Why do some places prosper while others lag behind? Surely the advent of the Internet and ever newer communications technologies will level the playing field. Not so, argues Mario Polese in "The Wealth and Poverty of Regions"; rather, geography will matter more than ever before in a world where distance is allegedly dead. This provocative book surveys the globe, from London and Cape Town to New York and Beijing, contending that regions rise - or fall - due to their location, not only within nations but also on the world map. Polese reveals how initial concentrations of industries and populations in specific locales often result in minor advantages that accumulate over time, resulting in reduced costs, improved transportation networks, higher productivity, and, not least of all, "buzz" - the excitement and vitality that attracts ambitious people. However, these are attributes that can also be lost. Even big cities can falter. And small places can succeed, given the right conditions. "The Wealth and Poverty of Regions" maps out how a heady mix of size, proximity, technological change, and just plain chance will determine which places become the thriving metropolises of the future, and which become the deserted backwaters of the past. Engagingly written, the book provides insight into the past, present, and future of regions.

This book focuses on the interrelations between nature and humans, in particular on those segments of societies that have been left behind (marginal groups). Nature is both the friend of humans and their adversary, depending on the way people treat and use it. Consequently, the book adopts a wide perspective of marginality: nature that has been marginalized by man (ecological marginality), but also social groups marginalized by politics, economic interests, and value judgements imbedded in culture. Many chapters deal specifically with issues in Nepal, but along with the other chapters with case studies from Southeast Asia and other regions, they demonstrate that the major man-nature problems are the same everywhere and can only be solved by constructive politics through clear regulations, convincing actions and general acceptance.

The turbulence of the current times has dramatically transformed the world's economic geographies. The scale and scope of such changes require urgent attention. With intellectual roots dating to the nineteenth century, economic geography has traditionally sought to examine the spatial distributions of economic activity and the principles that account for them. More recently, the field has turned its attention to a range of questions relating to: globalization and its impact on different peoples and places; economic inequalities at different geographic scales; the development of the knowledge-based economy; and the relationship between economy and environment. Now, more than ever, the changing fortunes of peoples and places demands our attention. Economic Geography provides a stimulating and innovative introduction to economic geography by establishing the substantive concerns of economic geographers, the methods deployed to study them, the key concepts and theories that animate the field, and the major issues generating debate. This book is the first to address the diverse approaches to economic geography as well as the constantly shifting economic geographies on the ground. It encompasses traditional approaches, albeit from a critical perspective, while providing a thorough, accessible and engaging examination of the concerns, methods and approaches of the 'new economic geography'. This unique introductory text covers the breadth of economic geography while engaging with a range of contemporary debates at the cutting-edge of the field. Written in an accessible and lucid style, this book offers a thorough and systematic introductory survey. It is enhanced by pedagogical features throughout including case studies dealing with topics ranging from the head office locations of the Fortune 500, Mexico's maquiladoras to China's investments in Southern Africa. This book also contains exercises based on the key concepts and annotated further reading and websites.

While the connected, international character of today's art economy is well known, the 18th century too had global systems of artistic production and consumption. Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds is the first book to create a global map of the art world of the 18th century. Fourteen case studies from distinguished experts explore both cross-cultural connections and local specificities of art production and consumption in Africa, the Americas, Asia, and Europe. The result is an account of a series of interconnected and asymmetrical art worlds that were well developed in the 18th century. Capturing the full material diversity of 18th-century art, this book considers painting and sculpture alongside numerous prints and decorative objects. Analyzing the role of place in the history of 18th-century art, it bridges the disciplines of art history and cultural geography, and draws attention away from any one place as a privileged art-historical site, while highlighting places such as Manila, Beijing, Mexico City, and London as significant points on a global art map. Eighteenth-Century Art Worlds combines a broad global perspective on the history of art with careful attention to how global artistic concerns intersect with local ones, offering a framework for studies in global art history.

Challenging the main ways we debate globalization, Global Displacements reveals how uneven geographies of capitalist development shape and are shaped by the aspirations and everyday struggles of people in the global South. * Makes an original contribution to the study of globalization by bringing together critical development and feminist theoretical approaches * Opens up new avenues for the analysis of global production as a long-term development strategy * Contributes novel theoretical insights drawn from the everyday experiences of disinvestment and precarious work on people s lives and their communities * Represents the first analysis of increasing uneven development among countries in the Caribbean * Calls for more rigorous studies of long accepted notions of the geographies of inequality and poverty in the global South

Highlighting the contribution of key thinkers from the Third World, "Geopolitics and the Post-colonial" examines the dynamic nature of spatial power and cultural representation. This book is unique in the way it reconceptualizes geopolitical analysis from a post-colonial perspective. A key motif concerns tracing the historical impact of the United States on the societies of the South and especially the Latin South. Throughout the text, ideas and events, interventions and representations are woven together in a critique of the effects of Western power.

How do recent trends toward globalization affect the Caribbean, a region whose suppliers, production, markets, and politics have been globalized for centuries? What is the status of neoliberal development policy in the Caribbean, where the rewards for belt tightening and economic opening have been slow in coming? How have Caribbean policymakers and citizens responded to and resisted the pressures to conform to the new rules of the global economy? By examining these questions through the lens of political economy, this volume explores the interaction among development, trade, foreign policy, the environment, tourism, gender relations, and migration. With its global implications, this book will be invaluable for students and scholars from all disciplines who are concerned with the impact of development and globalization.

This book presents a unified approach to the problem of inequality, combining results from a variety of research fields - the human life cycle, group dynamics, networks, markets, and economic geography. Its main message is that inequality emerges as the natural result of mechanisms operating both in individual human development and in social interaction. It posits that inequality is not an anomalous deviation from a naturally egalitarian social structure; quite to the contrary, inequality is to be expected as part of the human condition. The author states that the growth of inequality, on the other hand, is not a natural law - the level and character of inequality can be affected by collective decisions. This perspective on human inequality has potentially far-reaching consequences both for the political philosophy of inequality and for public policy-making. This book is of interest to a wide interdisciplinary social science readership, including public policy, decision sciences, economic geography, and life course studies.

Doreen Massey was a creative scholar, inspiring teacher and restless activist. Her path-breaking thinking about space, place, politics and economy changed not only geography but the critical social sciences, initiating new ways of seeing, understanding and indeed transforming the world. This collection of commissioned essays, including from Doreen Massey's long-time interlocutors and collaborators, explores both the generative sources and the continuing potential of her remarkably wide-ranging and influential body of work. It provides an unparalleled assessment of the political and social context that gave rise to many of Massey's key ideas and contributions - such as spatial divisions of labour, power-geometries and the global sense of place - and how they subsequently travelled, and were translated and transformed, both within and outside of academia. Looking forward, rather than merely backward, the collection also highlights the many ways in which Massey's formulations and frameworks provide a basis for new interventions in contemporary debates over immigration, financialization, macroeconomic crises, political engagement beyond academia, and more. Doreen Massey: Critical Dialogues is a testament to the continuing relevance of Doreen Massey's work across a wide range of fields, serving as an invaluable companion to the new collection of Massey's own writings, The Doreen Massey Reader published simultaneously and also compiled by the editors.

In the context of great economic turmoil and uncertainty, the emergent conflict between continued globalisation and growing economic nationalism means that a geographical economic perspective has never been so important. An Introduction to Economic Geography guides students through the key debates of this vibrant area, exploring the range of ideas and approaches that invigorate the wider discipline. This third edition includes new chapters on finance, cities and the digital economy, consumption and the environment. Underpinned by the themes of globalisation, uneven development and place, the text conveys the diversity of contemporary economic geography and explores the social and spatial effects of global economic restructuring. It combines a critical geographical perspective on the changing economic landscape with an appreciation of contemporary themes such as neoliberalism, financialisation, innovation and the growth of new technologies. An Introduction to Economic Geography is an essential textbook for undergraduate students taking courses in Economic Geography, Globalisation Studies and more broadly in Human Geography. It will also be of much interest to those in Planning, Business and Management Studies and Economics.

The core tenets of a capitalist system that dominated the world for more than a century are being challenged as never before. Narratives about the failures of capitalism, the greed of the 1 percent, and the blindness of corporations to public need have made their mark and are driving change. These aren't the superficial cosmetic fixes that generated so much cynicism in the past, but a revolution in the way corporations are imagined and run. Tomorrow's Capitalist reveals how corporate CEOs-the ultimate pragmatists-realized that they could lose their "operating license" unless they tackle the fundamental issues of our time: climate, diversity and inclusion, and inequality and workforce opportunity. Responding to their employees and customers who are demanding corporate change, they have taken the lead in establishing the bold new principles of stakeholder capitalism, ensuring that for the first time in more than a half a century it is not just shareholders who have a say in how corporations are run. Alan Murray vividly captures the zeitgeist of the real and compelling dynamic that is transforming much of the corporate world.

This compelling contribution to contemporary debates about the banking industry offers a unique perspective on its geographical and conceptual 'placement'. It traces the evolving links between the two, revealing how our notions of banking 'productiveness' have evolved alongside the shifting loci of banking activity.An original contribution to the urgent debates taking place on banking sparked by the current economic crisis Offers a unique perspective on the geographical and social concept of 'placement' of the banking industryCombines theoretical approaches from political economy with contemporary literature on the performativity of economicsDetails the globalization of Western banking, and analyzes how representations of the banking sector's productiveness have shifted throughout the evolution of Western economic theoryAnalyzes the social conceptualization of the nature - and value - of the banking industryIlluminates not only how economic ideas 'perform' and shape the economic world, but how those ideas are themselves always products of particular economic realities

The Geography of the World Economy provides an in-depth and stimulating introduction to the globalization of the world economy. The book offers a consideration of local, regional, national and global economic development over the long historical term. The theory and practice of economic and political geography provide a basis for understanding the interactions within and among the developed and developing countries of the world. Illustrated in color throughout, this new edition has been completely reworked and updated to take account of recent significant changes in the world economy. A new companion website also accompanies the book, with additional resources for each chapter including multiple choice and short essay questions and links to relevant websites. Figures and tables are also available for download located at www.routledge.com/cw/knox The text is signposted throughout with an glossary of key terms, and is richly illustrated with full-color maps, diagrams and illustrations. It is ideal for upper level university undergraduates and for post-graduates in a variety of specializations including geography, economics, political science, international relations and global studies.

Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) have gained a renewed momentum in recent years, and have come to be viewed by governments and funders alike as a silver bullet for infrastructure development and public service provision. Critiques of the corporate capture of development are well established, yet until now the urgent question of the impacts of PPPs on women's human rights around the world has remained under-explored. This open access book aims to fill the gap, providing new insights from a set of case studies from across the Global South. Bringing an intersectional feminist approach to PPPs, these cases enable analysis that can inform advocacy and activism, whilst challenging dominant narratives and resisting the negative impacts of PPPs on women and historically marginalized communities' human rights. Widely advocating for stronger regulatory frameworks and institutions, and indicating how changes could be implemented, the examples analysed cover a range of sectors including health, energy, and infrastructure from countries including Ethiopia, Peru, India and Fiji. The eBook editions of this book are available open access under a CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 licence on bloomsburycollections.com. Open access was funded by Development Alternatives with Women for a New Era (DAWN).

Creative and cultural industries, broadly defined, are now considered by many policy makers across Europe at the heart of their national innovation and economic development agenda. Similarly, many European cities and regions have adopted policies to support and develop these industries and their local support infrastructures. However this policy-making agenda implicitly incorporates (and indeed often conflates) elements of cultural and creative industries, the creative class and so on, which are typically employed without due consideration of context. Thus a better understanding is required. To this end, this book features eight research papers, split evenly with regard to geographical focus between the UK and continental Europe (the latter covering Spain, Germany, France, Luxemburg and Belgium individually and in combination). There is also a similar division in terms of those focusing primarily on the policy level (the chapters of Clifton and Macaulay, Mould and Comunian, Pareja-Eastaway and Pradel i Miquel, Perrin) and those of the individual creative actor (the chapters of Alfken et al, Bennett et al, Wedemeier and Brown). This book was previously published as a special issue of European Planning Studies.

This book presents a radically innovative view on trade shows as knowledge-rich places, where firms learn through observation and interaction with other economic actors, and as enablers, rather than mere consequences, of globalization. Traditionally seen as marketing tools, trade shows are conceptualised as temporary clusters that facilitate the creation and diffusion of knowledge across geographical distances, even in the age of social media. The book is organized in four parts. Part I lays out the conceptual foundations of the knowledge-based perspective, from the early development of trade fairs to modern-day events. Part II analyses specific global developments, focussing on the trade show ecologies of Europe, North America, and the Asia-Pacific region. Part III investigates differences in the nature of knowledge generation practices across international hub shows, exports shows, and import shows in different industries, and investigates competition between such events. Part IV discusses the implications of a knowledge-based conceptualisation of trade shows. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in economic geography, management, marketing, organization studies, political science, and sociology. It also has practical implications for trade show organisers on how to make their events more competitive through knowledge-based strategies; for industry associations and cities, on how to use these events for collective/place marketing purposes; and for policy makers, on how to use trade shows for export promotion and innovation policies.

In what ways are cities central to the evolution of contemporary global capitalism? And in what ways is global capitalism forged by the urban experience? This book provides a response to these questions, exploring the multifaceted dimensions of the city-capitalism nexus. Drawing on a wide range of conceptual approaches, including political economy, neo-institutionalism and radical political theory, this insightful book examines the complex relationships between contemporary capitalist cities and key forces of our times, such as globalization and neoliberalism. Taking a truly global perspective, Ugo Rossi offers a comparative analysis of the ways in which urban economies and societies reflect and at the same time act as engines of global capitalism. Ultimately, this book shows how over the past three decades capitalism has shifted a gear no longer merely incorporating key aspects of society into its system, but encompassing everything, including life itself and illustrates how cities play a central role within this life-oriented construction of global capitalism.

Focusing on the geographies between the Mekong and the Indus, this book brings objects to the centre of enquiry in the understanding of modern Asian frontiers. It explores how a range of objects have historically been significant bearers and agents of frontier making. For instance, how are objects connected to aspects of state making, social change, everyday life, diplomacy, political and ecological worlds, capital, forms of violence, resistances, circulations, and aesthetic expressions? This book seeks to interrogate and understand the dynamism of frontiers from the vantage point of objects such as salt, rubber, tea, guns, silk scarves, horses, and opium. It attempts to explore objects as sites of encounter, mediation, or dislocation between the social and the spatial. The book not only locates objects in the specificities of frontier spaces, but it also looks at how they are produced, circulated, and come to be intricately linked to a wide range of people, institutions, networks, and geographies. In the process, it explores how objects traverse and come to inhabit multiple historical, cultural, and geographical scales. This book will be of interest to researchers and academics working in areas of history, social and cultural anthropology, Asian studies, frontiers and borderland studies, cultural studies, political and economic studies, and museum studies.

Financial market bubbles are recurring, often painful, reminders of the costs and benefits of capitalism. While many books have studied financial manias and crises, most fail to compare times of turmoil with times of stability. In Bubbles and Crashes, Brent Goldfarb and David A. Kirsch give us new insights into the causes of speculative booms and busts. They identify a class of assets-major technological innovations-that can, but does not necessarily, produce bubbles. This methodological twist is essential: Only by comparing similar events that sometimes lead to booms and busts can we ascertain the root causes of bubbles. Using a sample of eighty-eight technologies spanning 150 years, Goldfarb and Kirsch find that four factors play a key role in these episodes: the degree of uncertainty surrounding a particular innovation, the attentive presence of novice investors, the opportunity to directly invest in companies that specialize in the technology, and whether or not a technology is a good protagonist in a narrative. Goldfarb and Kirsch consider the implications of their analysis for technology bubbles that may be in the works today, offer tools for investors to identify whether a bubble is happening, and propose policy measures that may mitigate the risks associated with future speculative episodes.

Cultural Values and Entrepreneurship aims to broaden and deepen our understanding of which elements of 'culture' influence, or are influenced by, entrepreneurial activity. Differences in entrepreneurial activity among countries, and regions within those countries, are persistent and cannot be fully explained by institutional and economic variables. A substantial number of these differences have been attributed to culture, and it is clear that some socio-cultural practices, values and norms are more conducive to driving or inhibiting entrepreneurial intentions and activity. However, we need to dig deeper into 'how' and 'why' cultural practices, and underlying values and norms, matter in entrepreneurial action, in order to more fully understand the complexities of the processes, without making cross-cultural or cross-national generalisations. Unique cultural, national, and institutional contexts present different practices in terms of opportunities and challenges for driving entrepreneurial action. The contributions in this book consider some of the many different facets of the culture-entrepreneurship relationship, and offer valuable insights to our understanding of the field. This book was originally published as a special issue of Entrepreneurship & Regional Development.

Why do some places prosper while others lag behind? Surely the advent of the Internet and ever newer communications technologies will level the playing field. Not so, argues Mario Polese in "The Wealth and Poverty of Regions"; rather, geography will matter more than ever before in a world where distance is allegedly dead. This provocative book surveys the globe, from London and Cape Town to New York and Beijing, contending that regions rise - or fall - due to their location, not only within nations but also on the world map. Polese reveals how initial concentrations of industries and populations in specific locales often result in minor advantages that accumulate over time, resulting in reduced costs, improved transportation networks, higher productivity, and, not least of all, "buzz" - the excitement and vitality that attracts ambitious people. However, these are attributes that can also be lost. Even big cities can falter. And small places can succeed, given the right conditions. "The Wealth and Poverty of Regions" maps out how a heady mix of size, proximity, technological change, and just plain chance will determine which places become the thriving metropolises of the future, and which become the deserted backwaters of the past. Engagingly written, the book provides insight into the past, present, and future of regions.

Accelerating processes of economic globalization have fundamentally reshaped the organization of the global economy towards much greater integration and functional interdependence through cross-border economic activity. In this interconnected world system, a new form of economic organization has emerged: Global Production Networks (GPNs). This brings together a wide array of economic actors, most notably capitalist firms, state institutions, labour unions, consumers and non-government organizations, in the transnational production of economic value. National and sub-national economic development in this highly interdependent global economy can no longer be conceived of, and understood within, the distinct territorial boundaries of individual countries and regions. Instead, global production networks are organizational platforms through which actors in these different national or regional economies compete and cooperate for a larger share of the creation, transformation, and capture of value through transnational economic activity. They are also vehicles for transferring the value captured between different places. This book ultimately aims to develop a theory of global production networks that explains economic development in the interconnected global economy. While primarily theoretical in nature, it is well grounded in cutting-edge empirical work in the parallel and highly impactful strands of social science literature on the changing organization of the global economy relating to global commodity chains (GCC), global value chains (GVC), and global production networks (GPN).

Globalization is a dominant feature and force in the contemporary world, impacting all areas of business, economics, and society. This accessibly written overview of contemporary capitalism shows how the development of global supply chains, the global division of labour, and, in particular, the globalization of financial markets have become the drivers of this process, and assesses the consequences. Not only does this affect the way firms operate, it also presents challenges for the nation state. The changing geography of capitalism underpinned by an expanding global division of labour and the integration of financial markets has undercut the bordering logics necessary for the maintenance of national systems of production, national varieties of capitalism, and national systems of social protection. Reviewing a range of debates and theories across the contemporary social sciences - varieties of capitalism, financialization, global production networks - the book shows how the insights of economic geography can be usefully brought to bear in understanding current trends, and the changing relationships between global financial markets, multinational firms, and contemporary welfare states. Wide-ranging, accessibly written, and inter-disciplinary, this short book is a most useful guide for researchers and students across the social sciences.

The authors analyze the ways in which places have been transformed through the changes taking place within them - shifts in the nature and quantity of paid and unpaid work, in social and political mobilization, in cultural and aesthetic experience and in the built environment. Using a locality study of Lancaster, they emphasize place as a decisive point in understanding social and economic changes. They consider how successfully concepts of `restructuring' explain the relation between local and global change. The book will be a major contribution to international debates on restructuring and the impact of global change on the locality. It will also be of interest to all social scientists interested in the sociology, economy and human geography of contemporary Britain.