Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

To raise the question of the nature of narrative is to invite reflection on the very nature of culture and, possibly, even on the nature of humanity itself. So natural is the impulse to narrate, so inevitable is the form of narrative for any report of the way things really happened, that narrativity could appear problematical only in a culture in which it was absent-absent or, as in some domains of contemporary Western intellectual and artistic culture, programmatically refused. As a panglobal fact of culture, narrative and narration are less problems than simply data. As the late (and already profoundly missed) Roland Barthes remarked, narrative "is simply there like life itself. . international, transhistorical, transcultural."' Far from being a problem, then, narrative might well be considered a solution to a problem of general human concern, namely, the problem of how to translate knowing into telling,2 the problem of fashioning human experience into a form assimilable to structures of meaning that are generally human rather than culture-specific. We may not be able fully to comprehend specific thought patterns of another culture, but we have relatively less difficulty understanding a story coming from another culture, however exotic that

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The Value of Narrativity in the Representation of Reality

The Limits to Capital

A vast and continually expanding literature on economic globalization continues to generate a miasma of conflicting viewpoints and alternative discourses. This article argues that any understanding of the global economy must be sensitive to four considerations: (a) conceptual categories and labels carry with them the dis- cursive power to shape material processes; (b) multiple scales of analysis must be incorporated in recognition of the contemporary 'relativization of scale'; (c) no single institutional or organizational locus of analysis should be privileged; and (d) extrapolations from specific case studies and instances must be treated with caution, but this should not preclude the option of discussing the global economy, and power relations within it, as a structural whole. This paper advocates a network method- ology as a potential framework to incorporate these concerns. Such a methodology requires us to identify actors in networks, their ongoing relations and the structural outcomes of these relations. Networks thus become the foundational unit of analysis for our understanding of the global economy, rather than individuals, firms or nation states. In presenting this argument we critically examine two examples of network methodology that have been used to provide frameworks for analysing the global economy: global commodity chains and actor-network theory. We suggest that while they fall short of fulfilling the promise of a network methodology in some respects, they do provide indications of the utility of such a methodology as a basis for under- standing the global economy.

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Chains and networks, territories and scales: towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy

Dieser Aufsatz behandelt die Art und Weise, wie eine QDA-Software – hier Nvivo – im qualitativen Analyseprozess eingesetzt werden kann. Computerunterstutzte qualitative Datenanalysesoftware (CAQDAS) wird als ein Werkzeug beschrieben, das Forschende in ihrer Suche nach einer akkuraten und transparenten Reprasentation der Daten unterstutzt, wahrend zur gleichen Zeit ein Audit des Analyseprozess als Ganzes ermoglicht wird – etwas, was oft in Darstellungen des qualitativen Datenanalyseprozesses fehlt. In diesem Beitrag vergleiche ich manuelle Methoden der qualitativen Datenanalyse von Interviewtranskripten mit der Anwendung von Nvivo fur den Auswertungsprozess. Im besonderen untersuche ich die Schwierigkeiten, die im Zusammenhang mit der detaillierten Analyse von Interviewtranskripten auftreten konnen, und befasse mich mit der Frage der Reliabilitat und Validitat des Analyseprozesses und seiner Ergebnisse. Die zeitlichen Investitionen, die erforderlich sind, um das gesamte Potential von NVivo auszuschopfen, werden ebenfalls diskutiert. Es wird gezeigt, dass eine Kombination von manuellen und computerunterstutzten Verfahren am sinnvollsten zu sein scheint.
URN: urn:nbn:de:0114-fqs0202260

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Dealing with Data: Using NVivo in the Qualitative Data Analysis Process

NGOs that operate as part of transnational advocacy networks face a number of ‘legitimacy challenges’ concerning their rights to participate in the shaping of global governance. Outlining the legitimacy claims that development NGOs make, the article argues that ‘legitimacy’ is a socially constructed quality that may be ascribed to an NGO by actors and stakeholders with different viewpoints. NGOs operating transnationally link disparate communities and conceptions of legitimacy, and undermine the discourse and practice of sovereignty. Therefore such NGOs will find it difficult to be universally regarded as legitimate, especially by states that hold a sovereignty-based conception of legitimacy. However, relationships are the building blocks of networks, and efforts to improve them should not be abandoned simply because ‘legitimacy’ is too closely connected with sovereignty. In particular, NGOs ought to improve their relationships with the poor and marginalized communities whose interests they claim to promote. To this end, the concept of ‘political responsibility’ is suggested as a pragmatic approach to understanding power relations as they arise in transnational advocacy networks and campaigns.

NGOs’ transnational advocacy networks: from ‘legitimacy’ to ‘political responsibility’?

Processes of globalization rework sovereignty as the ordering principle of the international political economy, creating new geographies of power. Such a reworking is most apparent offshore, a site where sovereignty is unbundled. The principle of sovereignty is maintained in the offshore financial centres' legal sovereignty but relinquished in terms of their fiscal powers. This unbundling articulates the state system and the capitalist economy. Such an unbundling is possible because sovereignty is based upon property rights. Changes in the practices and understandings of property rights change the meaning of sovereignty, altering the principle of differentiation which shapes the international political economy. In this way, the paradoxical marginality and centrality of offshoreness to the dynamics of the international political economy is explained.

Offshoreness, Globalization and Sovereignty: A Postmodern Geo‐Political Economy?

http://alanhudson.info/wp-content/uploads/2013/11/place.pdf

Placing trust, trusting place: on the social construction of offshore financial centres

With Northern development nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) becoming more involved in advocacy and policy influence, they are increasingly being asked questions about their effectiveness, legitimacy, accountability, and governance. In an effort to contribute to these debates and to inform NGOs’ thinking, this article provides an overview of the advocacy activities of UK-based NGOs. Using material from a recently completed research project, this study examines the growth of UK NGOs’ advocacy; the ways in which NGOs actually do advocacy; the position of advocacy within NGOs; the efforts of NGOs to work together in advocacy in the face of pressures to differentiate themselves; the ways in which NGOs relate to donors; issues of legitimacy, representation, and accountability; and evaluation.

Advocacy by UK-Based Development NGOs

Processes of globalization involve changes in the spatialities of power and social relations. This article develops a theory of regulatory landscapes, as a conceptual tool to aid our understanding of processes of globalization. Regulatory landscapes vary along two dimensions, both of which relate to scale and boundaries and extend from 'bounded' to 'trans-boundary': first, the degree of boundedness of economic accumulation; and second, the degree of boundedness of political regulation. Processes of geo-regulatory change, then, may be conceived in terms of two analytically separable moments. The first moment of geo-regulatory change is the trans-boundary extension of economic accumulation. The second moment, which is the focus of this article, is the trans-boundary or extra-territorial extension of political regulation. It is hypothesized that the attempted trans-boundary extension of political regulation - to avoid regulatory underprovision - leads to border skirmishes, battles or negotiations about the n...

Alan Hudson

Papers

NGOs’ transnational advocacy networks: from ‘legitimacy’ to ‘political responsibility’?

Offshoreness, Globalization and Sovereignty: A Postmodern Geo‐Political Economy?

Placing trust, trusting place: on the social construction of offshore financial centres

Advocacy by UK-Based Development NGOs

Reshaping the regulatory landscape: border skirmishes around the Bahamas and Cayman offshore financial centres