Adam Swain

Bio: Adam Swain is an academic researcher from University of Nottingham. The author has contributed to research in topics: Ukrainian & Restructuring. The author has an hindex of 11, co-authored 18 publications receiving 389 citations.

The Global Economic Crisis, Eastern Europe, and the Former Soviet Union: Models of Development and the Contradictions of Internationalization

Abstract: Two UK-based geographers specializing in the economies of East-Central Europe and the former Soviet Union review the character and consequences of the global economic crisis in these countries, focusing on how forms of geo-economic and geopolitical integration undertaken during their post-socialist transitions have contributed to economic vulnerabilities exacerbated by the emerging crisis. Particular emphasis is placed on the consequences for East-Central Europe of adhering to a development model based on internationalization of the financial sector, cheap credit, and increasing reliance on exports to compensate for energy resource imports. The authors explore the likely distancing within the broader region of a group of new "insiders" (Euro-zone countries as well as the new EU member states) from an uneven landscape of "outsiders" (including Ukraine and other FSU states), as well as some of the recent tensions emerging between old and new EU member states.Journal of Economic Literature, Classification Nu...

State and Market in Eastern Europe: Regional Development and Workplace Implications of Direct Foreign Investment in the Automobile Industry in Hungary

Abstract: Interactions between state and market in eastern Europe since 1989 are examined by focusing on inward investment in one sector the automobile industry which has been at the forefront in the development of new production strategies within the region, and one state Hungary where much foreign investment has been concentrated. The paper examines patterns of uneven development, the distinctive workplace organization and ownership form of state-planned economies, and their reconstitution as part of the process of transformation. The main direct foreign investment projects within the auto industry in eastern Europe are outlined to identify the global market context. The more detailed account of Hungary concentrates on the strategies of four leading companies: Ikarus, General Motors, Ford and Suzuki. The conclusion reconsiders the reconstitution of states and markets

Soft capitalism and a hard industry: virtualism, the ‘transition industry’ and the restructuring of the Ukrainian coal industry

Abstract: This paper examines the geographical transfer of economic knowledge and practices from centres of neoliberalism in North America and Western Europe to post-soviet Ukraine. The paper argues that a ‘transition industry’ emerged in the wake of the disintegration of the soviet system whose purpose was to realize economic transition in central and eastern Europe. The paper discusses the emergence of a community of academic and professional economists affiliated to international financial institutions and academic and professional economic research organizations in Kyiv engaged in promoting the Washington consensus. This community identified the coal industry, located in the Ukrainian Donbas, as a barrier to structural economic reform and the political re-alignment of the country. The paper then examines the way the World Bank unsuccessfully attempted to force the coal industry to conform to its own policy prescriptions. The example points to the articulation not only of extra-local and internal processes of neoliberalization, but also with indigenous informal marketization. In this instance the World Bank's vision failed to materialize because state power could not be allied to its neoliberal project.

Governing the Workplace: The Workplace and Regional Development Implications of Automotive Foreign Direct Investment in Hungary

Abstract: SWAIN A. (1998) Governing the workplace: the workplace and regional development implications of automotive direct foreign investment in Hungary, Reg. Studies 32, 653-671. This paper examines the connections that exist between the workplace implications of automotive foreign direct investment in Hungary and the unfolding uneven development of capitalism in East-Central Europe. It develops a conceptual framework in order to critically analyse the role played by foreign direct investment in the restructuring of the Hungarian space-economy. Drawing on ideas about the governance of socio-economic systems, the paper argues that foreign investments can be conceptualized as a 'site' where the interaction between competing institutions operating at different spatial scales is translated and instantiated in the material and discursive practices which constitute work. In this way factory regimes are nested in a web of interactions which govern industrial and regional change. This approach is used to analyse the diff...

Work, employment and transition: restructuring livelihoods in post-communism

Abstract: Introduction Al Rainnie, Adrian Smith and Adam Swain Part 1: Restructuring Employment and Work and Neo-Liberal Transitions 1. Al Rainnie, Adrian Smith and Adam Swain Employment and Work Restructuring in 'Transition' 2. Guy Standing The Babble of Euphemisms: Re-embedding Social Protection in 'Transformed' Labour Markets Part 2: Workplace Transformations and Trade Unions in 'Transition' 3. John Thirkell and Sarah Vickerstaff Trade Unions and the Politics of Transformation in Central and East Europe 4. Adam Swain Broken Networks and a Tabula Rasa? 'Lean Production', Employment and the Privatization of the East German Automobile Industry Part 3: Gender, Work and Employment in 'Transition' 5. Jane Hary and Alison Stenning Out With the Old, In With the New? the Changing Experience of Work for Polish Women 6. Sarah Ashwin 'A Woman is Everything': the Reproduction of Soviet Ideals of Womanhood in Post-Communist Russia 7. Judit Timar Restructuring Labour Markets on the Frontier of the European Union: Gendered Uneven Development in Hungary 8. Janet Henshall Momsen Gender and Entrepreneurship in Post-Communist Hungary 9. Mike Ingham and Hilary Ingham Gender and Labour Market Restructuring in Central and Eastern Europe Part 4: New Forms of Employment and Survival Stategies 10. Simon Clarke Sources of Subsistence and the Survival Strategies of Urban Russian Households 11. Mieke Meurs Economic Strategies of Surviving Post-Socialism: Changing Household Economies and Gender Divisions of Labour in the Bulgarian Transition 12. Adrian Smith Rethinking 'Survival' in Austerity: Economic Practices and Household Economies in Slovakia 13. John Pickles Gulag Europe? Mass Unemployment, New Firm Creation, and Tight Labour Markets in the Bulgarian Apparel Industry

The local geographies of the financial crisis: from the housing bubble to economic recession and beyond

Abstract: The recent financial crisis, with its origins in the collapse of the sub-prime mortgage boom and house price bubble in the USA, is a shown to have been a striking example of ‘glocalisation’, with distinctly locally varying origins and global consequences and feedbacks. The shift from a ‘locally originate and locally-hold’ model of mortgage provision to a securitised ‘locally originate and globally distribute’ model meant that when local subprime mortgage markets collapsed in the USA, the repercussions were felt globally. At the same time, the global credit crunch and the deep recession the global financial crisis precipitated have had locally varying impacts and consequences. Not only does a geographical perspective throw important light on the nature and dynamics of the recent financial meltdown, the latter in turn should give impetus for a more general research effort into the economic geography of bubbles and crashes.

The territorial dynamics of innovation: a Europe-United States comparative analysis

Abstract: The United States and European Union differ significantly in terms of their innovative capacity: the former have been able to gain and maintain world leadership in innovation and technology while the latter continues to lag. Notwithstanding the magnitude of this innovation gap and the political emphasis placed upon it on both sides of the Atlantic, very little systematic comparative analysis has been carried out on its causes. The empirical literature has emphasized the structural differences between the two continents in the quantity and quality of the major ‘inputs’ to innovation: R&D investments and human capital. The very different spatial organization of innovative activities in the EU and the US—as suggested by a variety of contributions in the field of economic geography—could also influence innovative output. This article analyses and compares a wide set of territorial processes that influence innovation in Europe and the United States. The higher mobility of capital, population and knowledge in the US not only promotes the agglomeration of research activity in specific areas of the country but also enables a variety of territorial mechanisms to fully exploit local innovative activities and (informational) synergies. In the European Union, in contrast, imperfect market integration and institutional and cultural barriers across the continent prevent innovative agents from maximizing the benefits from external economies and localized interactions, but compensatory forms of geographical process may be emerging in concert with further European integration.

Networks of value, commodities and regions: reworking divisions of labour in macro-regional economies

Abstract: The final, definitive version of this article has been published in the Journal, Progress in Human Geography 26 (1) 2002, Copyright SAGE Publications Ltd at: http://phg.sagepub.com/ [Full text of this article is not available in the UHRA]

Beyond household economies: articulations and spaces of economic practice in postsocialism:

Abstract: While there has already been an engaged critique of the `transition to capitalism', less work has explored the limits of the dominant capitalocentric accounts of postsocialism. In this paper, we argue that capitalist development in postsocialist societies should be seen as one part of a diverse economy, constituted by a host of economic practices articulated with one another in dynamic and complex ways and in multiple sites and spaces. To make this argument, we develop three interlinked points. First, we suggest that many of the prevailing conceptualizations of diverse economic practices in postsocialism fail to address adequately the multiple geographies within which such practices are constituted, enabled and constrained. Second, we argue that in much of the literature only limited attention has been paid to the articulation of capitalist and non-capitalist economies and to the mutually constitutive sets of social relations that underpin the diverse economies of postsocialism. Lastly, we focus on the po...

Conceptualizing Urban Shrinkage

Abstract: Since the second half of the 20th century, urban shrinkage has become a common pathway of transformation for many large cities across the globe. Although the appearance of shrinkage is fairly unive...