The Dictionary of Human Geography (102 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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industrial geography
A sub branch of eco nomic geography concerned with describing and explaining the spaces, places and geo graphical circulation of industry. Interest in the discipline emerged in the early twentieth century, driven partly by theoretical argu ments developed in economics. The history of industrial geography has been punctuated by moments of illuminating theory and novel methods, but the disciplinary norm tended to meticulous, empirically descriptive case stud ies of one firm, industry or industrial region or another. Iconic male dominated industries such as sawmilling, iron and steel, and auto mobile assembly were the primary subject matter; the field was thus marked by masculinism, reflecting the gender of the discipline?s practitioners and their substantive interests (a version of ?toys for boys?), and generally uncritical methods. (NEW PARAGRAPH) In 1910, economic geographer George Chisholm drew upon the German location theorist Alfred Weber to explain ?the seats of industry?. In the late 1950s and much of the 1960s, industrial geographers rediscovered Weber and other members of the German location school (see Location tHeory), and turned to neocLassicaL economic theories of rationaL cHoice and maximizing behaviour (Smith, 1981a [1971]) to explain industrial location. Propelling this disciplinary intellec tual move was a combination of the Quantita tive revoLution in human geography, which emphasized the importance of rigour and abstraction, and the influence of regionaL science, which applied neoclassical theory to the space economy, including to the optimal location of industry (Isard, 1956). However, even at the time, it was unclear exactly how many industrial geographers were convinced of the need for this more formal theorization, and most of the practitioners lacked the neces sary skill set to apply it. Within a decade, neoclassical formalism was criticized by: (1) a behavioural approach (following economists such as Herbert Simon), which stressed sub optimal outcomes (?satisficing?) rather than maximization (Pred, 1967, 1969: see decision MAKing); and (2) an institutional approach known initially as the ?geography of enterprise? and later ?corporate geography? which treated the firm as a complex entity, like an organism, that evolved, adapted and struggled in a larger competitive setting, was often not rational, and whose inner workings defied formalization (McNee, 1960). (NEW PARAGRAPH) The high water mark of the field was from the late 1970s to the end of the 1980s, when disciplinary intellectual ferment matched fer ment on the ground. Not only was the intel lectual environment changing, so too was the very object of investigation. It was then that seemingly entrenched Western industrial re gions were beset by gales of deindustriaLiza tion, industrial restructuring and corporate hollowing out, which both destroyed and cre ated anew. Hitherto bread and butter indus tries of Western economies, such as iron and steel, shipbuilding and textile manufacturing, were subject to severe economic trauma as firms went bankrupt, moved offshore, or turned lean and mean. Millions of traditional manufacturing jobs were lost. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Events on the ground produced new theory and new methods in industrial geography, and even began to challenge the discipline?s mas culinism. Scholars began to turn to radicaL geograPHy. In the UK, Doreen Massey?s watershed book, Spatial divisions of labour (1984), provided original theoretical explan ation and trenchant empirical analysis: in the USA, Allen Scott?s (1988b) transactions costs approach to the firm was the exemplar. Both resulted in impressive empirical work: Massey?s led to the British LocaLity project (Cooke, 1989), and Scott?s to case studies based in California, especially on the vibrant high tech and fiLm industries. Both bodies of work were influenced by poLiticaL economy, as well as a new methodological sensibility, criticaL reaLism (especially true in the UK, where critical realism became the unofficial metHodoLogy of the discipline). Codified and circulated primarily by Andrew Sayer (1992 [1984]), critical realism suggested in dustrial geography proceed methodologically by ?intensive?, on the ground, case studies of specific industries and their geographical sites. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Not everyone accepted ?critical realism?, however, with critics complaining it was only another version of the old disciplinary sin of empiricism and was producing geographic ally parochial studies. Moreover, there was also an underlying clash between the UK version of industrial geography emphasizing capitalism?s decline and fall, and the US (Cali fornian) version highlighting capitalism?s vital ity. However, the UK and US versions came together in the late 1980s through reguLation tHeory, and which set the sub disciplinary intellectual agenda for the following decade. Developed to explain why capitalism survived in spite of Marx?s best prediction of its demise, regulation theory introduced ideas of fordist and post fordist (see also fLexiBLe accumuLation) modes of production, and the fraught transition between them. What the distinction made clear was that while British industrial geographers had been documenting the disintegration of an older Fordist industry, US industrial geographers had been examin ing the formation of a brand new one, post Fordism. They were different sides of the same Janus face of industrial capitalism (Tickell and Peck, 1992). (NEW PARAGRAPH) In unpacking the geographical character of post Fordism during the 1990s, industrial geographers rediscovered the idea of an iNdus triaL district, the propensity of firms in the same sector to cluster spatially, and to be tightly interlinked (and first recognized by the early twentieth century English economist Alfred Marshall). In turn, that idea was joined to ?embeddedness?, a concept associated with the economic anthropologist Karl Polanyi, im plying an inseparable relation between the economic and the sociocultural. It was pre cisely this inseparability, argued industrial geographers, that characterized and accounted for the success of post Fordist industrial dis tricts such as Silicon Valley, Hollywood, the Third Italy and Baden WÂÂ81rttemberg. They flourished because their firms were so closely embedded within the cultural institutions, re lations and forms of life found in those places (Amin, 2000: see also cultural economy). (NEW PARAGRAPH) An interest in gLobaLizatioN has recently defined the field, with investigations into both new geographical patterns of production and new forms of industrial organization that make them possible. Peter Dicken?s Global shift (2007) is the exemplary text (first pub lished in 1988, and now in its fifth edition). The reverse side of deindustrialization has been, and continues to be ever more so, ram pant industrialization in the global South: cer tainly the post 1979 market reforms in China, but also in India, South East Asia, Central and South America and Mexico (Dicken, 2007). Industrial geography is conceptually still coming to grips with the enormous task of representing, analysing and explaining the fundamental industrial spatial transformation that is occurring. A novel conceptual vocabu lary and theoretical framework is being forged, as well as new methods, which have included commodity cham analysis, global networks, actor network theory, the analytics of traNSNatiONaL corporations and global eth nography. All have contributed, but indus trial geography remains a work in progress, as is its object of enquiry. tb (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Dicken (2007). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
industrial organization
Do a small number of large firms (oligopoly) or a large number of small firms dominate an industry? Why is this and what difference does it make for in dustrial geography, corporate behaviour, and economic and social outcomes? These are the questions of industrial organization. Oligopoly may arise from such factors as economies of scaLe or collusion. The result may be spatial concentration, high profits and high wages. Competitive industries may be geographically dispersed, labour intensive, low margin and low waged. Industrial organization may change due, for example, to technological shifts or the internationalization of markets. Understanding its causes and consequences illuminates the economic landscape. esch (NEW PARAGRAPH)
industrial revolution
A transformation in the forces of production, centring on but not confined to the circuit of industrial capital (see capitaLism). Generally attributed to Blanqui (1837), but popularized in Britain by Arnold Toynbee, the term originally applied to a set of dramatic changes occurring in the British economy c.1760 1840, when the old eco nomic order was ?suddenly broken to pieces by the mighty blows of the steam engine and the power loom? (Toynbee, 1884). Subsequent analyses identified British ?indus trial revolutions? both earlier (in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries) and later (towards the end of the nineteenth century), while the term has also been invoked to describe changes taking place across Western Europe and North America in the nineteenth century. This questions the unique nature of the classic industrial revolution, portraying it as simply another peak on the long term waves of innov ation and development (see Hudson, 1992: cf. kondratieff cycLes). The gradualist perspective is reinforced by ideas of proto industriaLization and by econometric stud ies. The former emphasize the continuities between modern factory based manufacturing and earlier systems of domestic production; while the latter highlight the growth of industry earlier in the eighteenth century, and question the extent and pace of structural change in the British economy before 1840. On top of these, models of dual economies which counter poise a small technologically dynamic sector with a much larger traditional sector have further qualified the revolutionary nature of change. (NEW PARAGRAPH) As with other aspects of modernization, industrialization was temporally and spatially uneven: there were periodic crises of capital accumulation and circulation, and an increas ingly heterogeneous space economy. Differ ent products and production systems were increasingly associated with particular parts of the country, creating a new regional geog raphy that was based on industrial specializa tion (see Langton, 1984; Langton and Morris, 1987; Hudson, 1989). There were many dif ferent routes to industrialization: in its timing, causes and manifestation, the industrial revo lution varied from place to place. Much em phasis has been placed on the availability of raw materials (particularly coal) in determin ing both the course and geography of industri alization (Langton, 1979; Wrigley, 1988). Linked to this is the role of transport in facili tating the exploitation of mineral resources, integrating regional economies and thus pro moting industrial growth. More recent ana lyses have highlighted the importance of a range of sociocultural factors in which eco nomic processes were embedded (see cul tural turn). These influenced access to credit and capital, determined labour mobility and discipline, and shaped attitudes to entre preneurship (Gregory, 1990). Linked to this, neo institutional approaches have stressed the role of networks (of people, credit, infor mation and towns) in effectively integrating regional economies and in shaping the indus trialization process (Wilson and Popp, 2003; Stobart, 2004). Ultimately, sustained develop ment was contingent on the establishment of a critical mass of interdependent industries, ser vices, infrastructures and communications. The varied composition of such industrial complexes and the different production sys tems on which they were based, led to regional variations in the experience of industrializa tion. Indeed, Langton (1984) argues that as regional economies became ?more specialized, more differentiated from each other and more internally unified?, they found expression in coherent regional cultures. Others, though, have highlighted the varied nature of produc tion systems, work practices, and social and cultural identities within regions: most were characterized by a symbiotic relationship between factory and domestic or workshop based production (Berg, 1994). Recent cri tiques argue that these debates are too narrow in their focus, ignoring non industrial forms of capitalism and the wider global/imperial context of industrialization. Most influential is the ?gentlemanly capitalism? thesis which, in broadening the geographical bounds of analysis, argues that Britain?s economy and overseas policy were driven not by the growth and needs of industrial capitalism, but by landed, mercantile and financial interests (Cain and Hopkins, 2001). Historical geog raphers have yet to engage fully in these debates, however: largely inspired by post colonialism, work on empire has had little to say about economic processes and the global geographies of nineteenth century British industrialization. (NEW PARAGRAPH) For individuals and communities, as well as for regions and nations, the industrial revolution had profound social and cultural repercussions (Berg and Hudson, 1992). Experiences of work were transformed as production was centralized and control was removed from the individual. Resistance to such change was occasionally dramatic, sur facing in a variety of protests across industri alizing districts that often targeted new labour saving machinery (Gregory, 1982, 1990; Hudson, 1989). More generally, the contours of the new political economy of industrial capitalism were sharply contested as the established relationships of a so called moral economy were replaced by those based on the market. Of particular significance was the way in which the transformation of the LAbOUR process was central to the emergence of class consciousness. Yet the extent to which such social identities transcended local and regional allegiances remains an area of considerable debate. Moreover, the new social relations of production were struc tured by gender as well as class. Many of the new machines were operated by women and children, creating a new sexual division of labour in which men?s work was characterized as more skilled and (consequently) better paid (Hudson, 1992; Berg, 1994). Nonethe less, the earnings of all members of the house hold were vital in determining standards of living, conventionally seen as falling, then ris ing, as real incomes were first undermined, then augmented by industrialization. Living conditions and social relations were also shaped by the transformation of the urban milieu, which was both cause and conse quence of industrial development (see Stobart, 2004). Towns grew both in number and size, with those in the industrializing dis tricts experiencing the most rapid expansion. This caused a rapid deterioration in living conditions in many towns, as the construction of houses, and physical and social infrastruc ture, failed to keep pace with demographic growth. It also led to a restructuring of Britain?s urban geography and hierarchy, and with it the geopolitical relationship between centre and periphery. London remained dom inant as the focus of commercial, financial and political activity, but debates and policies were, for a brief time in the mid nineteenth century, shaped by experiences in and the concerns of Britain?s industrial towns, most notably Manchester. jst (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Berg (1994); Gregory (1990); Langton (1984). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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