Cultural economic geography and a relational and microspace approach to trusts, rationalities, networks, and change in collaborative workplaces

2003 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. Ettlinger
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Cultural Economic

scholarly journals Positioning and ‘doing’ geographies of dissociation

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Ibert ◽  
Martin Hess ◽  
Jana Kleibert ◽  
Felix Müller ◽  
Dominic Power
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Empirical Research ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Agenda Setting ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
The Social ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Political Economic

Inspired by five commentaries on our forum article, in this response article we elaborate on three points related to geographies of dissociation, namely positioning dissociation, dealing with plurality and moving from agenda-setting to empirical research. In order to assess the validity of critique elaborated in the commentaries, we specify the contribution we seek to make. Geographies of dissociation aim to contribute to a strand of cultural economic geography that has become increasingly interested in the social construction of symbolic value but that still lacks a conceptual vocabulary for addressing the loopholes and missing links in these relational webs and their related geographies. We explain how geographies of dissociation build on pluralism without ignoring epistemological frictions. Furthermore, we discuss how geographies of dissociation might inspire political economic approaches and future empirical research.

scholarly journals Eclipsed by the halo: ‘Helping’ brands through dissociation

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 78-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa Ann Richey
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Ethical Consumption ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
The Real ◽  
Ethical Action ◽  
Short Commentary ◽  
Symbolic Value ◽  
Ethical Obligations

‘Helping’ distant others through ‘Brand Aid’ humanitarianism may be one of the most successful dissociational branding practices of all. In this short commentary, I argue that humanitarian ‘helping’ itself can become a branded commodity, as understood by Ibert et al. (2019). I draw on the dissociational framework to reconsider the concept of ‘brand aid’ as a link between ethical consumption, international development, and the commodification of humanitarianism. In brand aid, the ‘ethical’ action proposed by a consumption choice triggers the ‘helping’ of distant and disengaged Others. This results in reshaping the real or imagined ethical obligations across networks of solidarity, where dissociational symbolic value moves from consumption back to production and is deflected onto suffering Others. In these chains of value, the conditions of production become eclipsed by the halo of helping through consumption. Ethical consumption is becoming less possible, humanitarianism is increasingly commodified, and ‘partnerships’ meant to alleviate global suffering are becoming more complicated than ever before. Cultural economic geography can deepen our knowledge of how maintaining inequalities can produce surplus value through ‘helping’, and how this is embedded in strategic and habitual forms of dissociation from global ills.

scholarly journals Geographies of dissociation: Value creation, ‘dark’ places, and ‘missing’ links

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 43-63 ◽  
Author(s):  
Oliver Ibert ◽  
Martin Hess ◽  
Jana Kleibert ◽  
Felix Müller ◽  
Dominic Power
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Economic Value ◽  
Human Geography ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Relational Work ◽  
The Social ◽  
Negative Links

In this article, we seek to contribute to cultural-economic geography debates on the social construction of economic value. We widen the focus on already well-studied associations between branded commodities and other entities representing nonmonetary values by also considering what we refer to as ‘dissociations’. Dissociation denotes practices of weakening or obscuring negative links between a branded commodity and other entities in order to let the desired associations overrule undesired ones. We highlight the strategic agency behind such dissociations and thus focus on actors’ proactive relational work to prevent negative associations from becoming salient as well as their reactive practices of managing reputational crises. The article situates the study of dissociations in human geography and pays particular attention to the geographies of dissociation along territorial, relational, and topological lines.

scholarly journals A new vocabulary for cultural–economic geography?

2019 ◽  
Vol 9 (1) ◽  
pp. 83-87 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ian Cook
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Value Creation ◽  
Human Geography ◽  
Traditional Practices ◽  
Research Practices ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Creative Practice ◽  
Academic Review

Ibert et al.’s (2019) article is a welcome stimulus to, and a refocusing on, what seem to us to be reasonably well-established problematics and debates. Its arguments seem familiar to us because of our work, since 2011, on the followthethings.com project. From this perspective, their remit for new cultural–economic geography research doesn’t seem cultural enough (what about cultural geography’s recent ‘turn’ towards creative practice?), the publications drawn upon seem unnecessarily traditional (what about geography’s ongoing ‘turn’ towards digital practice and ‘natively digital’ outputs?), and the research practices needed for the work that is outlined seem undeveloped (what can we learn about capitalism’s ‘dark’ places and strategies of association and dissociation from, among others, creative digital practice?). Digital outputs such as followthethings.com risk being bypassed by more traditional practices of academic review, and our insistence that it should ‘stand on its own’ without accompanying academic papers doesn’t, admittedly, help. So, in this response, we have chosen to engage with the anchor article’s main themes and arguments by sketching out our parallel world of ongoing research in which strategies and vocabularies of dissociation feature strongly. What we conclude is that both of our projects could be seen to be working towards the same goal: to assemble a new vocabulary that is better suited for the analysis of this area of cultural–economic geography. We’d like to collaborate on this with Ibert et al. ((2019) Geographies of dissociation: value creation, ‘dark’ places, and ‘missing’ links. Dialogues in Human Geography.) and anyone else who’s interested.

Relocating Regulation in Montana's Gold Mining Industry

10.1068/a3430 ◽  
2002 ◽  
Vol 34 (5) ◽  
pp. 867-881 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rob Krueger
Keyword(s):  
Economic Geography ◽  
Economic Activity ◽  
Gold Mining ◽  
Mining Industry ◽  
Economic Structure ◽  
Economic Regulation ◽  
Access To Resources ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Physical Transformation ◽  
Permitting Process

In this paper I seek to make a preliminary link between the discursive representation of the ‘environment’ and the regulation of economic activity. The contemporary Montana gold mining industry belies accounts that economic regulation can be situated purely in concepts of structures and institutions. In the 1990s, the Montana gold mining industry was fundamentally transformed in the absence of concomitant changes in the economic structure of the industry or in the institutions of regulation. Indeed, the changes in the efficacy of the Montana gold mining economy can only be explicated by adding a discursive account of regulation. In particular, I link a regulationist account of reregulation with the post-structural sensibilities found in cultural economic geography. This analysis, which focuses on how nature is represented in the mine-permitting process, illustrates that how we perceive ‘environment’ in particular places and times can influence access to resources and their subsequent physical transformation.

scholarly journals The limits to openness: Co-working, design and social innovation in the neoliberal city

2019 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 747-765 ◽  
Author(s):  
Colin Lorne
Keyword(s):  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Economic Geography ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Social Innovation ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Urban Economic ◽  
Working Space ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Set Up

This article examines the emergence of ‘open’ urban economic projects that promote the transformative potential of social innovation and civic enterprise. By putting the burgeoning literature on an open paradigm of work and innovation within cultural economic geography into dialogue with scholarship on open cities, I problematize the inherently progressive framing of openness. The paper makes two contributions. First, it emphasises how open narratives encourage entrepreneurial communities that manifest as individualization-masked-as-collectivism. It argues efforts to design new spaces of social innovation through the blurring of boundaries simultaneously reproduce social and material exclusions. Second, it demonstrates how the championing of open ecosystems of social innovation intersects with austerity localism. New modes of state withdrawal are facilitated through co-creation, crowdfunding and social enterprise. Illustrated through research into a co-working space in London set up in response to the 2007–2008 economic crisis, I reveal the geographies of exclusion, enclosure and exploitation embedded in the pursuit of openness. Against the claims of enabling conditions for progressive civic futures, I establish the limits to openness whereby such ideas are easily assimilated into the processes of neoliberalisation that they seek to reject.

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