By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

In recent years, economic geographers have seized on the concepts of `path dependence' and `lock-in' as key ingredients in constructing an evolutionary approach to their subject. However, they have tended to invoke these notions without proper examination of the ongoing discussion and debate devoted to them within evolutionary economics and elsewhere. Our aim in this paper, therefore, is, first, to highlight some of the unresolved issues that surround these concepts, and, second, to explore their usefulness for understanding the evolution of the economic landscape and the process of regional development. We argue that in many important aspects, path dependence and `lock-in' are place-dependent processes, and as such require geographical explanation. However, the precise meaning of regional `lock-in', we contend, is unclear, and little is known about why it is that some regional economies become locked into development paths that lose dynamism, whilst other regional economies seem able to avoid this danger and in effect are able to `reinvent' themselves through successive new paths or phases of development. The issue of regional path creation is thus equally important, but has been rarely discussed. We conclude that whilst path dependence is an important feature of the economic landscape, the concept requires further elaboration if it is to function as a core notion in an evolutionary economic geography.

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Path dependence and regional economic evolution

The concept of scale in human geography has been profoundly transformed over the past 20 years. And yet, despite the insights that both empirical and theoretical research on scale have generated, there is today no consensus on what is meant by the term or how it should be operationalized. In this paper we critique the dominant – hierarchical – conception of scale, arguing it presents a number of problems that cannot be overcome simply by adding on to or integrating with network theorizing. We thereby propose to eliminate scale as a concept in human geography. In its place we offer a different ontology, one that so flattens scale as to render the concept unnecessary. We conclude by addressing some of the political implications of a human geography without scale.

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Human geography without scale

List of Boxes. List of Tables and Figure. Preface. Abbreviations. Introduction. 1. Capitalism and the Capitalist Type of State. 2. The Keynesian Welfare National State. 3. The Schumpeterian Competition State. 4. Social Reproduction and the Workfare State. 5. The Political Economy of State Rescaling. 6. From Mixed Economy to Metagovernance. 7. Towards Schumpeterian Workfare Postnational Regimes?. Notes. References. Index.

The Future of the Capitalist State.

Allen J. and Cochrane A. (2007) Beyond the territorial fix: regional assemblages, politics and power, Regional Studies 41, 1161–1175. The idea of regions as territorially fixed in some vital political sense is a stubborn conception, one that is both mobilized to pursue selective interests and to establish regional identities. To assert that regions are political constructs, however, is not to say that such bounded, territorial entities enclose all the political relations that produce them. This paper puts forward a relational view of the region based upon an assemblage of political actors, some public, some private, where elements of central and local government are ‘lodged’ within the region, not acting above or below it. Using examples drawn from governing agencies across and beyond the south-east of England, it is shown how a more diffuse form of governance has given rise to a spatially discontinuous region. This is grounded in an exposition of the political assemblage that is Milton Keynes today, with...

/pdf/beyond-the-territorial-fix-regional-assemblages-politics-and-1xltjoxuix.pdf

Beyond the territorial fix: regional assemblages, politics and power

Rethinking the Region argues that regions are not simply bounded spaces on a map. This book uses unique research of England during the 1980s to show how regions are made and unmade by social processes. The book examines how new lines of division both social and geographical were laid down as free-market growth and reconstructed this are as a `neo-liberal' region. 
The authors argue that a more balanced form of growth is possible - within and between regions as well as between social groups. This book shows that to grasp the complexities of growth we must rethink `the region' in time as well as in space.

Rethinking the region

Multi-scalar or multi-site power relations offer two contrasting ways of understanding the shifting geography of state power. In this paper, we argue for a different starting point, one that favours a topological understanding of state spatiality over more conventional topographical accounts. In contrast to a vertical or horizontal imagery of the geography of state power, what states possess, we suggest, is reach, not height. In doing so, we draw from Sassen (2006, Territory, Authority, Rights: From Medieval to Global Assemblages, Princeton University Press) a vocabulary capable of portraying the renegotiation of powers that has taken place between central government in the UK and one of its key city regions, the South East of England; one that highlights an assemblage of political actors, some public, some private, where negotiations take place between elements of central and local actors 'lodged' within the region, not acting 'above', 'below' or 'alongside' it. The articulation of political demands in such a context has less to do with 'jumping scale' or formalizing extensive network connections and more to do with the ability to reach directly into a 'centralized' politics where proximity and reach play across one another in particular ways.

Assemblages of State Power: Topological Shifts in the Organization of Government and Politics

Using the example of Manchester's Olympic bidding process, the paper examines some of the links between globalisation and what has become known as the 'new urban politics'. The politics of the city's Olympic bids powerfully symbolise many of the supposedly transformative features of the new urban politics, British-style, as the old images of municipal welfarist (bureaucratic) politics have apparently been superseded by those of a dynamic and charismatic (entrepreneurial) business leadership. But while there are superficial similarities between these developments and those highlighted by analysts of US 'growth coalitions', the Manchester case reveals how they are as much about struggles over the role, meaning and structure of the state, as they are about urban growth. Manchester's Olympic bid committee resembles not so much a growth coalition as a grant coalition. This said, it is important not to underestimate the significance of the new urban imperative to talk about growth in order to get grants.

Manchester Plays Games: Exploring the Local Politics of Globalisation:

1. What is Urban Policy?. 2. Exploring the Roots: 'Race', Disorder, and Poverty. 3. Managerialism and the City. 4. The Meaning(s) of Community. 5. Managing Disorderly Places. 6. Competitiveness, the Market and Urban Entrepreneurialism. 7. Taking the Cultural Turn. 8. Neo-liberalism and the Globalisation of Urban Policy. 9. Reshaping Welfare, Re-imagining Urban Policy. References. Index

Allan Cochrane

Papers

Beyond the territorial fix: regional assemblages, politics and power

Rethinking the region

Assemblages of State Power: Topological Shifts in the Organization of Government and Politics

Manchester Plays Games: Exploring the Local Politics of Globalisation:

Understanding Urban Policy: A Critical Approach