Geographical imaginaries of the ‘New Europe’ and the ‘East’ in a business context: the case of Italian investors in Slovakia, Romania, and Ukraine1

Sellar, Christian

doi:10.1080/08873630903322254

Cited by 7 publications

(8 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Idealized spaces are descriptions of kinds of places, disseminating general stories about their universal characteristics. Idealized spaces can have positive associations, like being a ‘developed country’ (Seller ), or negative ones, like the ‘ghetto’ (Jaffe ). Positive associations often argue how specific places should remain an idealized kind of space (like a developed country), ‘othering’ different places in the process.…”

Section: Place Idealized Space and Spatial Transformation Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Idealized Space Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Geographers have extensively drawn from this linguistic-representational conception (Bale 1996;Harvey et al 2011;Chang 2010;Cornwell and Atia 2012;Davis 2011;Kothari 2006;Kothari and Wilkinson 2010;McFarlane 2004;Millington 2013;Seller 2009;Slater 1997). Representational conceptions often emphasize how spatial imaginaries create an identity for the people of a place (Bale 1996;Radcliffe 1996).…”

Section: Spatial Imaginaries As Representational Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatial Imaginaries Research in Geography: Synergies, Tensions, and New Directions

2015

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Human geographers have produced a diverse, and growing, body of literature documenting the existence and consequence of spatial imaginaries. However, reviews explaining and evaluating how geographers conceptualize and empirically verify spatial imaginaries, along with the field's tensions and potential directions, are lacking. This article addresses this gap by assessing geography's spatial imaginary literature. I identify shared features across the literature, while arguing geographers have, in fact, verified three different kinds of spatial imaginaries: imaginaries of places, idealized spaces, and spatial transformations. The article recommends researchers better account for these three, both their differences and relationalities. I also explain and evaluate geography's four competing conceptions of spatial imaginaries' ontology. Some geographers see them as semiotic orders, other geographers believe them to be worldviews, yet spatial imaginaries are predominantly viewed as representational discourse. Recently, however, some geographers have argued them to be performative discourses. This article advocates viewing spatial imaginaries as performative; arguing this view – among other things – clarifies the association between spatial imaginaries and material practices while offering new research directions for the field.

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Section: Place Idealized Space and Spatial Transformation Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Idealized Space Imaginariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Spatial Imaginaries As Representational Discoursementioning

confidence: 99%

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Spatial Imaginaries Research in Geography: Synergies, Tensions, and New Directions

2015

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“…The case of Slovakia is not unique. Scholarship on Greek (Kamaras, ; Kalogeresis and Labrianidis, ) and Italian (Sellar, ; 2012) entrepreneurship in CEE has highlighted that foreign investors and expatriate entrepreneurs tend to establish some kind of organization to interface with host governments, partners and labor . These organizations are especially useful to small and medium‐sized enterprises because they allow smaller investors to navigate foreign‐language environments, as well as unfamiliar systems of both spoken and unspoken norms.…”

Section: Supporting Italian Investments In the Slovak State: An Instimentioning

confidence: 99%

Mutating Neoliberalism: The Promotion of Italian Investors in Slovakia before and after the Global Financial Crisis

Sellar

Pástor

2015

Int J Urban Regional Res

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In the context of the literature on 'actually existing neoliberalisms', this article analyzes the policies and services supporting Italian foreign direct investment (FDI) in Slovakia. It identifies a group of organizations, both Slovak and Italian, which shape and deliver neoliberal pro-FDI policies. By studying such an 'investment promotion community' (IPC) before and after the global financial crisis of 2009, and during Italy's prolonged crisis, this article shows both the persistence and adaptability of neoliberal policies and institutions. In so doing, it highlights some of the transnational flows underpinning the 'domestication' of neoliberalism in Slovakia. These findings support recent literature arguing that post-crisis neoliberalism can be interpreted as a stunted Polanyian double movement, in which the state has improved some of its regulatory functions but without questioning the overarching neoliberal principles. Specifically, it shows that FDI policies and the support of Italian investors rest upon a professional community that has not changed much since the 2009 crisis. This community played a crucial role in embedding neoliberal rationalities in Slovakia and supports the persistence of this ideology in the post-crisis environment.

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“…1 Using a case study method (Yin, 2003), the paper uses part of this research: Western Ukraine is excluded because during the research period it was at the margins of Italian outsourcing. Only a handful of Italian manufacturers were working there, there was no major Italian banking group operating in Western Ukraine, and there was only one independent business consultant (for more information on the geography of Italian outsourcing, see Sellar, 2009). The author also collected information at IC & Partners’ headquarters in Italy, and at its branches in Bratislava, Sofia, Timisoara, and Bucharest.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Italian banks and business services as knowledge pipelines for SMEs: Examples from Central and Eastern Europe

Sellar

2012

European Urban and Regional Studies

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There are few analyses available of the role played by finance and business consultancies in post-socialist economic geographies and even fewer on the internationalization of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). Both issues are addressed in this paper with a focus on Italian banks and business services as well as their relationship to SME outsourcing in Central and Eastern Europe. The basic premise of this paper is that a relationship exists between the internationalization of banks, services, and SMEs when analyzed within the framework of the Uppsala Internationalization Process Model. Specifically, banks and services allow the mobilization of resources forming knowledge pipelines between Italian firms and Central and Eastern European regional economies.

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Geographical imaginaries of the ‘New Europe’ and the ‘East’ in a business context: the case of Italian investors in Slovakia, Romania, and Ukraine1

Cited by 7 publications

References 11 publications

Spatial Imaginaries Research in Geography: Synergies, Tensions, and New Directions

Spatial Imaginaries Research in Geography: Synergies, Tensions, and New Directions

Mutating Neoliberalism: The Promotion of Italian Investors in Slovakia before and after the Global Financial Crisis

Italian banks and business services as knowledge pipelines for SMEs: Examples from Central and Eastern Europe

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