Начала политической экономии и податного обложения = The principles of political economy and taxation

How might economic geography (re)position itself within the interdisciplinary field of heterodox economics? Reflecting on this question, this article offers a critical assessment of the “New Economic Sociology,” making the case for moving beyond the limited confines of the networks-and-embeddedness paradigm. More specifically, it argues for a more broadly based and purposive conversation with various currents within social-constructivist and macroeconomic sociology, which, in turn, calls for a more full-blooded critique of market relations and analytics and a more militant attitude toward economic orthodoxies. The promise of such a conversation, strategically focused on the simultaneously social and geographic constitution of economic relations, is an emboldened economic geography with a more persuasive voice in the field of heterodox economic studies.

Economic Sociologies in Space

Embodying the nation-state:Canada's response to human smuggling

It is no mere coincidence that recent years have witnessed a resurgence in statetheoretical work in geography, much of which has been animated by a concern to track, map and explain a series of far-reaching movements in economic governance, citizenship relations and social regulation. Nor should it be surprising that this ‘return to the state’ has been accompanied by an insistent problematization of scale, reorganized scalar relations and emergent scalar narratives (Marston, 2000; Swyngedouw, 2000; Brenner, 2001). It is now broadly accepted that processes of contemporary state restructuring are deeply entangled with transformations in scalar relations. What is at stake here is far more than rescaling for rescaling’s sake, because these forms of scalar restructuring are both a medium and an outcome of changes in the means and ends of state action. Hence the need to move beyond ‘thick descriptions’ of state restructuring, policy reforms and new forms of governance to ask what it is that the state is actually doing – why, where and with what political, social and economic implications. The careful mapping of emergent state forms can, and should, be an important part of this process. Certainly, we know quite a lot about what the state – at least in the advanced industrial nations – used to do. In the three decades after the second world war, Keynesian welfare states were the key sites of regulatory functions like income maintenance, macro-economic management and social and spatial redistribution. As this historically and geographically specific form of statecraft has been eroded and rolled back over the last two decades, it has been progressively (if unevenly) displaced not by liberalized markets – as neoliberal mythology has it – but by new forms of statecraft. In the process, new institutional and regulatory landscapes are being created, Progress in Human Geography 27,2 (2003) pp. 222–232

Geography and public policy: mapping the penal state:

Feminist geographers have documented that the spatial entrapment of many women negatively affects their economic opportunities. The experiences of many African-American women, however, suggest that the spatial-entrapment thesis requires refinement. I argue that the spatial-entrapment thesis is based on a problematic conceptualization of the links between space and power in people's daily lives, one that equates immobility with powerlessness and mobility with power. The thesis not only theorizes power as unidirectional (i.e., more power, more mobility), it also masks important differences among women by undertheorizing mobility and immobility relative to social relations other than gender, such as “race.” I argue that, depending on the constellation of power relations, the spatial boundedness of women's lives is a potential resource for, as well as a constraint on, their economic security. The utility of this reconceptualization of the links between space and power for examining the opportunities for and b...

“Race,” Space, and Power: The Survival Strategies of Working Poor Women

The intent of this study is to demonstrate that an understanding of poverty in geographic and historical perspective can powerfully inform the societal debate over the causes of poverty. I argue that conservative theory, attributing poverty to individual deficiencies, such as indolence and low aspirations, falters when the spatial dynamics of poverty in the United States are considered. The changing map of American poverty does not represent an ebb and flow of lassitude among the nation’s population; rather, it reflects the geographic contours of recent transformations in the American political economy. I begin by investigating the changing map of poverty over the last two decades of economic restructuring and political realignment in the United States. I then present five brief case studies to demonstrate that poverty is geographically produced, as alterations in the market and the state emanating from the global and national levels are differentially translated into the social order of locales t...

The Changing Map of American Poverty in an Era of Economic Restructuring and Political Realignment

We examine the geographic dimensions of the feminization of poverty in the U.S. from 1970–80. County-level maps of growth in female-headed family poverty show strongest concentration in the Northeast and North Central regions. Three explanations for these variations are presented: the breakdown of the traditional nuclear family, changes in welfare programs, and the status of women's work. The last is integrated into a broader thesis focusing on sectoral and spatial economic restructuring. We estimate dynamic regression models of growth in poverty among black and white female-headed families, using county-level data, for the entire U.S. and stratified by census region. The results confirm the importance of female-headed family formation across all region and race subfiles. Welfare program changes operate at the national level, but not in accordance with expectations derived from the conservative perspective. The regional restructuring thesis is also supported: concentration of women's employment i...

Restructured Regions and Families: The Feminization of Poverty in the U.S.

A contextual examination of the feminization of poverty

The popular image of U.S. welfare assistance is that it reduces the motivation to work by offering an alternative to employment. This study examines the work disincentive effect of welfare under spatially variant conditions in the labor market and in the public assistance system. The contention is that the decision between work and welfare, and therefore the work disincentive effect of welfare, is constrained by variable opportunities for employment and for obtaining public assistance in different parts of the country. This proposition is examined, using a model of the response of welfare participation to work disincentives, across different labor market and public assistance contexts. Results of an analysis of AFDC recipiency in the states indicate that welfare participation is most responsive to work disincentives in the upper Midwest, lower New England, and on the West Coast, where welfare provision is relatively liberal and the employment structure is not oriented toward the needs of the AFDC...

Janet E. Kodras

Papers

The Changing Map of American Poverty in an Era of Economic Restructuring and Political Realignment

Restructured Regions and Families: The Feminization of Poverty in the U.S.

A contextual examination of the feminization of poverty

Labor Market and Policy Constraints on the Work Disincentive Effect of Welfare

Geographies of power in Political Geography