Economic geography Flashcards
We were in the same bed but had different dreams
Quote by the CICC highlights contemporary geography of world development and production. The CICC’s venture with Morgan Stanley in the US reveals the complex global network of production. Over the last millennium it has been important for organisation to expand over the eastern areas due to the resurgence of Asia. Asia accounts for over two thirds of the value of total global production (Lee, 2008). China is now the second largest economy so it is hardly surprising that western investment banks- whose businesses include purchasing and underwriting new shares wish to extend their distribution to the growth areas in Asia.
Why can International relations in production be complex?
Business can be tortuous and complex. The growth of the Chinese economy is extraordinary. To engage with the banks of china pushes western businesses to cope with the social relations that shape the Chinese economic practices and performances which are very different from those in the west.
Economic Geographies as social construction
‘we were in the same bed but had different dreams’ highlights the growing complexity and dynamic processes that involve joint ventures on global scales. Businesses are shaped by their social relations. This is fundamental, for economic geographies are social constructions. They do not arise automatically, nor are they mere physical or material set of flows and transactions. Economic geographies shaped by the emergent but always contested (conflict) set of social relations.
why are Social Relations important
Social relations frame the shared or imposed understandings and values about the very nature, purpose or parameters (Cuba) of economic activity. They provide the interpretative context of economic life, so making sense of, legitimating and giving direction.
Social relations offer a framework of communication and evaluation and so identify notions of normality and rationality.
Social Relations are
the social context in which people make their living and come to understand their relationships to the natural and social world.social relations reflect relations of trust as well as power, relations of control as well as spontaneity.
The most important boundaries of social relations is
social relations of economic life deny the possibility of the autonomous individual reacting mechanically and independently to an external stimuli. Thus, the diversity of different sets of social relations between to global business will represent one of the most significant sources of differentiation and of conflict in a contemporary society.
Overall ‘in the same bed, different dreams’. What does it mean?
To engage in economic performance across two very different sets of social relations involves some profound difficulties. They may be ‘in the same bed’ in the sense they occupy the same place and seek to act as a joint venture but their objectives, norms of practices and measure of practices they bring are at least, fundamentally different.
Production involves work- the intentional application of labour-in the creation of value.
it therefore mobilizes a range of environmental but its not limited merely to the creation of material goods. Value can take very different forms i.e. processes, transactions, ideas and information.
Values and its worth is entirely dependent on social context.
on the social relations of economic life. The value of businesses involved within a culture of individualism will be differentiated from businesses that are more attenuated to collective endeavor with performance targets.
Production and economic life are more generally
social processes shaped by opposing forces (prevailing).This is rarely uncontested and not necessarily locally derived-social relations of value which may be sustained or changed by conscious and unconscious actions from near and far. The formation of a joint venture between Chinese and American banks has the effect of moving China further into a capitalist social relation. But the ruling Chinese communist party formulates regulations that have the intended effect of resisting, or at least restricting, that movement
productions is subject to the norms of evaluation
prevailing within these social relations. the movement of capital and labour- but especially highly mobile capital- in response to geographies of profitability and risk exert a profound influence on the trajectory and geographies of production and production
social constructions of the conditions in which productions take place
social constructs are regulated in shaped in various ways for a purpose. i.e th joint venture between morgan stanley and the china construction bank.
Geography of production is highly complex
Geography of production involves the interconnection of functions and operation by fims and non-firms institutions organised into extended or even global networks of value of creations and transmission.
Geographies are space and path dependant
they reflect the contours and temporal trajectories of past and existing geographies such as the uneven temporal and geographies development of regions like Asia. This spatial and path dependence of geographies of production may constrain future development- but as the changing geography of the world economy demonstrate, it certainly does not determine it.
Production is dynamic
constantly changing in response to technological changes and the demand for the product. it is difficult to define boundaries and define industries as they flow into each other and are perpetually reshaped
