Reinterpreting the Geography of Accumulation: The Global Shift and Local Restructuring

Abstract

The authors argue that the nation is not the natural space for the circulation and reproduction of capital, and that this is vitally important in understanding the restructuring of economic activity since the mid-1970s. Rapidly increasing global integration of production, realisation of profit, and the circulation of financial capital have been recognised widely. Yet little consensus has developed about cither the theoretical or empirical impacts of globalisation on changing spatial divisions of labour within developed capitalist countries. The authors outline a model of globalisation in which an increasingly internationalised process of accumulation is expressed in, and reproduced through, the changing social relations of production which remain bounded territorially by nation-states. The model is built up from a synthesis of some apparently disparate theoretical positions on capitalist restructuring crises taken by researchers during the 1980s. These include theories of the internationalisation of capital and those dealing with restructuring within nation-states after the now much-debated transition out of the regime of accumulation which produced the long boom after 1950. Some of these theories have focused too narrowly on the circuit of production to the exclusion of the increasingly complex world trading links and with a severe underestimation of the importance of global financial capital during the 1980s. Methodological implications of the model are investigated and the role of the state in a globally integrated economy is illuminated.

Transborder Networks and Geogovernance: A Comparison of the Great South China Region and the Bohai Rim Region

“…Whatever form globalition or transnationalisation may take, its underlying force is the capitalist imperative which enforces the chain of value creation to extend across national boundaries of accumulation systems (Appelbaum, et.al., 1995: Fagan and Le Heron, 1994: Fasenfest, et. al., 1997: Gereffi, 1994: Hirst and Thomson, 1994.…”

The Evolution of Modern Demography and the Debate on Sustainable Development

“…3. Some regulationist studies of advanced industrialized countries include Aglietta (1976), Moulaert and Swyngedouw (1989), Fagan and Le Heron (1994), Peck and Miyamachi (1994), Haughton and Browett (1995), and Peck and Tickell (1995). A few recent studies of economic restructuring in Eastern European and East Asian countries have also adopted the regulationist perspective (e.g.…”

New Geographies of Accumulation, Globalising Firm Networks and the Role of the Auckland Region in the Australasian Economy

“…While internationally the post-1945 long boom was characterised by significant developments in the circuit of production capital (Fagan and Le Heron, 1994), New Zealand featured particular structural constraints, by virtue of a strong interventionist state, which constricted accumulation to national development. Options for economic actors during this era were thus limited, with respect to how the spheres of trade, production and finance developed.…”

“…This has placed a premium on taking 'the rest of the world seriously' (Thrift, 1985) by developing geographical knowledge that reveals the situated, contextual and embedded nature of regions. Conceptual and theoretical work by Australian and New Zealand economic geographers has explored how in an increasingly globalising world economy new geographies of accumulation accompany restructurings in the spheres of trade, production and finance and in organisations, industries and territories (e.g., Britton and Le Heron, 1991;Fagan, 1990;Fagan and Le Heron, 1994;Le Heron, 1991, 1993Pritchard and Fagan, 1999). Internationally recent conceptualisations emphasise the rise of globalising networks 1 (GNs), especially those S173 associated with various dimensions of global commodity chains, global value chains and global production networks (e.g., Coe et al, 2004Coe et al, , 2007Coe et al, , 2008Dicken, 2007;Dicken et.al., 2001;Fold and Pritchard, 2005;Hughes and Reimer, 2004), the connectivity of clusters into processes operating at a range of geographic scales (e.g., Eradyn, 2002), and geographically informed theories of the firm (Dicken and Malmberg, 2001;Taylor and Asheim, 2001).…”