Spaces of Globalization: Reasserting the Power of the Local (Perspectives on Economic Change)

Arguments about the globalization of economic relations have become commonplace; part of the everyday diet of social science and public affairs alike. Citing the growth of multinational and transnational corporations, and the enhanced mobility of goods, services and money, proponents of the globalization hypothesis claim that capital now creates new forms of competition beyond the reach of state agencies and nationally organized forms of worker representation. Defined in this manner, globalization becomes a threat to the welfare state, to policies of full employment, and to national living standards. Taking a radically different tack, this timely and far-reaching volume reexamines the underlying assumptions of globalization arguments from a critical perspective. Alongside globalization, authors show, there persist tendencies towards the territorialization and re-territorialization of economic life, as well as the development of new organizing strategies by labor. Probing the complex relationship between the global and the local and investigating the changing dynamics of contemporary firms, labor, capital, and communities, the book also addresses the broader question of the difference that space makes in understanding society.

Kevin R. Cox is Professor of Geography at The Ohio State University. His major interests are in the politics of local economic development and in social theory and geography. His books include Conflict, Power and Politics in the City and Location and Public Problems.