remarkable process of global de-privatisation locally: leading to the term remunicipalisation. There is, however, little research on the extent to which remunicipalisation challenges the inequities and injustices associated with privatisation and dominant neoliberal agendas at urban and regional scales. This paper aims to fill this gap with a two-step analysis of remunicipalisation outcomes. First,…
Mobilising for local energy democracy in the United States: Confronting political lock-in and private capture in the campaign for public power
This article theorises remunicipalisation as a political and spatial project of resistance to neoliberal governance and corporate capture. Drawing on insights from energy democracy literatures, we conceptualise remunicipalisation not as a managerial fix but as a transformative strategy to reclaim local control over essential infrastructure. Through comparative analysis of grassroots public power campaigns in Maine and Rochester, NY, we foreground…
Crowdsourcing as a methodology for global movements: Building counter-hegemonic knowledge of de-privatisation
The repertoire of contemporary social movements increasingly includes utilising data in strategic pursuit of their goals. In this paper, we explore the potential for co-produced crowdsourced data in the context of a global, networked movement advocating for the de-privatisation of public services. We argue that crowdsourcing can produce data to inform and strengthen alternative progressive narratives to counteract dominant elite discourses still …
Beyond developmentalism in sustainability transitions: Thinking with post-development in the global north
Narratives around sustainability often rest on an implicit model of development, contrasting the capacities of the Global South versus North, or different regions within Europe, who are then seen as leaders or followers within the race to transition away from carbon-intensity. Against such tendencies, there is a need to deconstruct this story of carbon governance from the ground up, questioning the abstractions involved and attending to the every…
The limits to the urban within multi-scalar energy transitions: Agency, infrastructure and ownership in the UK and Germany
This article critically interrogates the over-emphasis upon urban solutions when considering complex and multi-scalar energy infrastructures that must transition to low-carbon intensity for a sustainable future. While urban actors can play an important role in energy transition, their interventions are riven with difficulties, and at times failure, as they encounter challenges of politics, capacity and agency in a broader and multi-scalar governa…
Caring at the edges: Infrastructures of care and repair in urban deprivation
Care is an activity vital to making the world liveable. Alternative infrastructures of care have emerged that re-centre care and repair within everyday life. These infrastructures often require more care to address care deficits and repair the social fabric of society; however, insights are limited as to the implications of demands on people and the places they reside for such extra care. Through an ethnographic study of a community food hub in a…
New municipalism in South America? Developing theory from experiences in Argentina and Chile
Working towards social transformation through forms of participatory and economic democracy is a core element of the new municipalist agenda. While utilising a ‘politics of proximity’ to develop citizen-led collectives in various forms and at various scales, these projects reimagine and reclaim the local state for social and ecological justice. However, much of the empirical literature that has fed into the development of this conceptualisation o…
The return of the local state? Failing neoliberalism, remunicipalisation, and the role of the state in advanced capitalism
Picking up on the manifestation of state intervention following the 2008 financial crisis, we argue that the recent trend towards remunicipalisation underlines but also problematises the thesis of new state capitalism. Remunicipalisation refers to a process whereby towns, cities and sub-national regions take previously privatised services and infrastructures back into public ownership. Remunicipalisation has led to the emergence of regionally- an…
The state of municipal energy transitions: Multi-scalar constraints and enablers of Europe’s post-carbon energy ambitions
There is increasing enthusiasm at urban and municipal scales for leading sustainability transitions, amid higher level endorsement and even expectation of such leadership. Yet this downscaling of responsibility for transition requires a greater critical focus. It raises questions of how evenly spread the capacity to lead on this is, and how it relates to the complex and differentiated multi-scalar governance structures and political landscapes wi…
Remunicipalisation, Mutating Neoliberalism, and the Conjuncture
There is a growing interest in the progressive potential of remunicipalisation, a global trend for towns, cities, and even subnational regions to take formerly privatised assets and services back into public ownership. In this paper, we offer a novel conceptualisation of remunicipalisation, developing a spatialised conjunctural perspective through critical engagement with the work of Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and recent geographical scholarsh…
Adapting to the political moment and diverse terrain of 'Actually Existing Municipalisms'
This article engages constructively with the 'new municipalism', while cautioning against imposing another set of top-down elite imperatives on 'left behind places'. It also points out that local does not necessarily mean progressive, citing the example of Tees Valley's Conservative mayor Ben Houchen. As an alternative, it draws upon positive experiences from the recent global remunicipalisation trend, and highlights the importance of working wit…
The Case for Economic Democracy
The idea that the people have a right to shape political decisions through democratic means is widely accepted. The same cannot be said of the decisions that impact on our everyday economic life in the workplace and beyond. Andrew Cumbers shows why this is wrong, and why, in the context of the rising tide of populism and the perceived crisis of liberal democracy, economic democracy's time has come. Four decades of market deregulation, financialis…
Reconfiguring Economic Democracy: Generating New Forms of Collective Agency, Individual Economic Freedom and Public Participation
We seek to advance debate and thinking about economic democracy. While recognising the importance of existing approaches focused upon collective bargaining and workplace organisation, we articulate a perspective that emphasises the importance of individual economic rights, capabilities and freedoms at a time when established norms and protections at work are in retreat in many parts of the world. We outline a framework where both individual right…
Defining health and health inequalities
OBJECTIVES: To examine existing definitions of health and health inequalities and to synthesise the most useful of these using explicit rationale and the most parsimonious text. STUDY DESIGN: Literature review and synthesis. METHODS: Existing definitions of health and health inequalities were identified, and their normative properties were extracted and then critically appraised. Using explicit reasoning, new definitions, synthesising the most us…
Impact of Political Economy on Population Health: A Systematic Review of Reviews
Background. Although there is a large literature examining the relationship between a wide range of political economy exposures and health outcomes, the extent to which the different aspects of political economy influence health, and through which mechanisms and in what contexts, is only partially understood. The areas in which there are few high-quality studies are also unclear. Objectives. To systematically review the literature describing the …
That type of thing does give you a boost”: Control, Self‐valorisation, and Autonomist Worker Copings in Call Centres
There are growing concerns over current and future incarnations of routine work, based on the rise of technology and its perceived impact on skill requirements in the labour market. Drawing on Autonomist Marxist (AM) literature, the following article demonstrates how and why workers are likely to play a role in maintaining meaningful forms of work. Complimenting labour process research, which focuses on the role of worker “resistance” in the work…
Ronan Paddison (1945–2019): An Appreciation of an Academic Life
Rethinking Path Creation: A Geographical Political Economy Approach
A burgeoning strand of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) research is addressing questions of regional path creation, based on the idea that place-specific legacies and conditions play a critical role in supporting the emergence of new economic activities. Yet there has been little effort thus far to take stock of this emerging body of research. In response, the aims of this article are to offer a fresh synthesis of recent work and to develop …
Making sense of remunicipalisation: Theoretical reflections on and political possibilities from Germany’s Rekommumalisierung process
The increasingly discussed phenomenon of ‘remunicipalisation’ marks a global trend since 2000 for cities to take formerly privatised assets, infrastructure and services back into public ownership. It is most prominent in basic service sectors such as water and energy, but it is also evident in a range of diverse utility and infrastructure areas—from education, health, refuse and other areas of local government. As a reaction to the problems and c…
Managerial control and the limits to employee participation in retail work spaces: Evidence from a UK Ikea store
This article contributes to labour process debates around managerial control and worker autonomy in the retail workplace. Through critical analysis of managerial strategies in the production of organisational space within an IKEA store, it explores how spatial design and practice shape managerial control and employee participation. Rather than the rhetoric of employee participation espoused by IKEA , our findings emphasise how managers use space …
What is a 'person' like you doing in a 'place' like that? Reflections on the business school migration from economic geography
The decline of economic geography in British geography departments and schools is a cause for concern, given its historic importance as a seedbed for critical and alternative thinking. While there are attractions and opportunities for economic geographers such as myself in working in management departments and business schools, particularly those that have a critical social science culture, it is vital that geography itself, as a discipline, reta…
The Work of Community Gardens: Reclaiming Place for Community in the City
The growth of community gardens has become the source of much academic debate regarding their role in community empowerment in the contemporary city. In this article, we focus upon the work being done in community gardens, using gardening in Glasgow as a case study. We argue that while community gardening cannot be divorced from more regressive underlying economic and social processes accompanying neoliberal austerity policies, it does provide sp…
Introducing Debates in urban studies
States of just transition: Realising climate justice through and against the state
Places of prosumption: Community gardens putting the ‘we’ into neighbourhoods
Prosumption encompasses acts of production and consumption, and studies on it have mostly taken a commercial focus, centred on the dominant individualistic narrative of ‘I’. This article seeks to extend debate regarding prosumption by exploring its possibilities for creating a new set of ‘we’ identities based around nature and community. It focuses on community gardens and how these places generate progressive forms of social relations that criti…
Progressive localism and the construction of political alternatives
Learning, innovation and regional development: A critical appraisal of recent debates
A resurgence of interest in the region as a scale of economic organization has been apparent within economic geography over the past decade or so. In view of the apparent shift towards a ‘knowledge-driven economy’, the capacity of regions to support processes of learning and innovation has been identified as a key source of competitive advantage. This paper provides a critical appraisal of recent work on innovation, learning and regional developm…
Labour agency and union positionalities in global production networks
The development of a global production networks (GPN) perspective in economic geography has brought valuable insights into the social and political relations between regional, state and corporate actors in understanding processes of value capture in the production of commodities. However, to date, little has been said about labour as an active constituent of the global economy, rather than the passive victim of restructuring processes. In this ar…
Evolution in Economic Geography: Institutions, Political Economy, and Adaptation
Economic geography has, over the past decade or so, drawn upon ideas from evolutionary economics in trying to understand processes of regional growth and change. Recently, some researchers have sought to delimit and develop an "evolutionary economic geography" (EEG), aiming to create a more systematic theoretical framework for research. This article provides a sympathetic critique and elaboration of this emergent EEG but takes issue with some asp…
States of just transition: Realising climate justice through and against the state
Rethinking Path Creation: A Geographical Political Economy Approach
A burgeoning strand of evolutionary economic geography (EEG) research is addressing questions of regional path creation, based on the idea that place-specific legacies and conditions play a critical role in supporting the emergence of new economic activities. Yet there has been little effort thus far to take stock of this emerging body of research. In response, the aims of this article are to offer a fresh synthesis of recent work and to develop …
Constructing a global commons in, against and beyond the state
The “commons” is emerging as one of the progressive political key words of our time. Against a backdrop of continuing neoliberal governance of the global economy, there is interest in a “translocal” global commons as an alternative that transcends both state and capitalist forms of appropriation. In this paper, I offer a constructive critique of the global commons. While sympathetic to arguments about the deficiencies of state-centric forms of so…
Class, Agency and Resistance in the Old Industrial City
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 m…
Policy activism and regional path creation: The promotion of offshore wind in North East England and Scotland
This paper argues for a broad evolutionary political economy understanding of local and regional path creation. We adopt a multi-actor and multi-scalar perspective, focusing on the roles of the state and regional policy interventions in mediating the creation of growth paths. The framework interprets attempts in North East England and Scotland to support path creation in the offshore wind sector through evolutionary inspired contextual policies. …
Institutions, Power and Space: Assessing the Limits to Institutionalism in Economic Geography
Economic geographers have drawn upon concepts from institutional economics and economic sociology in recent years to understand processes of regional development within an increasingly globalized economy. In this paper, we assess the influence of this institutional `turn' in economic geography and regional development studies. Two interrelated themes provide the focus of our critique. First, we emphasize the neglect of power and politics in relat…
Contesting Neoliberal Urbanism in Glasgow's Community Gardens: The Practice of DIY Citizenship
In this journal, it has been suggested that citizens practising community gardening “can become complicit in the construction of neoliberal hegemony”. Such hegemony is maintained, it is argued, through the day-to-day work of neoliberal citizen-subjects, which “alleviates the state from service provision”. In this paper we acknowledge that community gardens are vulnerable to neoliberal cooptation. But, even where neoliberal practices are evidenced…
The Work of Community Gardens: Reclaiming Place for Community in the City
The growth of community gardens has become the source of much academic debate regarding their role in community empowerment in the contemporary city. In this article, we focus upon the work being done in community gardens, using gardening in Glasgow as a case study. We argue that while community gardening cannot be divorced from more regressive underlying economic and social processes accompanying neoliberal austerity policies, it does provide sp…
Old Industrial Regions in Europe: A Comparative Assessment of Economic Performance
Birch K., MacKinnon D. and Cumbers A. Old industrial regions in Europe: a comparative assessment of economic performance, Regional Studies. Recent academic and policy discourses on regional development in Europe promote the expansion of ‘knowledge-based’ economies and learning regions. The assumptions underpinning the new regional policy are cast into sharp focus by the experiences of old industrial regions. The paper engages with these issues th…
Doing Evolution in Economic Geography
Evolutionary approaches in economic geography face questions about the relationships between their concepts, theories, methods, politics, and policy implications. Amidst the growing but unsettled consensus that evolutionary approaches should employ plural methodologies, the aims here are, first, to identify some of the difficult issues confronting those working with different frameworks. The concerns comprise specifying and connecting research ob…
Making sense of remunicipalisation: Theoretical reflections on and political possibilities from Germany’s Rekommumalisierung process
The increasingly discussed phenomenon of ‘remunicipalisation’ marks a global trend since 2000 for cities to take formerly privatised assets, infrastructure and services back into public ownership. It is most prominent in basic service sectors such as water and energy, but it is also evident in a range of diverse utility and infrastructure areas—from education, health, refuse and other areas of local government. As a reaction to the problems and c…
Grassrooting Network Imaginaries: Relationality, Power, and Mutual Solidarity in Global Justice Networks
In this paper we draw critically upon actor network theory (ANT) in order to analyse the contours of relationality, communication, and operational logic within a global justice network-People's Global Action Asia. Drawing upon the concept of translation, we consider how connections are fostered and sustained within the network, focusing upon the work of key organisers (those we term the 'imagineers') and key events in producing the network. In so…
Remunicipalisation, Mutating Neoliberalism, and the Conjuncture
There is a growing interest in the progressive potential of remunicipalisation, a global trend for towns, cities, and even subnational regions to take formerly privatised assets and services back into public ownership. In this paper, we offer a novel conceptualisation of remunicipalisation, developing a spatialised conjunctural perspective through critical engagement with the work of Stuart Hall, Antonio Gramsci, and recent geographical scholarsh…
Adjustment or renewal in regional clusters? A study of diversification amongst SMEs in the Aberdeen oil complex
A renewed interest in the spatial clustering or agglomeration of economic activity is evident within economic geography and related fields. This paper considers processes of change within ‘mature’ regional clusters, developing a conceptual framework which links firm‐level strategies to development scenarios at the cluster level through a set of intervening mechanisms. Whange, enabling the cluster to sustain its prosperity, and adjustment which is…
Innovation, Collaboration, and Learning in Regional Clusters: A Study of SMEs in the Aberdeen Oil Complex
Issues of regional innovation and learning have attracted growing interest from economic geographers and related specialists in recent years. The advantages to be gained from localised networks and learning are claimed to be particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in helping offset the size-related advantages of larger firms. Such claims are part of a wider rediscovery of the benefits of clustering and agglomeration i…
The return of the local state? Failing neoliberalism, remunicipalisation, and the role of the state in advanced capitalism
Picking up on the manifestation of state intervention following the 2008 financial crisis, we argue that the recent trend towards remunicipalisation underlines but also problematises the thesis of new state capitalism. Remunicipalisation refers to a process whereby towns, cities and sub-national regions take previously privatised services and infrastructures back into public ownership. Remunicipalisation has led to the emergence of regionally- an…
British Jobs for British Workers? Negotiating Work, Nation, and Globalisation through the Lindsey Oil Refinery Disputes
This paper explores the relationships between labour organising, globalisation and national identity through an engagement with the 2009 Lindsey Oil Refinery strikes. Some strikers adopted the controversial slogan ‘British Jobs for British Workers’ in response to employers' attempts to undercut existing wages and conditions with a new migrant workforce. This led to accusations of xenophobia. We make three inter‐related arguments. First, we conten…
A Geographical Political Economy of Evolution in Economic Geography
Key themes for evolution in economic geography are identified that clarify and further refine and reinforce our argument for broader conceptions of institutions, social agency, and power and for the situation of the plural and emerging field of evolutionary approaches more fully within geographical political economy. We address the following issues: conceptual and terminological clarity; evolution and institutions within and beyond the firm; agen…
Entangled logics and grassroots imaginaries of Global Justice Networks
This article concerns the operation of two global justice networks (GJNS): People's Global Action Asia (PGA Asia) and the European arm of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and Mining Workers (ICEM). We investigate the entangled operational logics of both networks as they combat tendencies towards emerging operational hierarchies while attempting to embed international imaginations among the grassroots. The work of key activists, or…
Globalization, Local Economic Development and the Branch Plant Region: The Case of the Aberdeen Oil Complex
CUMBERS A. (2000) Globalization, local economic development and the branch plant region: the case of the Aberdeen oil complex, Reg. Studies 34, 371-382. In recent years, there has been considerable debate over the consequences of globalization for local economic development. For some, globalization is seen as strengthening the position of transnational corporations (TNCs) and core regions over branch plant regions. For others globalization offers…
Intervening in globalization: The spatial possibilities and institutional barriers to labour’s collective agency
Trade unions are facing a series of challenges around place-based forms of work in industries such as construction, transport and public services. New spatial strategies by employers involving corporate reorganization, increased outsourcing and the use of migrant labour, allied to a deepening of neoliberal governance processes are accelerating a race to the bottom in wages and conditions. Drawing upon the experience of two recent labour disputes …
Development Prospects for the European Offshore Oil Industry
Continuity or Change in Employment Relations? Evidence from the UK's Old Industrial Regions
Recent years have seen a considerable degree of change in the nature of employment relations, nowhere more so than in the UK's older industrial regions where new forms of work have partially replaced traditional activities. The author argues that such changes cannot automatically be read off as part of a wider transformation, but need to be firmly embedded within particular local social relations. Recognition of such complexities is necessary if …
The National State as Mediator of Regional Development Outcomes in a Global Era: A Comparative Analysis from the UK and Norway
In recent years, commentators have downplayed the role of the national state in shaping regional economic development. In particular it has been argued that globalization processes are undermining the national level as a container of economic regulation and action. This has been accompanied by a celebration of the regional level as a site for constructing competitive advantage, amid growing evidence of increased sub-national economic agglomeratio…
Globalization, Local Economic Development and the Branch Plant Region: The Case of the Aberdeen Oil Complex
CUMBERS A. (2000) Globalization, local economic development and the branch plant region: the case of the Aberdeen oil complex, Reg. Studies 34, 371-382. In recent years, there has been considerable debate over the consequences of globalization for local economic development. For some, globalization is seen as strengthening the position of transnational corporations (TNCs) and core regions over branch plant regions. For others globalization offers…
Globalisation and the Contested Process of International Corporate Restructuring: Employment Reorganisation and the Issue of Labour Consent in the International Oil Industry
Labour is typically treated as a passive victim of corporate restructuring processes in discourses on globalisation, rendered helpless by rationalisation and downsizing, and structurally place-bound and defenceless against increasingly mobile and footloose capital. This paper forms part of a growing body of work in the geographical literature that seeks to contest this view, reinserting labour as an actor in the context of globalisation. Specific…
The Workplace at the Millennium: New Geographies of Employment
Learning, innovation and regional development: A critical appraisal of recent debates
A resurgence of interest in the region as a scale of economic organization has been apparent within economic geography over the past decade or so. In view of the apparent shift towards a ‘knowledge-driven economy’, the capacity of regions to support processes of learning and innovation has been identified as a key source of competitive advantage. This paper provides a critical appraisal of recent work on innovation, learning and regional developm…
Institutions, Power and Space: Assessing the Limits to Institutionalism in Economic Geography
Economic geographers have drawn upon concepts from institutional economics and economic sociology in recent years to understand processes of regional development within an increasingly globalized economy. In this paper, we assess the influence of this institutional `turn' in economic geography and regional development studies. Two interrelated themes provide the focus of our critique. First, we emphasize the neglect of power and politics in relat…
Innovation, Collaboration, and Learning in Regional Clusters: A Study of SMEs in the Aberdeen Oil Complex
Issues of regional innovation and learning have attracted growing interest from economic geographers and related specialists in recent years. The advantages to be gained from localised networks and learning are claimed to be particularly important for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in helping offset the size-related advantages of larger firms. Such claims are part of a wider rediscovery of the benefits of clustering and agglomeration i…
Embedded Internationalisms: Building Transnational Solidarity in the British and Norwegian Trade Union Movements
There has been growing interest in the prospects for a new trade union internationalism in recent years, following the end of the Cold War and the coming together of the main national union organisations into one confederation, the International Confederation of Free Trade Unions (ICFTU). For the first time in decades, geopolitical straitjackets and defensive nationalistic postures are giving way to more open, internationalist perspectives as uni…
Adjustment or renewal in regional clusters? A study of diversification amongst SMEs in the Aberdeen oil complex
A renewed interest in the spatial clustering or agglomeration of economic activity is evident within economic geography and related fields. This paper considers processes of change within ‘mature’ regional clusters, developing a conceptual framework which links firm‐level strategies to development scenarios at the cluster level through a set of intervening mechanisms. Whange, enabling the cluster to sustain its prosperity, and adjustment which is…
Spaces of Work: Global Capitalism and Geographies of Labour
N. Castree, N. Coe, K. Ward and M. Samers London: Sage, 2004. ISBN 0-7619-7217-X, 303 pp. Price: $44.95 The emergence of a distinctive labour studies school over the last decade has been an important development within economic geography. Up until recently, capital and state-centric accounts of spatial economic development have largely ignored or underplayed the role of labour in shaping the global economy. Both conventional spatial analysis and …
Genuine Renewal or Pyrrhic Victory? The Scale Politics of Trade Union Recognition in the UK
There is an ongoing debate within radical geography concerned with the trade union response to the hegemony of business interests apparent under neoliberal capitalism. In this paper, I contribute to this debate by exploring recent attempts to renew trade union organisation in the UK following decades of decline. I argue that, despite recent successes in stemming falling membership numbers and signing new recognition agreements, closer inspection …
Entangled logics and grassroots imaginaries of Global Justice Networks
This article concerns the operation of two global justice networks (GJNS): People's Global Action Asia (PGA Asia) and the European arm of the International Federation of Chemical, Energy and Mining Workers (ICEM). We investigate the entangled operational logics of both networks as they combat tendencies towards emerging operational hierarchies while attempting to embed international imaginations among the grassroots. The work of key activists, or…
Public Sector Spending and the Scottish Economy: Crowding Out or Adding Value
NTRODUCTION A recent debate in Scottish media and business circles has been highly critical of the role of the public sector in the Scottish economy. The debate has revolved around the extent to which public sector expenditure and investment has ‘crowded out’ the private sector, leading to poor national economic performance. This article suggests that there is little evidence for such a claim, whilst it could be argued that the opposite is actual…
Grassrooting Network Imaginaries: Relationality, Power, and Mutual Solidarity in Global Justice Networks
In this paper we draw critically upon actor network theory (ANT) in order to analyse the contours of relationality, communication, and operational logic within a global justice network-People's Global Action Asia. Drawing upon the concept of translation, we consider how connections are fostered and sustained within the network, focusing upon the work of key organisers (those we term the 'imagineers') and key events in producing the network. In so…
Labour agency and union positionalities in global production networks
The development of a global production networks (GPN) perspective in economic geography has brought valuable insights into the social and political relations between regional, state and corporate actors in understanding processes of value capture in the production of commodities. However, to date, little has been said about labour as an active constituent of the global economy, rather than the passive victim of restructuring processes. In this ar…
Old Industrial Regions in Europe: A Comparative Assessment of Economic Performance
Birch K., MacKinnon D. and Cumbers A. Old industrial regions in Europe: a comparative assessment of economic performance, Regional Studies. Recent academic and policy discourses on regional development in Europe promote the expansion of ‘knowledge-based’ economies and learning regions. The assumptions underpinning the new regional policy are cast into sharp focus by the experiences of old industrial regions. The paper engages with these issues th…
Rescaling Employment Relations: Key Outcomes of Change in the Privatised Rail Industry
The past decade has witnessed a revival of interest in the role of labour in political and economic restructuring. Following a period in the 1980s and early 1990s when trade unions and employees were routinely portrayed as passive victims of corporate restructuring, the past ten years have seen a resurgence of work by geographers highlighting the continued agency of labour. Despite this 'new labour geography', however, there has been little empir…
Global Justice Networks: Geographies of Transnational Solidarity
This title provides a critical investigation of what has been termed the 'global justice movement' and the first comprehensive geographical analysis of transnational political action after the Seattle protests of 1999.
Evolution in Economic Geography: Institutions, Political Economy, and Adaptation
Economic geography has, over the past decade or so, drawn upon ideas from evolutionary economics in trying to understand processes of regional growth and change. Recently, some researchers have sought to delimit and develop an "evolutionary economic geography" (EEG), aiming to create a more systematic theoretical framework for research. This article provides a sympathetic critique and elaboration of this emergent EEG but takes issue with some asp…
A Geographical Political Economy of Evolution in Economic Geography
Key themes for evolution in economic geography are identified that clarify and further refine and reinforce our argument for broader conceptions of institutions, social agency, and power and for the situation of the plural and emerging field of evolutionary approaches more fully within geographical political economy. We address the following issues: conceptual and terminological clarity; evolution and institutions within and beyond the firm; agen…
Class, Agency and Resistance in the Old Industrial City
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 m…
Knowledge, Space, and Economic Governance: The Implications of Knowledge-Based Commodity Chains for Less-Favoured Regions
As an increasing amount of manufacturing employment has relocated to the Global South, the developed economies of the Global North have sought new ways of competing within the global economy. In part they have done so through the promotion of the so-called 'knowledge-based economy' (KBE) constituted by innovations and new markets in high-tech industries like telecommunication, information technology, and the life sciences. A KBE discourse has bec…
Labour, organisational rescaling and the politics of production: Union Renewal in the Privatised Rail Industry
Researchers are becoming more alert to the importance of geography to union renewal in counteracting the strategies of corporate and state actors. In this article the example of the UK's rail industry is used to show how privatisation created a new geography of employment relations. Unions responded to the destruction of national collective bargaining and a new fragmented geography of employment relations through organisational restructuring, whi…
Political science (50 works) · Sociology (44 works) · Economics (39 works) · Politics (37 works) · Law (28 works) · Political economy (25 works) · Law (20 works) · Economic system (19 works) · Economic geography (18 works) · Social science (16 works)