Volume 51, Issue 1

Herbert Spencer, William Hearn and Alfred Marshall on social evolution and spatial patterns of the Economy. In contemporary regional economics and economic geography, Alfred Marshall is appreciated as the first economist who described and theorized economic clusters. However, his work has been one-sidedly reduced to his economic rational explorations of the emergence and success of industrial districts. Delving deeper reveals that Marshall was deeply influenced by evolutionary thinking. For him, districts were an organizational pattern arising out of human evolution. Marshall was also influenced by two other earlier scholars: Spencer and Hearn. The founder of socio-evolutionary theory, Herbert Spencer, had already used the spatial allocation of production activities as a important criteria to characterize societal development. William Hearn had integrated the socio-evolutionary terms of organization into economics in order to describe the macro-economy. Alfred Marshall borrowed their concepts and worked them into the wider framework of social science. Due to this, he gained insights into the contingency and the path dependency of spatial processes.

Trade fairs as focal intersections in the global economy. Trade fairs have long been the focus of studies in business administration, investigating the importance of such events as marketing and sales instruments. In contrast, only few studies have analysed the nature of information and communication flows during these gatherings and studied them as platforms for processes of learning and knowledge creation. This paper argues, that the roles of trade fairs in these processes differ according to sector, market focus and spatial reach. Particularly international flagship fairs have become central nodes which connect the global economy and provide participating firms with access to new technologies, market trends and potential business partners. They bring together agents from all over the world and create temporary spaces of presentation and interaction, or temporary clusters. This paper develops a typology of trade fairs regarding their potential to support processes of knowledge creation and innovation. Further, it analyses the interaction patterns during seven such events in Germany.

The spatial restructuring of the (West)German advertising industry. Labour markets as local anchors of the creative economy? The spatial restructuring of the German advertising industry is examined from the beginning 1980s onwards focusing on the shifting centre of gravity of the national industry from the post-war centres Frankfurt am Main and Düsseldorf to Hamburg. From this particular case this paper attempts to derive general conclusions for the spatial organization of the creative economy. The rise of Hamburg was based, on the one hand, on a general change of the global industry towards a more creative and entertaining advertising style. On the other hand, this process was transferred to the national level by a small group of pioneer agencies based in Hamburg, managing to access artistic segments of the labour markets and integrating them into a business service activity. The final result was the emergence of a dynamic and turbulent local labour market in Hamburg which turned into a pole of attraction and incubation for advertising firms. These findings underpin the general argument that the spatial “fixation” of the creativity and knowledge based economy is mediated primarily through the labour markets of professionals. However this does not imply that the organization of the economy merely follows the desires of highly qualified workers. The mediation rather occurs through the multiple uncertainties inherent to knowledge intensive labour markets which - as the final idea - can be most appropriately processed in a metropolitan context.

Technological absorptive capacity of local and foreign firms in Southeast Asia. Examples from Singapore, Penang and Bangkok. The article reflects on the conceptualization of absorptive capacity (AC) and distinguishes between potential and realized AC. Next it analyses potential AC in an exploratory manner for a) all surveyed and b) only R&D-performing local and foreign firms. Using general indicators such as qualification of the workforce and training expenditure as well as R&D-specific indicators such as R&D-expenditure, -personnel and -cooperation, it finds evidence that in general foreign firms tend to possess a higher absorptive capacity while the opposite is true for R&D performing firms.

Labour market development in the logistics sector. Importance, dynamics and (de-)regulation of the distribution economy. Deregulation and innovation in commercial and industrial transportation, warehousing and distribution led to the rise of a modern logistics sector. Both for Germany and the US scholars have argued that expanding logistics services help to compensate for the decline in manufacturing employment. An examination of national employment statistics to the contrary shows logistics employment to be in absolute (Germany) or relative (US) decline. While the share of logistics jobs requiring higher qualifications seems to increase in both countries, many lower skilled activities seem to be subject to productivity increase and/or (international) relocation. If dynamics in the logistic sector contribute to the decline of manufacturing employment in various ways, employment in this sector overall does not contribute to the rising share of employment in the service sector.

Regional logistics changes. Locational dynamics and strategies in physical distribution - a transatlantic comparison. The paper discusses locational dynamics of freight distribution firms at the regional level, as a consequence of changes in logistics network configuration and related requirements for placing distribution centres. The empirical basis is provided by two case studies, carried out in Germany and in Northern California (USA). Both cases are subject to comparative analysis, regarding location choice and context, corporate strategy and regional policy and planning.

This paper discusses the spatial dynamics in the Le Havre - Hamburg range. By applying existing spatial models on port system development, changes in the range’s port hierarchy are discussed. It is demonstrated that the existing port hierarchy in the range is unlikely to be structurally challenged in the foreseeable future and that port authorities and market players are designing strategies in view of better meeting the market requirements in terms of port services provision, logistics integration and hinterland penetration.

Network enterprises of the global economy? The role of proximity for the internationalisation of air freight forwarders. Customer requirements, new technologies and the deregulation and liberalisation measures of the last 15 years have had a significant influence on increasing globalization of the air freight forwarding industry. On the basis of empirical studies of the airports Frankfurt am Main/Germany and Amsterdam/The Netherlands, the study examines the impact of embeddedness of foreign companies in regional networks. It will be shown, that most of the companies do not need to be embedded in foreign networks, because of the global extension of the costumers and a high degree of organizational standardization. In fact the example of international cooperation among medium sized airfreight forwarders of different countries rather shows that global networks can be linked successfully, independent from the regional level.

Never ending resource conflicts? The political economy of African economies of violence. Since years there is an ongoing debate whether resource scarcity or resource curse is a causal factor for conflict and war especially in central and western Africa. The argument in this paper starts with a review of both bodies of literature. Though resource scarcity is and will be an important underlying factor for situations which may lead to militant crisis, it is argued that empirical evidence supports assumptions based on the paradox of the plenty. But it is argued that statistical and comparative studies are perhaps misleading because important aspects of war economies, especially their embeddedness within international networks, are neglected. The phrase “violent nodes in global networks” is used here and illustrated in respect to the war economy of the Democratic Republic Congo to analyze forms of local-global interplay. In this way it becomes obvious that localized forms of violence are part of global commodity chains and neoliberal restructuring of the world economy. Solutions for this kind of conflicts presuppose either strong transnational norms or ongoing military interventions by the UN.

African countries with significant natural wealth have often reaped limited rewards and have experienced underdevelopment, corruption, political instability, and in some cases, violent conflict. As a result, the so-called ‘resource curse’ hypothesis has received much attention in recent years. It has been suggested that diamonds played a key role in fuelling the brutal civil war in Sierra Leone during the 1990s, an issue that has given rise to a significant literature on ‘blood diamonds’. However, as Sierra Leone emerges from a decade of destruction, field-based research undertaken in the Eastern Province suggests that diamonds could actually provide an important impetus for post-war reconstruction. Following a review of the ‘resource curse’ literature and its relevance to Sierra Leone, two important initiatives in the country’s diamond economy are then examined: the Kimberley Process Certification Scheme (KPCS) and the Diamond Area Community Development Fund (DACDF). The paper argues that whilst such initiatives are undoubtedly significant steps in addressing a number of key issues, such strategies need to be managed carefully and future policies must be based on a detailed understanding of relationships between diamond mining and broader development strategies and priorities.

Who governs Colombia? Socio-economic and social-structural consequences of the economies of violence. An enormous number of publications about the different types of organized violence in Colombia already exists (drug-mafia, guerilla, paramilitaries). This article focuses on the macro- and microeconomic consequences of these criminal organizations in rural and urban areas as well as in the corresponding spatial-structural components, especially in the regional and local interaction fields/“controlled” areas. For a long time the aims of the guerilla-organizations have been oriented by Marxist ideologies. Meanwhile they can be interpreted in the sense of the “new” war economies.

Ruling favelas - the relationship between state, drug trafficking and favelas in Rio de Janeiro. Through the deployment of Michel Foucault’s concept of governmentality, this paper sets out to discuss the question of how irregular settlements (favelas) in Rio de Janeiro are governed by complex and intertwined relationships of different actors. It reveals that the current oppressive regime is based on techniques of power derived from colonialism, the military regime and a bourgeois conception of the city. Simultaneously, it is based on traditional technologies of the self that emerged out of the historical need of favela residents to govern themselves.

Political violence and state failure in Fiji. Between 1987 and 2006 Fiji experienced four coups in which governments were overthrown by their own military forces. Many observers attribute political violence in Fiji to ethnic tensions between indigenous ethnic Fijians and descendants of persons of Indian origin, who immigrated to Fiji mainly between 1880 and 1920. While ethnicity contributes to political instability in Fiji, the existence of additional cleavages based on class, kinship and centre-periphery dichotomy creates a rather complex picture. The coups are also offsprings of conflicts within the Fijian society, conflicts about the loss of political and economic power in the course of modernization, experienced by traditional chiefs of tribal confederacies, as well as conflicts caused by marginalization of indigenous people living in peripheral areas. External actors like Australia, New Zealand and the USA add another layer to the conflicts. During the socalled Cold War the Pacific islands were nuclear testing grounds for the USA, France and Great Britain as well as a strategic region for the US-American Pacific fleet. Since 9/11 the USA as well as Australia and New Zealand consider political instability in the Pacific island region as a breeding ground for international terrorism and thus a threat to their national security.

Geographies of violence. In his Hettner-lecture, Michael Watts asserted that violence might be understood as ‘struggle over geography’. Surprisingly, geography is largely missing in the contemporary debates on the incidence of civil wars, the dynamics of war economies and “new” wars. These debates have produced universalistic, nomothetical statements about the causes and dynamics of contemporary war economies and have focused on analyzing the economic incentives of combatants and fighters, thereby neglecting the spatial contextualities and institutional ambiguities of war economies. In this paper, we suggest to bring geography back in focus and develop a conceptual framework that studies geographies of violence using three analytical concepts: governable spaces, spaces of agency and subjectivities. These categories are linked with the politics of scale. We illustrate this framework with examples from the Sri Lankan and Sierra Leonean civil wars. Our studies suggest that geographies of violence produce complex entanglements of survival and war economies that are manifested in the spatio-temporal dynamics of different actors’ vulnerabilities and agencies.

Styles of scientific thought in German economic geography. Current changes since 1970. In the recent history of economic geography in Germany since 1970, there have been periods of heterogenous and competing styles of thought and one extended period characterised by a dominant style, i.e. a particularly German version of the spatial approach (Raumwirtschaftslehre). This paper begins with an attempt to view these shifts in the context of changes in society and the generations of scholars. Today, German economic geography is shaped by the increasingly dominant impact of ideas from sociology, although important stimuli for economic geography are also coming from the field of economics. The author argues in favour of retaining the economic aspects of economic geographical thought while remaining open to other styles of thought.