The increasing ‘climate crisis’, along with other major global environmental threats, has led in the 2020s to an ever more pressing set of research and policy debates about the urgent need to transition to a much more environmentally sustainable global economy. However, the nature of this ‘green economy’ remains unclear, contested and spatially uneven (Jones and Ström 2024). Moreover, it has become very apparent that economic geographical research into the nature of green economic development, and in particular its unevenness, interconnectedness and evolution in different industries, can make a crucial contribution to both understanding and policies in relation to a sustainable economic transition. Economic geographical work is widely engaged in this respect in relation to different national and regional contexts, different industrial sectors and different governmental and regulatory context in which a global green economy is developing.

This session seeks to bring together a wide range of economic geographical research into the green economy, and aims in particular to develop conceptual, empirical and methodological dialogue between the many areas of the economic geography and related social sciences disciplines that are engaging in this important field. A core goal is to foster further discussion about how economic geography can place itself at the heart of debates on the green economy, and how different areas of the sub-discipline might productively interact.

In that respect, contributions that are conceptual, empirical or methodological are welcome which engage with the green economy broadly defined. These may include, but are not limited to:

• Theoretical understandings of the green economy

• Geographies of green industries

• Uneven development of the green economy

• Global, regional and national regulatory context for green economic development

• Green industrial or sector development

• Green finance, production networks and regional clusters

• Geographies of green innovation

• Management, leadership and intercultural understanding in the green global economy

• Greenwashing and the political geographies of green economic development.

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Patrik Ström (patrik.strom@hhs.se) and Andrew Jones (Andrew.jones2@brunel.ac.uk) by 8 January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts by 10 January 2025, presenters must submit their abstracts through the conference registration website of the GCEG 2025 by 15 January 2025.

Researching (Desirable) Green Hydrogen FUTURES in the South

Session organiser: PD Dr Festus Boamah (Universität Bayreuth, Germany)

The current generation ‘sits on the pin’ in its obsession with foreknowing, studying, and governing potentially multiple (undesirable planetary) futures. The challenge of predicting with exactitude the particularities of low-carbon futures dominates the longstanding sustainability debates. The validity of knowledge mediating the pursuit of the contingent low carbon futures at stake, comparative epistemologies of desirable low-carbon futures, and how those multiple futures may be contested, embraced, and negotiated in different settings is least explored. Uncertainties, trajectory, and new geographies of the green hydrogen transition (i.e. continued depencies on Western systems of modernity, demands for cheaper freshwater, land, and solar resources, and other predatory resource extraction practices in the south) are no aberrations from previous global green deals (e.g., biofuels land grabbing) that caused system-wide and socio-ecological issues in the South. What appears novel is the emerging international hydrogen partnerships intended to reduce power asymmetries in the north-south hydrogen development cooperation (Tunn et al., 2024) and a more substantial commitment to potential ethical issues (Altenburg et al., 2023; da Silva Hyldmo et al., 2024) and ‘de-risking schemes’ by states in the south (Gabor & Sylla, 2023) to ensure desirable hydrogen futures in the south. That said, resource governance, management approaches, and epistemologies of energy justice are premised on specific assumptions about desirable futures grounded on precedence and aspirations. Furthermore, critical energy justice scholarship advocates insurrectionary approaches by ‘provincialising’ Western knowledge, confronting ‘quintessentially colonial institutions’ (e.g., the state) in energy transitions and privileging alternatives to Western-centric, statist, and capitalist development (Hesketh, 2023; Dunlap & Tornel, 2024; Tornel, 2024). Global hydrogen governance is, nonetheless, steered by the advanced northern countries seeking to gain autonomy in hydrogen imports and cost-effective industrial applications while decarbonising their fossil fuel-dependent industries (Tunn et al., 2024; Eicke & De Blasio, 2022). The ‘steering process’ signals a return to continued dependencies on Western technologies, epistemologies, expertise, and funding (see Gabor & Sylla, 2023; Eicke & De Blasio, 2022), potentially eclipsing Southern voices, agency, and epistemologies as usual.

The collective consciousness to enact ‘desirable’ outcomes of green hydrogen and illuminate the pathway for a decolonised energy transition process suggests many possible futures. First, the transition process may set precedents by granting the prospective hydrogen exporters some self-determination capacity in this north-south development cooperation (as they feed the ‘needier’ global north with ‘greener energy’) and potentially compelling the advanced northern countries to configure their foreign policy actions towards the partner countries more favourably. Second, despite the thoughtful and proactive ‘risk-averse’ strategies forged by the state in the south, the state’s capacity to ‘discipline private capital into pursuing green industrialisation goals’ and render governable foreign capital in the state–capital relationship remains questionable (Gabor & Sylla, 2023, p. 1172). Nonetheless, strong state capacity and the inevitable mediating role of advanced Western countries in the green hydrogen transition reproduce Western-centric capitalist development in the global south and thus appear to be at odds with the post-development and anti-/decolonial schools of thought, shaping current (critical) energy justice scholarship (Dunlap & Tornel, 2024; Tornel, 2024). Third, green hydrogen literature is less explicit on the conceptualisation and impacts of the diverse, multiple, and contingent green hydrogen FUTURES in the global south. Affordances of such a future-oriented perspective are evident by the costeffectiveness of the ‘blue hydrogen’ regime built around sunk investments in fossil infrastructure, competencies, and other vested interests, making it difficult to be displaced by the nascent and uncertain alternative – i.e., green hydrogen energy. Also, the green hydrogen transition is inextricably connected to the uncertainties-riddled fossil energy regime (Vezzoni, 2024). A promising hydrogen research agenda should prioritise previewing green hydrogen FUTURES in the south by interrogating comparative epistemologies of energy justice, privileging cross-disciplinary dialogues and drawing on case studies from southern countries with unique energy transition regimes, geopolitics, and state-making configurations. These crucial questions are worth exploring:

➢ Does the green hydrogen energy transition signal the return to continued dependencies on Western development orthodoxies and a new wave of ‘land grabbing’ in the south?
➢ How should we situate the green hydrogen transition studies in critical energy justice scholarship?
➢ Or what should a decolonised green hydrogen transition in the global south look like and afford?
➢ At what geographical scale should ethical commitments to the socio-ecological injustice of green hydrogen transition be framed and implemented?
➢ Could the emerging global green hydrogen governance reconfigure longstanding asymmetrical power relations in the North-South Development Cooperation toward just outcomes or risk perpetuating subtler forms of neo-colonialism?
➢ Which (practical) knowledge base can guide global south governments in pursuing self-determination in the green hydrogen transition?
➢ Or how can the global south render green hydrogen futures governable and more cost-competitive relative to the established blue hydrogen regime?

A few scientific journals have expressed interest in this Themed Issue proposal. Immediately after the panel session, I aim to edit a Themed Issue collection with papers shedding light on multiple, divergent, and contingent Green Hydrogen FUTURES in the South, including (but not limited to) geopolitics of green hydrogen infrastructure, green finance, green hydrogen education, decolonising hydrogen energy transitions, the role of state-private partnerships, and comparative epistemologies of energy justice. You may submit your 250-word abstract via Festus.Boamah@uni-bayreuth.de by 10 January 2025. Notifications of abstract acceptance to the session will be sent by 13 January 2025. Contributors may submit their accepted abstracts via the conference registration page here (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by 15 January 2025.

REFERENCES
Altenburg, Tilman, et al. Green Hydrogen–Support for the Just Transition? 2023. da Silva Hyldmo, Håkon, et al. “A Globally Just and Inclusive Transition? Questioning Policy Representations of the European Green Deal.” Global Environmental Change, vol. 89, 2024, p. 102946.
Dunlap, Alexander. “Conclusion: A Call to Action, toward an Energy Research Insurrection.” Energy Democracies for Sustainable Futures, Elsevier, 2023, pp. 339–48.
Dunlap, Alexander, and Carlos Tornel. “Pluralizing Energy Justice? Towards Cultivating an Unruly, Autonomous and Insurrectionary Research Agenda.” Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 103, 2023, p. 103217.
—. “Was Postdevelopment Too Much? Autonomous Struggle, Academic Coloniality & the Radical Roots of the Pluriverse.” Globalizations, 2024, pp. 1–24.
Eicke, Laima, and Nicola De Blasio. “Green Hydrogen Value Chains in the Industrial Sector— Geopolitical and Market Implications.” Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 93, 2022, p. 102847.
Gabor, Daniela, and Ndongo Samba Sylla. “Derisking Developmentalism: A Tale of Green Hydrogen.” Development and Change, vol. 54, no. 5, 2023, pp. 1169–96.
Hesketh, Chris. “Indigenous Resistance at the Frontiers of Accumulation: Challenging the Coloniality of Space in International Relations.” Review of International Studies, 2023, pp. 1–20.
Tornel, Carlos. “Decolonizing the Political Economy of Energy Transitions: New Energy Spaces and Pluriversal Politics in Mexico.” Review of International Political Economy, 2023, pp. 1–25.
Tunn, Johanna, et al. “Green Hydrogen Transitions Deepen Socioecological Risks and Extractivist Patterns: Evidence from 28 Prospective Exporting Countries in the Global South.” Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 117, 2024, p. 103731.
Vezzoni, Rubén. “How ‘Clean’ Is the Hydrogen Economy? Tracing the Connections between Hydrogen and Fossil Fuels.” Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, vol. 50, 2024, p. 100817

Critical geoeconomics of the green and blue transition

Session organizers: Carlo Inverardi-Ferri & Felix Mallin

Acute recognition of the economic implications of global environmental change has spurred a surge in policy discourse framing ecological challenges in competitive geoeconomic terms (Goldthau, 2021; Sabyrbekov et al., 2023). This emerging geoeconomic lens serves both as a framework for geostrategic action in interstate rivalries and as a heuristic for analyzing power struggles over terrestrial and maritime resources in the Anthropocene (Inverardi-Ferri, 2024; Mallin et al., 2024). Common narratives intertwine Malthusian anxieties about resource depletion with optimistic visions of technologically-driven “clean” or at least “cleaner” futures, blending fears of scarcity with fantasies of green and blue economic restoration (Mallin & Barbesgaard, 2020). However, such narratives frequently portray degraded ecosystems as mere collateral damage amenable to technological fixes, perpetuating established imaginaries of capitalist production (Barca, 2020; Inverardi-Ferri, 2021) and marginalizing alternative actors and histories beyond the guiding paradigms (Lawreniuk, 2021; Smith, 2012).

As national and supranational policy agendas increasingly (re)incorporate geoeconomic elements akin to different episodes of the 20th Century (Mallin & Sidaway, 2023), strategic concerns about ecological threats and critical material control are fuelling a new discourse characterised by geopolitical posturing and geoeconomic insulation. This shifting landscape of interests and coalitions, driven by the green transition, is significantly reconfiguring power relations (Van de Graaf et al., 2020) and partially animated by the rise of new actors (Blondeel et al., 2021). As such, it constitutes a process that raises challenging questions for economic and political geography. While recent critical literature has begun to reassess how these discursive shifts are institutionalising specific material practices, the session calls for deeper engagement with the “geoeconomics of the green and blue transition” within economic geography. We invite theoretical, empirical, and methodological contributions that explore themes including, but not limited to:

Critical geoeconomics, anti-geoeconomics of the green and blue transition;
Natural resources and geoeconomic landscapes of extractivism, transportation, energy production and waste;
Geoeconomics of labour regimes and environmental access and control;
Value chains, production networks and the geoeconomics of decoupling;
Primitive accumulation, new enclosures and geoeconomic contestation at different scales;
Emerging economic paradigms and the green/blue energy transition
Green finance, geoeconomics, and the climate crises
Political ecologies and historical geographies of geoeconomics
Informal and illicit geoeconomic spaces

Informal queries can be addressed to c.inverardi-ferri@qmul.ac.uk and felix.mallin@unifr.ch.

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) to c.inverardi-ferri@qmul.ac.uk and felix.mallin@unifr.ch by 10th January 2025. Accepted abstracts will need to be submitted through the conference website by 15th January 2025.

References

Barca, S. (2020). Forces of reproduction: Notes for a counter-hegemonic anthropocene. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Blondeel, M., Bradshaw, M. J., Bridge, G., & Kuzemko, C. (2021). The geopolitics of energy system transformation: A review. Geography Compass, 15(7), e12580. doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12580

Goldthau, A. C. (2021). The tricky geoeconomics of going low carbon. Joule, 5(12), 3078-3079. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joule.2021.11.012

Inverardi-Ferri, C. (2021). Towards a cultural political economy of the illicit. Progress in Human Geography, 45(6), 1646-1667. doi:10.1177/03091325211013378

Inverardi-Ferri, C. (2024). An anti-geoeconomics of climate change. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0), 0308518X241265589. doi:10.1177/0308518×241265589

Lawreniuk, S. (2021). Climate change is class war: Global labour’s challenge to the Capitalocene. In N. Natarajan & L. Parsons (Eds.), Climate Change in the Global Workplace (pp. 172-188). Abingdon: Routledge.

Mallin, F., & Barbesgaard, M. (2020). Awash with contradiction: Capital, ocean space and the logics of the Blue Economy Paradigm. Geoforum, 113, 121-132. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2020.04.021

Mallin, F., & Sidaway, J. D. (2023). Critical geoeconomics: A genealogy of writing politics, economy and space. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, n/a(n/a). doi:https://doi.org/10.1111/tran.12600

Mallin, F., Sidaway, J. D., Cheng, H., & Woon, C. Y. (2024). Introduction: Explanation, critique and critics of geoeconomics. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 0(0), 0308518X241280007. doi:10.1177/0308518×241280007

Sabyrbekov, R., Overland, I., & Vakulchuk, R. (2023). Climate Change in Central Asia: Decarbonization, Energy Transition and Climate Policy. Cham: Springer Nature.

Smith, S. (2012). Intimate Geopolitics: Religion, Marriage, and Reproductive Bodies in Leh, Ladakh. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 102(6), 1511-1528. doi:10.1080/00045608.2012.660391

Van de Graaf, T., Overland, I., Scholten, D., & Westphal, K. (2020). The new oil? The geopolitics and international governance of hydrogen. Energy Research & Social Science, 70, 101667. doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2020.101667

New Perspectives on the Geography of Innovation

Session organisers: Johannes Glückler, LMU Munich, and Richard Shearmur, McGill Montreal

Because knowledge – not information – has proven to be sticky to place, the geography of innovation has been an exciting area of academic research as well as a practical challenge for organizations and policymakers. Innovation refers to the introduction of novelty within a particular domain. Traditionally, researchers and policymakers have focused on technological and industrial innovation driven by private sector actors, emphasizing corporate R&D, the economic advantages of agglomeration, and the disproportionate innovation activity within metropolitan areas. This focus has produced numerous original approaches, including mapping patent activity, tracing patent citations to reveal technological trajectories, and constructing innovation networks based on co-inventor relationships. However, the emphasis on technological innovation has overshadowed the broader dimensions of varied geographies of innovation.

Recently, scholars have turned their attention to alternative perspectives on innovation, highlighting the role of peripheries – both geographical and social – in innovation processes and examining the influence of social institutions and relational infrastructures on diverse geographies of innovation. They have broadened the scope of innovation research to include alternative types such as social, organizational, design, and service innovations. Additionally, they have embraced normative frameworks for innovation, emphasizing sustainable and responsible approaches. This shift has also reframed innovation from being solely about products to encompassing processes, including open, collective and inclusive innovation. Furthermore, researchers have expanded the range of actors studied, incorporating public sector entities, community organizations, and municipalities. They have explored innovation occurring in and during periods of social controversy, such as illicit innovations, offering a lens into unconventional contexts of innovation. These emerging perspectives provide fertile ground for challenging conventional assumptions and exploring new concepts, conditions, patterns, mechanisms, and dynamics in the geography of innovation.

We invite papers that challenge, explore and discuss existing and new perspectives of the geography of innovation as well as their constructive implications for theories, models, methods and empirical research agendas, including, among others:

New data and methods needed/available to develop original research designs in a geography of innovation that include alternative types and processes of innovation.
The role of social institutions and networks in enabling, driving or constraining which types of innovation and in which geographical contexts,
The role of peripheries, both geographical and organizational, and their relation to centers regarding types and processes of innovation,
The role of social controversies, social movements, and regulatory resistance in ambiguous innovation contexts,
The role of and impact of approaches focusing on responsible, sustainable, inclusive and social innovations for regional development,
The relation between actors/types/processes/understandings of innovation and regional development
The conditions, practices and policies needed to forge different types of innovation in specific geographical contexts.

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) to the session organisers (johannes.glueckler@lmu.de; richard.shearmur@mcgill.ca) by Friday 10 January 2025. We will send notifications of acceptance to the session by Monday 13 January. You are asked to register to the conference via the conference website https://gceg.org/ by 15 January.

From Risk to Resilience: The Impact of Disasters on Globalized Regional Economies

Organizers: Thomas Neise (Osnabrück University) & Franziska Sohns (Anglin Ruskin University)

The increasing frequency and intensity of disasters – both natural and man-made – pose significant challenges to globalized regional economies. In our interconnected world, local events often ripple across borders, disrupting economic structures, regional development, and socioeconomic dynamics at multiple spatial levels. Disaster events can compromise regional assets, including critical infrastructures, which are essential integrating regions into the global economy. This degradation not only threatens regional economic prosperity but may also harm the reliability of local suppliers. For multinational enterprises, disruptions in their supply of raw materials or intermediate goods can lead to lost revenue and diminished investment. However, disasters may also act as catalysts for change, prompting regions to adapt and potentially embark on more sustainable development paths.

The session will explore the evolving socio-spatial dynamics resulting from disaster risk mitigation and adaptation processes, highlighting their potential to reshape the globalized economy, e.g. through reconfigured global value chains, transformed global production networks, or enhanced regional resilience. At the same time, the session will address the ‘dark side’ of these processes, examining how failures in mitigation and adaptation can lead to economic decline, environmental degradation, or increased vulnerability.

We invite theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions that explore innovative and promising avenues in economic geography with links to hazard and disaster research. Submissions may include quantitative or qualitative analyses, conceptual frameworks, or interdisciplinary perspectives. We particularly encourage case studies and comparative research that provide insights into the socio-spatial dynamics of disaster risk and regional adaptation.

Contributions may address, but are not limited to, the following themes:

Spatial dimensions of disaster exposure, adaptation, and mitigation
Economic and organizational resilience in the face of disasters
Disaster recovery and pathways to economic transformation
Spatial impacts of de-investment, de-coupling, or de-risking activities
Reshaping global supply chains, global value chains, or global production networks
Environmental innovations and knowledge transfer in disaster contexts
Socioeconomic inequalities arising from disaster exposure and recovery
Policy and governance responses to regional disaster management

The meeting will also serve as the first networking platform for interested colleagues who want to participate in the application for a joint international research project (e.g. Horizon Europe) on the cross-border effects of disasters in a globalized world.

Please submit your abstract (max. 250 words) to Thomas Neise (thomas.neise@uos.de) and Franziska Sohns (franziska.sohns@aru.ac.uk) by January10, 2025. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by January 13. Accepted contributions must be submitted via the conference website by January 15, 2025.

Towards multi-dimensional geographies of entrepreneurial ecosystems

Session Organizers

Susann Schäfer (University of Heidelberg), susann.schaefer@uni-heidelberg.de

Andreas Kuebart (Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space | Brandenburg Technical University), andreas.kuebart@leibniz-irs.de

Session Abstract

While the debate on entrepreneurial ecosystems (EE) has strongly emphasized the regional dimension of entrepreneurial support, recent contributions have emphasized the need for a more solid conceptualization of the spatial dimension of the EE model (Schäfer, 2021; Harris & Menzel, 2023). Two aspects that question the regional paradigm of EEs have been highlighted in recent research: On the one hand, contributions have stressed the trans-local linkages between regional entrepreneurial ecosystems have been highlighted recently (Wurth et al. 2021; Schäfer & Kuebart, 2024). Since EEs are no “islands of entrepreneurship” (Kuebart & Ibert 2019), linkages are formed through various mechanisms such as transnational migration of entrepreneurs and experts (David & Schäfer 2022), entrepreneurial events and accelerator participation (Kuebart 2022), cross-border financial investments (Balachandran & Hernandez 2019), and other forms of internationalization practices. On the other hand, EEs have been conceptualized as places. Contributions in this literature have developed the notion of EEs as places (O’Connor et al. 2018). Other contributions have rather focused on the notion of places in EEs, for example in the context of third places (Credit et al. 2024), or place-based forms of entrepreneurial support such as collaborative working spaces (Gao & Psenner 2024) or Open Creative Labs (Lange & Schmidt 2020; Kuebart 2023).

For the proposed session we invite contributions that engage with the spatial dimensions of entrepreneurial ecosystems, including but not limited to the following topics:

Trans-local communication and knowledge exchange
Trans-local dimensions of digital entrepreneurship
Migration and migrant entrepreneurship
Role of incubators, accelerators, and collaborative workspaces
Foreign (venture capital) investments in entrepreneurial ecosystems
International events and conferences as temporary clusters
Entrepreneurial ecosystems and international communities of practice
Governance of trans-local linkages in entrepreneurial ecosystems
(New) data, methodologies, and analysis of the geographies of EEs

Abstract Submissions

Please email your abstracts (max. 250 words) to the organizers by January 10, 2025

References

Balachandran, S., & Hernandez, E. (2019). Mi Casa Es Tu Casa: Immigrant Entrepreneurs as Pathways to Foreign Venture Capital Investments. Academy of Management Proceedings, 2019(1), 19263. https://doi.org/10.5465/ambpp.2019.19263abstract

Credit, K., Kekezi, O., Mellander, C., & Florida, R. (2024). Third places, the connective fibre of cities and high-tech entrepreneurship. Regional Studies, 58(12), 2225–2240. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2023.2297083

David, A., & Schäfer, S. (2022). Spatial perspectives on migrant entrepreneurship. ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography, 66(3), 131–136. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2022-0033

Gao, C., & Psenner, E. (2024). Transforming the Creative and Social Entrepreneurial Ecosystem: The Broker Roles of Rural Collaborative Workspaces. Societies, 14(6), 81. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc14060081

Kuebart, A. (2023). Open creative labs as functional infrastructure for entrepreneurial ecosystems: Using sequence analysis to explore tempo-spatial trajectories of startups in Berlin. Research Policy, 51(9), 104444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.respol.2021.104444

Kuebart, A., & Ibert, O. (2019). Beyond territorial conceptions of entrepreneurial ecosystems: The dynamic spatiality of knowledge brokering in seed accelerators. Zeitschrift Für Wirtschaftsgeographie, 63(2–4), 118–133. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2018-0012

Lange, B., & Schmidt, S. (2020). Entrepreneurial ecosystems as a bridging concept? A conceptual contribution to the debate on entrepreneurship and regional development. Growth and Change, September 2019, grow.12409. https://doi.org/10.1111/grow.12409

O’Connor, A., Stam, E., Sussan, F., & Audretsch, D. B. (2018). Entrepreneurial Ecosystems: The Foundations of Place-based Renewal. In A. O’Connor, E. Stam, F. Sussan, & D. B. Audretsch (Eds.), Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (Vol. 38, pp. 1–21). Springer International Publishing. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63531-6_1

Schäfer, S., & Kuebart, A. (2024). A typology of trans-local knowledge circulation between entrepreneurial ecosystems. In J. A. Cunningham, M. Menter, C. O’Kane, & M. Romano (Eds.), Research Handbook on Entrepreneurial Ecosystems (pp. 279–293). Edward Elgar Publishing. https://doi.org/10.4337/9781800378988.00021

Schäfer, S. (2021). Spatialities of entrepreneurial ecosystems. Geography Compass, 15(9), 1–10. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12591

Wurth, B., Stam, E., & Spigel, B. (2021). Toward an Entrepreneurial Ecosystem Research Program. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 104225872199894. https://doi.org/10.1177/1042258721998948

Assetization as Social-Spatial Governance

Session organisers:

Kean Birch, York University, Canada

Callum Ward, Sheffield University, UK

Anetta Proskurovska, York University, Canada

Session Abstract

The socio-spatial organization, coordination, and governance of diverse economic geographies are increasingly constituted by assetization, understood as the transformation of things into assets. Assets are both resources and property, generating income or other benefits for their owners/controllers while frequently valued on the basis of discounting those future benefits. As a concept, assetization helps geographers to identify a broad set of counter-parties who are held liable for ensuring the future returns expected by asset owners/controllers; this includes financial liabilities of investors, as well as the socio-spatial liabilities entailed in the transformation of our economic geographies through the extension of the asset boundary to a growing array of things, relations, practices, knowledges, and more. For example, asset management – by corporate or government sectors – can easily lock people into liability for costs which have been spatially and temporally displaced.

In order to address these issues, we invite submissions that deal not only with the transformation of things into assets but also the governance implications of this socio-spatial transformation. Submissions might address questions like:

How are assets used to organize, coordinate, and govern different economic geographies?
How are places, spaces, and scales reconfigured through the transformation of things into assets?
What practices, knowledges, and logics underpin this governance via assetization?
How is governance via assetization being contested and challenged in different places?

Abstract Submissions: please email your abstracts (max. 250 words) to the organisers (kean@yorku.ca and Callum.Ward@sheffield.ac.uk) by Friday 10th January 2025.

Economic Geographies of Cryptocurrency and Blockchain

Organizers: Chris Muellerleile (Swansea University) and Matt Zook (University of Kentucky)

Geographers’ engagement with cryptocurrencies and blockchain technologies has grown considerably over the last several years, but the contribution of economic geographers is still relatively small (although see Wyeth et al. 2024, Zook & Blankenship 2018, Zook & Grote 2020, Rella 2020). With the incoming U.S. administration set to embrace crypto capital and prioritize crypto friendly regulation, it is an apt time for economic geographers to deepen our analysis.

To date geographers have investigated constitutive relationships between crypto and neo-colonialism and exploitation of marginalized communities (Crandall 2019, Howson et al 2024), libertarian urbanism (Lynch & Munoz-Viso 2024), enclave and island geographies (Simpson & Sheller 2022), and energy production and consumption (Adkins et al. 2021), to name just a few. But with a few exceptions (Zook & Grote 2020, Rella 2020), geographers have not explored the gradual absorption of cryptocurrencies into variegated formations of the state finance nexus, startup financing, its role in digital platform dis- and re-intermediation (Lai 2020) or its targeting by Silicon Valley venture capital. In addition we also see an urgent need for more research on the relationship between cryptocurrencies and financial subjectivities, geopolitical positioning, techno-industrial planning, online and offline identities, constructed precarities across race/gender/class, and gendered disparities in its promotion and effects.

While not meant to be an exhaustive list, we are particularly interested in papers that interrogate the relationship between cryptocurrencies and/or blockchain technologies and:

The state-finance nexus and variegated forms of new state capitalism
Monetary, (central) banking and financial geographies
Financial infrastructures and systemic financial risk
Value theory
Urban and regional (digital) growth regimes
Subjectivity, gender dynamics, identity, ‘bro’ culture
Integration into the practices and precarities of everyday life
FinTech and platform (dis)intermediation
Global financial networks
Capitalist natures and political ecologies
Libertarian, neoliberal, and anarcho-capitalist ideologies
Resurgent nationalism, national competitiveness, geopolitics, and the ‘Second Cold War’
Reworkings of material space and governance via blockchains systems (DAOs, automated contracts)

Please send expressions of interest along with a title and abstract to Chris Muellerleile (Swansea University) and Matt Zook (University of Kentucky) by January 9, 2025.

c.m.muellerleile@swansea.ac.uk

zook@uky.edu

Agri-food systems under pressure – Governance and other challenges for a sustainable and inclusive agri-food transformation

Session Organizers: Amelie Bernzen (University of Vechta), Alexander Follmann (University of Cologne), Marit Rosol (University of Würzburg)

The interconnected global crises, also known as the polycrisis, which include climate change, biodiversity loss, geopolitical tensions, conflicts, wars, and the lingering effects of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic, underscore the urgency of transforming agri-food system at global, national and regional/ local scales. The polycrisis is having direct impacts on agri-food value chains, threatening food and nutrition security as well as income and livelihoods for producers and other stakeholders. At the same time, the dominant productionist paradigm that structures global agri-food systems is a significant contributing factor to some of these crises, above all the massive loss of biodiversity. In this already dire situation, it is of great concern that current responses to the polycrisis of governments, agri-food corporations, producers and consumers are endangering the still rather limited transformative pathways towards more sustainable and equitable food systems. Such responses include, for example, the suspension of environmental and sustainability targets in EU agricultural policies, reshoring debates, and inflation-related changes in consumer behavior leading to declining sales of organic food.

While shocks to the system (such as the COVID-19 pandemic) may initially provide a window of opportunity for rethinking and reorganizing food systems at different scales, we are currently witnessing an at least partial reversal of the already inadequate transformation efforts. Furthermore, while Free Trade had been the tenet of neoliberal economic policy for decades, there are indications that a new phase of protectionism may be emerging. The confluence of these factors, coupled with the ascendance of populism and authoritarianism, the widening urban-rural divides, rising social inequality and polarization, and the uncertain and uneven effects of sweeping technological change, poses significant challenge to the realization of sustainable and inclusive food futures. In this context, the governance of agri-food systems at all levels and by a range of actors – including regulatory efforts and economic and trade agreements at the sub-national, national, supra-national and global scale; governance of value chains and production networks; as well as governance of alternative food networks, producer or producer-consumer organizations – is of great importance.

With a specific focus on, but not limited to, governance questions, in this session we therefore we aim at:

1) an examination and critical analysis of the current state of agri-food system development, related to inherent issues and contradictions, the polycrisis, and existing transformation efforts, and

2) an investigation of possible ways forward regarding different scales and actors, including new forms of economic governance, novel political and regulatory approaches, alternative economic practices and initiatives, and other strategies.

We welcome theoretical and/ or empirical presentations from various economic geography perspectives addressing these issues.

Submission Guidelines:

Please submit presentation title, abstract of up to 250 words and contact details of all presenters to Amelie Bernzen (amelie.bernzen@uni-vechta.de), Alexander Follmann (a.follmann@uni-koeln.de) and Marit Rosol (marit.rosol@uni-wuerzburg.de) by 5^th January 2025.

We will send notifications on the acceptance of abstracts by Friday 10 January 2025. Authors will need to submit abstracts via the GCEG conference website and pay the registration fee by the conference deadline of 15 January 2025.

For general information on the conference see: https://gceg.org/

Intersections of Global Financial Networks and Global Digital Technology Networks

Session Organizers: David Bassens (Vrije Universiteit Brussel) & Dariusz Wójcik (National University of Singapore)

Amid a wider shift toward platform capitalism, platformization is also the name of the game in finance, with financial institutions digitizing and becoming ever-more data centered (Hendrikse et al., 2018; Langley and Leyshon, 2021). As a result, financial institutions and centres are becoming increasingly reliant on digital technology owned and operated by Big Tech firms (Keenan et al., 2022). This dependence is both about the platform technologies themselves, but also about the underlying infrastructural layer of data centres, fibre-optic cables, internet exchange points, etc. (Amoore, 2018). Such infrastructural dependence may result in the extraction of value from finance to the realm of Big Tech, or at least the emergence of a growing sharing of rents among finance and tech fractions of capital. And it may also further embroil finance in geopolitical strife among rivalling states growing and defending their technological spheres of influence (Bassens et al., 2022)

The existing Global Financial Network (GFN) framework has considerable power in analysing the spatial structure supporting the construction and coordination of financial markets (Haberly & Wójcik, 2022). However, while GFN scholars have paid increasing attention to the rise of FinTech (Lai and Samers, 2021), the underlying layer anchored in Big Tech infrastructures and technologies has received less attention. With the maturation of platform capitalism comes the need to acknowledge the autonomous role Global Digital Technology Networks (Bassens et al., 2024) from which the intersections with the world of finance can be studied. This session aims at exploring the mutual reliance of finance and technology through the lense of intersecting GFNs and GDTNs.

Research questions can include (but should not limit themselves) to the following list:

What issues of financial stability, competition, cybersecurity, and data privacy are prominent concerns in emerging cloud geographies?
Which cloud providers do banks use? What happens with financial data? Where is it stored? What is the role of data centres in future financial centre trajectories?
What are geopolitical and geoeconomic concerns at the intersections of finance and digital technology?
What are the energy and environmental implications of growing data storage and processing needs, especially with increasing use of AI in both back-office and customer-facing applications?
How do investment banks and the wider complex of business services remain crucial gatekeepers of financial market as they underwrite Big Tech stock? How are Big Tech firms financialized?
What is the role of offshore finance and offshore jurisdictions in the interactions of Global Financial Networks with Global Digital Technology Networks?
And what new networked hierarchies between tech valleys and financial centres do we see emerging?

We are also interested in giving a platform to more conceptual or theoretical papers that reflect on the value of the imbrication of existing and novel frameworks such as GFNs, GDTNs, and others.

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to David Bassens (david.bassens@vub.be) and Dariusz Wójcik (dwojcik@nus.edu.sg) by Friday 10 January 2025. We will send notifications on the acceptance of abstracts by Monday 13 January 2025. Authors will need to submit abstracts via the GCEG conference website and pay the registration fee by the conference deadline of 15 January 2025. Please feel free to contact us for any queries about the session.

References

Amoore, L. (2018). Cloud geographies: Computing, data, sovereignty. Progress in Human Geography, 42(1), 4-24.

Bassens, D., Hendrikse, R. (2022). Asserting Europe’s technological sovereignty amid American platform finance: Countering financial sector dependence on Big Tech? Political Geography, 97(1), 1-10.

Bassens, D., Pažitka, V., Hendrikse, R. (2024). Banking in the cloud: Mapping Big Tech’s Global Digital Technology Networks. Regional Studies, 1–15.https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2024.2391483.

Haberly, D., Wójcik, D. (2022). Sticky Power: Global Financial Networks in the Global Economy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Hendrikse, R., Bassens, D., Van Meeteren, M. (2018). The Appleization of finance: Charting incumbent finance’s embrace of FinTech. Finance and Society, 4(2), 159-180.

Keenan, L., Monteath, T., Wójcik, D. (2022). Financial discipline through inter-sectoral mergers and acquisitions: exploring the convergence of Global Production Networks with the Global Financial Network. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 54(8), 1532-50.

Lai, K. P. Y., Samers, M. (2021). Towards an economic geography of FinTech. Progress in Human Geography, 45(4), 720-739.

Langley, P., Leyshon, A. (2021). The platform political economy of FinTech: Reintermediation, consolidation and capitalisation. New Political Economy, 26(3) 376-388.

FinTech and Geographies of Everyday Life

Session organisers:
Karen Lai, Durham University
Gordon Tan, Singapore University of Technology and Design

The rapid rise of financial technologies (FinTech) is transforming the ways that individuals and households engage with financial services, impacting everyday financial practices, and reconfiguring relationships with financial institutions. These range from digital wallets, mobile payment apps and expense tracking tools to robo-advisors, buy-now-pay-later schemes and micro-insurance. The governance and regulation of digital financial services has become more challenging as they engage in the same economic spaces as financial institutions but without similar regulatory oversight. There are increasing concerns about digital access and financial scams with the growth of digital finance. The intersections of gender, race, age and other social dimensions of difference are also informing research and policy concerns about financial inclusion, predatory practices and algorithmic discrimination.

This session invites papers that critically examine the intersections of fintech and everyday lives. Research themes could include (although are not limited to):
·      The role of fintech in shaping new forms of financial inclusion or exclusion in various demographic and geographical contexts;
·      The impacts of fintech platforms and services on household financial practices and debt management.
·      The spatialities of fintech adoption and resistance, including urban-rural and Global North-South divides;
·      The evolving relationships of fintechs with traditional financial institutions and informal economies in everyday finance;
·      The cultural and affective dimensions of fintech use, including trust, anxiety, care or play;
·      The role of fintech platforms in new or changing political subjectivities;
·      The challenges posted by fintech companies operating outside of traditional financial regulatory frameworks and implications for individuals and household financial behaviour and outcomes;
·      The role of fintech in promoting state/market-led narratives on desired financial subjects and economic outcomes;
·      The role of social media in influencing consumer adoption and attitudes towards fintech apps and services.

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Karen Lai (karen.lai@durham.ac.uk) and Gordon Tan (kuosiong_tan@sutd.edu.sg) by Tuesday 7 January 2025. We will send notifications on the acceptance of abstracts by Friday 10 January 2025. Authors will need to submit abstracts via the GCEG conference website and pay the registration fee by the conference deadline of 15 January 2025. Please feel free to contact us for any queries about the session.

Mapping the future of the global energy transition: Economic geographies of green hydrogen

Session organiser:

Linus Kalvelage, University of Cologne, Germany

Green hydrogen is seen as a cornerstone of the energy transition, helping to decarbonize industrial sectors that cannot be directly electrified, such as steel, chemicals, aviation, and shipping (IEA 2023) Industrialized economies of the global North, seeking to decarbonize their industries, aim to ramp up the green hydrogen economy by creating heavily subsidized markets and implementing large-scale infrastructure projects (Walker & Klagge 2024).

Here, the green hydrogen industry is seen as a driver for green path development in lagging regions (Njøs et al., 2024), often connected with powerful spatial imaginaries (Hine et al., 2024). However, with limited domestic renewable energy production potential, industrialized economies often seek to meet their growing demand for “green” energy through hydrogen imports from the global South (Kalvelage & Walker 2024, Kalvelage & Tups 2024). In Global South regions with advantageous production factors such as large land availability, high solar irradiation, and strong winds, large-scale green hydrogen investments have raised hopes for green industrialization (Scholvin 2024). While recent project announcements in the Global South have sparked debates about energy equity and power imbalances (Fladvad 2023), others have highlighted the possibility of achieving sustainable development goals (Altenburg et al., 2023). As it stands, it is unknown whether large-scale green hydrogen production facilities will reproduce structural dependencies or rather lead to green industrialization pathways.

A major challenge in scaling up green hydrogen production is the financing of projects: Private sector acceptance of green hydrogen is still hesitant, affecting the bankability of projects (IEA 2023). To bridge the financing gap, governments are implementing de-risking initiatives with large amounts of public funding (Gabor & Sylla 2023). The involvement of oil and gas companies in the emerging green hydrogen sector is high (Vezzoni 2024), which could accelerate the energy transition by providing the necessary capital and technology. However, diversification strategies aligned with oil companies’ core businesses, such as carbon capture and storage, may inadvertently deepen society’s reliance on fossil fuels due to their association with natural gas and existing infrastructure, thus hindering the development of renewable energy paths (Dorn 2024).

This session aims to map the variegated economic geography research on green hydrogen including, but not restricted to:

– The geopolitics and international governance of green hydrogen

– Green industrialization and the development of industrial linkages

– Green path development and regional sustainability transitions

– The geographies of green hydrogen innovation

– Financial geographies of green hydrogen

– Energy justice and socio-ecological risks

– Spatial imaginaries and sustainable futures

Authors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Linus Kalvelage (linus.kalvelage@uni-koeln.de) by Sunday 5 January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts for the session authors will be required to submit their abstracts via the conference registration page by the GCEG deadline of 15 January 2025. Please do not hesitate to contact me if you have any questions.

References:

Altenburg, T., Stamm, A., & Strohmaier, R. (2023). Green hydrogen–support for the just transition? German Institute of Development and Sustainability.

Dorn, F. M. (2024). Towards a multi-color hydrogen production network? Competing imaginaries of development in northern Patagonia, Argentina. Energy Research & Social Science, 110, 103457.

Fladvad, B. (2023). Infrastructuring environmental (in) justice: green hydrogen, Indigenous sovereignty and the political geographies of energy technologies. Geographica Helvetica, 78(4), 493-505.

Gabor, D., & Sylla, N. S. (2023). Derisking developmentalism: a tale of green hydrogen. Development and change, 54(5), 1169-1196.

Hine, A., Gibson, C., & Carr, C. (2024). Green hydrogen regions: emergent spatial imaginaries and material politics of energy transition. Regional Studies, 1-18.

International Energy Agency (2023a). Global Hydrogen Review 2023. 6ce5b1e19cef/GlobalHydrogenReview2023.pdf

Kalvelage, L., & Tups, G. (2024). Friendshoring in global production networks: state-orchestrated coupling amid geopolitical uncertainty. ZFW–Advances in Economic Geography, (0).

Kalvelage, L., & Walker, B. (2024). Strategic coupling beyond borders: Germany’s extraterritorial agency in Namibia’s green hydrogen industry. Journal of Economic Geography, lbae036.

Njøs, R., Sjøtun, S. G., Jakobsen, S. E., & Fløysand, A. (2024). (Re) Incorporating “the Tangible” in Industrial Path Development Analyses: The Role of Sociomaterial Contingencies in Explaining Potential Emergence of Hydrogen Production in Western Norway. Economic Geography, 1-22.

Scholvin, S. (2023). Green hydrogen and linkage-based development in Antofagasta, Chile. Local Economy, 02690942241230450.

Vezzoni, R. (2024). How “clean” is the hydrogen economy? Tracing the connections between hydrogen and fossil fuels. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 50, 100817.

Walker, B., & Klagge, B. (2024). Infrastructure Bottlenecks as Opportunity for Local Development: The Case of Decentralized Green‐Hydrogen Projects. Tijdschrift voor economische en sociale geografie.

Navigating uncertain futures: Economic geographies of crisis and disruptions

Session organizers:

Verena Brinks, Johannes Gutenberg-Universität Mainz, Germany

Oliver Ibert, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space (IRS), Erkner & Brandenburg University of Technology, Cottbus-Senftenberg, Germany

The recent past is rich with disruptive events, stimulating an increased interest in crisis research in the field of economic geography. Notions such as “polycrisis” (Lawrence et al., 2024) or “multiple crises” enter the disciplinary jargon and refer to transgressive qualities and mutual entanglements of crises in a globalised world. One field within economic geography that pioneered these discourses is concerned with the resilience of global production networks (e.g. Neise, Verfürth & Franz, 2024). By linking up with recent GPN literature, the geographical debate so far has largely focused on conceptions of risk management. The manifold linkages between risk and crisis offer a fruitful avenue to explore the opening field. However, it still seems too narrow, as the term risk covers only threats that are known in advance and calculable with regards to their probabilities and effects. The term crisis, in contrast, denotes threatening situations of “radical uncertainty” (Kay & King 2020).

Against this background the proposed session seeks to extend the debate from risky to disruptive contexts. The notion of “disruption” refers to threats that hit actors “off guard” (Hällgren et al. 2018), be it due to their ignorance of existing threats or misapprehension of known threats. Moreover, disruptions mark irreversible turning points in the flow of time and thus require a reinterpretation of the past as well as a modification of “fictional expectations” (Beckert, 2016) about the future. While crisis can be conceived as one possible response of economic actors to disruption, the term disruption is broader and might be used to characterize the context of crisis.

Interesting novel questions arise about how economic actors operate in disruptive contexts, and how they respond to situations of threat, urgency and uncertainty. Particularly, from the field of social and organization science, we can draw inspiration on how to navigate uncertain futures. For instance, Kornberger et al. (2018) describe decision-making in crisis following a “logic of tact”, denoting a step-by-step approach of continuous adaptation to the requirements of the present. Moreover, ignorance studies demonstrate how actors operate in contexts of nonknowledge, theorizing about the ambivalent nature of ignorance as being harmful but in some situations also “useful” (Gross & McGoey 2023) for social actors. Thus, instead of just passively suffering from dramatic events, economic actors actively operate in crisis – and might also see and take opportunities from disruptive dynamics. Finally, while the temporal specifics of disruption and crises are already well-considered by highlighting their eventful character which interrupts the flow of time in the “normal” course of events, the spatial unfolding and management of disruptive events and related uncertainties are still underexplored. By emphasizing transgressive qualities of crisis (in sectors, territories and scales), crisis interdependencies and the local implications of (global) crisis, economic geography has lo lot to contribute to a better understanding spatiality of crisis.

We invite contributions from economic geography and beyond to share conceptual, methodological and empirical insights. Submissions might include but are not limited to

Crisis-related concepts and theories:
- the transgressive qualities of crisis
- concepts of disruptions from a geographical perspective
- time-spatial perspective on unfolding crisis
Management of uncertainty and ignorance/nonknowledge:
- The productive potential of ignorance
- The diversity of uncertainty
- Organizing for uncertainty
- Resilience strategies towards future crisis
Methodological approaches to explore crisis geographies:
- Innovative approaches for exploring crisis
- Challenges of crisis research (e.g. issues of reconstructing crisis)

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Verena Brinks (verena.brinks@uni-mainz.de) and Oliver Ibert (oliver.ibert@leibniz-irs.de) by 8 January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts (by 10 January 2025), presenters must submit their abstracts through the conference registration website of the GCEG 2025 by 15 January 2025.

References:

Beckert, J. (2016). Imagined Futures. Fictional Expectations and Capitalist Dynamics. Harvard University Press.

Kay, J., King, M. (2020). Radical Uncertainty. Decision-Making beyond the Numbers. The Bridge Street Press.

Gross, M., McGoey, L. (2023). Revolutionary epistemology: the promise and peril of ignorance studies. In: Gross, M., McGoey, L. (eds.): Routledge International Handbook of Ignorance Studies. Routledge, pp. 3-14.

Hällgren, M., Rouleau, L., de Rond, M. (2018). A matter of life or death: How extreme context research matters for management and organization studies. Academy of Management Annals 12, 111-153.

Kornberger, M., Leixnering, S., Meyer, R. E. (2018). The logic of tact. How Decisions happen in situations of crisis. Organization Studies 40, 239-266.

Lawrence, M., Homer-Dixon, H., Janzwood, S., Rockström, J., Renn, O., Donges, J. F. (2024). What is a global polycrisis? The causal mechanisms of crisis entanglement. Global Sustainability 7, e6.

Neise, T., Verfürth, P., Franz, M. (eds.) (2024). The Changing Geographies of Companies and Regions in Times of Risk, Uncertainty and Crisis. Routledge.

Transformations towards a sustainable circular economy of plastics

Session organisers: Päivi Oinas and Johanna Yliskylä-Peuralahti, University of Turku, Finland

The literature on geographies of sustainability transformation has hardly addressed ongoing efforts in contemporary societies to tackle the widespread use of plastics. The global production of oil-based virgin plastics has increased 20-fold since the 1960s. Despite the many benefits plastics afford, their production makes use of diminishing oil supplies and various plastics cause diverse environmental and health problems. There is an urgent need for a global transition into a safe and sustainable use of plastics. There are marked differences in the production, use, waste handling, and recycling of plastics in different parts of the globe. Regions are unequally equipped with capacities to mitigate the problems related to plastics, and peripheral or poorly accessible regions are vulnerable in this respect.

The conventional global plastic value chains are linear whereas the emerging sustainable circular economy of plastics involves a transformation towards a closed and clean material circulation. This covers (a) recyclable materials design, (b) reduced use when alternatives do not exist, (c) reuse, (d) sustainable recycling, (e) reduced transportation, and (f) alternative materials. The establishment of circular systems necessitates efficient and comprehensive sorting and processing of a large variety of different plastic materials, efficient transport logistics and waste handling systems, and better functioning markets for recycled plastics. A well-functioning circular economy of plastics entails extensive co-operation between the different actors in the plastics value chain as well as regulatory bodies.

The negative environmental, health, and sustainability impacts of plastic use are visible at multiple geographical scales from the human body in its surroundings to the global scale. Correspondingly, regulation and policies should tackle issues related to regulation compatibility and frameworks for collaborative public-private solutions. At the global scale, intergovernmental negotiations are aiming to establish a globally binding plastics treaty. Additionally, voluntary commitments made by individuals, citizen groups and companies are part of the overall transformation. Given the multiplicity of initiatives, there is a need to critically assess the potential and pitfalls of the existing and planned regulatory and other measures.

We invite papers that discuss the (un)sustainability of plastics and their use in the framework of sustainability transition from multiple perspectives, including for instance the following:

Theoretical contributions to the circularity of plastics enhancing the sustainability transition frameworks
Theoretical and empirical contributions discussing the spatial aspects of plastic use, including e.g. material flows and material circularity at different scales and in different contexts across the globe, also in global South and developing regions
Different ways of overcoming unsustainable use and harmful impacts of plastics, e.g. by studying pathways and lock-ins
Actor networks, including business networks, public-private collaboration and partnerships, formed around plastic materials, their reuse, and recycling
The potential and pitfalls of policies and governance as drivers towards the transformation of a more sustainable plastic use and waste handling
Technologies and innovation with plastics, their recycling and replacement, e.g., with other materials, including bio-based alternatives
The potential of multidisciplinary research contributing to the sustainable circular economy of plastics
Methodological contributions and reflections on studying the (un)sustainable use of plastics

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) to the session organisers (joylpe@utu.fi; paivi.oinas@utu.fi) by Friday 10 January 2025. We will send notifications of acceptance to the session by Monday 13 January. You are asked to register to the conference via the conference website https://gceg.org/ by 15 January.

Global (re)production networks and the energy transition: Examining the economic geographies of critical minerals

Session organizers: Felipe Irarrázaval (Universidad Mayor) and Erika Faigen (University of Vienna)

At the COP21 conference in 2015, countries committed to the Paris Agreement, setting ambitious targets to reduce carbon emissions by 45% by 2030 and achieve Net Zero Emissions (NZE) by 2050. Central to this transformation is not only a shift in energy carriers and infrastructures—from fossil fuels to large-scale adoption of renewable sources like wind and solar—but also a forecast increase in the extraction of so-called critical minerals essential for the technologies that will power this energy transition. Following the NZE timeline, the demand for minerals such as copper, cobalt, lithium, graphite, and rare earth elements will skyrocket by 2040, with copper and cobalt production nearly doubling, graphite output increasing fourfold, and lithium production increasing ninefold (IEA, 2024). This projected increase – “forecasting as world-making” (Riofrancos, forthcoming) draws social and material life into the conversation as land uses and subterraneous resource potential compete for their legitimacy. As such, the commitment of the energy transition outlines a pathway for transforming the global energy system (Kuzemko et al 2024; Riofrancos, forthcoming); and it involves the spheres of production and social reproduction (see, for example, Kelly 2009; Barrientos 2019).

The forecast surge in mineral demand profoundly impacts global production networks. Both industries and states are increasingly grappling with the challenge of securing reliable supplies of critical minerals, leading to a reconfiguration of strategies (Bridge & Faigen, 2022; Dorn 2024; Staritz et al., 2024; Wojewska et al 2024). Industrialized countries have popularized the term “critical and strategic minerals” to describe those essential for developing low-carbon technologies within their borders, which face higher risks of supply shortages (IEA, 2024). However, defining a mineral as “critical” from this perspective reflects a supply/demand scenario centered on industrialized nations, often obscuring the complex socio-ecological processes involved in appraising minerals as resources, and resources as critical, and its consequences. As critical resource geographers have argued, resources are not inherently “natural” or “critical”; they emerge from manifold socio-ecological relationships that make nature into resources, render them valuable and exploitable (Valdivia et al., 2022). In this context, the definition of minerals as “critical” and “strategic” involves a set of socio-ecological relations that determine which subsurface areas are subjected to geophysical and geological studies, rendered into resources and reserves for extraction, and whose voices will influence decisions about extraction processes and the distribution of benefits.

This call for papers invites authors to engage in unpacking, discussing, and/or theorizing the resource-making/world-making practices and processes (Bakker and Bridge 2006; Himley et al., 2021; Kama 2020; Li 2014; Richardson and Weszkalnys 2014), broadly defined (see, for example, Irarrázaval, 2021), through which minerals are rendered critical and strategic. Beyond supply risk and economic importance, and materialities and interwoven temporalities – what other constituent elements are to be considered when examining how and why minerals are rendered critical and strategic, and what are the consequences? The listing of minerals as “critical” is an outcome of assessments in the domains of geology, economics and politics, and reflects decision-making practices, value and power relations and embeddedness around which various actors gather, seeking to capture benefits of industrial policies.

Through a critical appraisal of the resource-making process of resources under the energy transition, this call is also interested in examining implications of “making minerals critical” for the geographies of production and social reproduction. This involves examining how mineral-supply countries are challenging the protectionist measures of industrial cores through export restrictions (OECD, 2024), and the multi scalar political debates that are configuring the meaning of “critical” and “strategic” minerals in peripheral economies and their offshore over the geographical composition of the global production networks of low-carbon technologies (Bos & Forget, 2021; Irarrazaval & Carrasco, 2023; Orihuela & Serrano, 2024; Radley, 2023). This call seeks contributions that move beyond examining economic linkages, value chains, and the geographies of labor involved in critical minerals, to also explore how their territorial embeddedness in various locations reshapes processes of social reproduction—broadly understood as the social relations that sustain and regenerate labor both daily and across generations in the areas where resources are extracted and processed. A lens on geographies of production and social reproduction around minerals involves a critical exploration of the role of territory, the state, skills training, education, research and development (R&D), and innovation (see, for example, Morales et al., 2024; Teixeira 2022, 2024; Bridge and Faigen 2023). This gaze engages with the past, present and future, and includes logics, ideas and imaginaries (Benner 2024; Dorn 2024; Gong 2024).

Against this background, this CfP seeks contributions around the following themes:

Global (re)production networks and minerals for energy technologies – exploring minerals through the interrelated spheres of production and social reproduction, including labor regimes, skills training and education
Critical and strategic minerals – including their interconnection with geopolitical tensions, industrial policy (including upgrading/downgrading), and local livelihoods
(Un)making resources – including resource assemblages, resource temporalities, resource-making/world-making

Guidelines for submission:

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Felipe Irarrázaval (felipe.irarrazaval@umayor.cl) and Erika Faigen (erika.faigen@univie.ac.at) by Wednesday, 8th of January 2025. We will send notifications on the acceptance of abstracts by Friday, 10th of January 2025, and authors will need to submit abstracts via the conference website and pay the registration fee by the GCEC deadline of 15th of January. Please feel free to reach out to us for further information or other guidance. We look forward to hearing from you.

Geographies of the Food Transition

Session organizer: José Luis Sánchez Hernández (University of Salamanca, Spain) – jlsh@usal.es

Food transition may be defined as a social, economic, political and cultural process, developed across different geographical scales, that pretends to build a more sustainable, equitable and/or localized system of food provision. Food transition is thus a multilayered endeavor pushed by a complex network of public and private actors whose aims and values do not necessarily match. It may be argued that the food transition advances along four lines. First, ‘business as usual’, including organic certification, designations of origin and other audit schemes. Second, ‘food-tech’, whose incumbents rely on biotechnologies as a solution for social and environmental issues (alternative proteins, cell-based meat, algae, insects, precision agriculture). Third, ‘bioregional’ fixes, mostly related to those alternative/sustainable/values-based food networks anchored in the principles of agroecology, food sovereignty, and food relocalization. Fourth, ‘eco-global’ attempts to promote a fairer political economy for global food value chains, as it is the case of fair trade.

However, the food transition is not a self-referential or a-geographical process. It interacts with the territorial setting and is influenced -at the local and regional level, mostly- by environmental, spatial, economic, social, political, regulatory and cultural factors. In other words, the territorial framework may push or hamper the food transition and thus open the way for different local trajectories or ‘territorialised food transitions’.

This session welcomes papers that discuss the development of food transition, and its diverse lines, in different geographical contexts. Contributions might address the following topics (but other perspectives are also welcome):
• What actors are driving the food transition and how do they interact (or not) on the national/regional/local scales?
• What are the locational patterns of the actors and processes that drive the food transition?
• What is the particular ‘regional mix’ of the food transition in different geographical settings?
• What values underpin the four lines of the food transition? How do these lines address similar societal concerns (environment, health, local development, animal welfare??

Submission Guidelines:
Authors are invited to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to José Luis Sánchez-Hernández (jlsh@usal.es) by Wednesday January 8th 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Friday 10th January 2025), paper authors should submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of January 15th 2025.

New Economic Geographies of War and Geopolitical Crises

Session Description:

In recent years, the geopolitical disruptions and military conflicts have exposed the vulnerabilities of trade and the fragility of critical infrastructure across regions. This session will explore the need for a new economic geography of war that examines how military conflicts, geopolitical tensions, and crises influence among others:

– critical trade and value chains,

– resources and products

– key logistic corridors and hubs,

– investments (including debates around friend shoring etc.).

Presenters are encouraged to bring forward case studies and empirical analyses that deepen our understanding of how conflict and crisis reshape trade routes, resource flows, and regional economic stability. By augmenting economic geography, with the outlined perspectives, this session seeks to chart new directions for an economic geography in times of geopolitical and military crises.

Session Organizers:

Peter Dannenberg, University of Cologne, Germany
Franziska Sielker, TU Wien, Austria

Panel Session: Debating Exchange and Cross-Fertilization between Economic Geography’s Research Communities and Paradigms

Session organizers:

Han Chu, Kiel University, Germany

Robert Hassink, Kiel University, Germany

Şükrü Yılmaz, Kiel University, Germany

Economic geography is a sub-discipline that is characterized by pluralism (Martin, 2021), both concerning paradigms and perspectives and concerning topic-related research communities, and there has been ample debate about whether this pluralism can be regarded as engaged or fragmented (Barnes & Sheppard, 2010; Martin, 2021; Chu et al., 2024; Van Meeteren, 2023).

Concerning paradigms and perspectives, Chu et al. (2024) recently identified the following: evolutionary economic geography (EEG), relational economic geography (REG), institutional economic geography (IEG), geographical political economy (GPE) and alternative economic geographies (AEG). Paradigms and perspectives draw from heterodox economics to have the power to explain phenomena around the spatial distribution of economies in a broad and all-encompassing way. Chu et al. (2024) draw two conclusions on the basis of a bibliometric analysis; first, there is more engaged pluralism between them than expected on the basis of discussions in the literature and, secondly, evolutionary economic geography is by far the most popular paradigm, but, overall, the reference made to paradigms and perspectives is decreasing.

Concerning research communities or “major research foci and communities” (Yeung, 2023: 1), which focus more on recent empirical trends in the economy and society at large, the following non-exclusive list can be identified (Barnes and Christophers, 2018; Barnes and Sheppard, 2024; Yeung, 2023): environmental economic geography (Braun et al., 2018; He et al., 2022), the geography of sustainability transitions (Hansen and Coenen, 2015), financial geography (Wójcik, 2022; Gibadullina, 2021), global production networks (Coe and Yeung, 2019), labor geography (Peck, 2018), entrepreneurship (Sternberg, 2022) and the platform economy (Kenney and Zysman, 2020).

Some of these communities enjoy increasing popularity and hence grow strongly, stronger than the above-mentioned paradigms and perspectives. Although there have been some examples of attempts to link communities to paradigms, such as with environmental economic geography and EEG (Patchell & Hayter, 2013) and global production networks and EEG (Yeung, 2021), we see scope for exploring and discussing more cross-fertilization and synergies between communities and paradigms, which is the main aim of this panel session. This might not only help better explaining understanding some empirical phenomena researched in the communities, but it might also help to rejuvenate and re-strengthen some paradigms. At a higher abstraction level, such a dynamic debate about communities and paradigms might also contribute to find out what economic geography is and how it can explain geographical differentiation of economic activities and their spatial evolution.

If you are interested to be panelist, please write a few lines on how you could contribute to this panel to Han Chu chu@geographie.uni-kiel.de by Friday 10^th January 2025. Following acceptance (Monday 13^th January 2015), you will be required to submit your attendance to the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

References

Barnes, T. J., & Christophers, B. (2018). Economic geography: A critical introduction. John Wiley & Sons.

Barnes, T. J., & Sheppard, E. (2010). ‘Nothing includes everything’: towards engaged pluralism in Anglophone economic geography. Progress in Human Geography, 34(2), 193-214.

Barnes, T. J., & Sheppard, E. (2024). Economic Geography. In: The International Encyclopedia of Geography. Wiley.

Braun B, Oßenbrügge J and Schulz C (2018) Environmental economic geography and environmental inequality: challenges and new research prospects. Zeitschrift für Wirtschaftsgeographie 62(2): 120–134.

Chu, H., Hassink, R., & Yılmaz, Ş. (2024). Fragmented or engaged pluralism in economic geography? Progress in Human Geography, 48(3), 247-274.

Coe NM and Yeung HWC (2019) Global production networks: mapping recent conceptual developments. Journal of Economic Geography 19(4): 775–801.

Gibadullina A (2021) The birth and development of Anglophone financial geography: A historical analysis of geographical studies of money and finance. Geoforum 125, 150–167.

Gong H and Hassink R (2020) Context sensitivity and economic-geographic (re)theorising. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 13(3): 475-490.

Hansen T and Coenen (2015) The geography of sustainability transitions: Review, synthesis and reflections on an emergent research field. Environmental innovation and societal transitions 17: 92–109.

He C, He S, Mu E and Peng J (2022) Environmental economic geography: Recent advances and innovative development. Geography and Sustainability 3(2): 152–163.

Kenney M and Zysman J (2020) The platform economy: restructuring the space of capitalist accumulation. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 13(1): 55–76.

Martin, R. (2021). Putting the case for a pluralistic economic geography. Journal of Economic Geography, 21(1), 1-28.

Patchell, J., & Hayter, R. (2013). Environmental and evolutionary economic geography: time for EEG2? Geografiska Annaler: Series B, Human Geography, 95(2), 111-130.

Peck, J. (2018). Pluralizing labour geography. In: Clark, G.L., Feldman, M.P., Gertler, M.S. & Wójcik, D. (Eds.) The new Oxford handbook of economic geography. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, pp. 465–484.

Sternberg, R. (2022). Entrepreneurship and geography—some thoughts about a complex relationship. The Annals of Regional Science, 69(3), 559-584.

Van Meeteren, M. (2023). Geografisch denken als curriculaire grammatica. In: T Béneker, G van Campenhout & R van der Vaart (eds.), Aardrijkskunde in Transitie? Vakinhoudelijke perspectieven op de examenprogramma’s aardrijkskunde. Utrecht: KNAG, 76-81.

Wójcik D (2022) Financial geography III: Research strategies, designs, methods and data. Progress in Human Geography 46(1): 245–254.

Yeung, H. W. C. (2021). Regional worlds: from related variety in regional diversification to strategic coupling in global production networks. Regional Studies, 55(6), 989-1010.

Yeung HWC (2023) Troubling economic geography: New directions in the post‐pandemic world. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 48(4): 672–680.

Peripheral Dynamics and State Strategies in (Re)Shaping Strategic Value Chains

Session Organizers:

Kirsten Martinus (The University of Western Australia)

Natsuki Kamakura (The University of Tokyo)

In an era marked by polycrisis—spanning pandemics, regional conflicts, financial instability, climate change, and technological disruptions—the strategic importance of value chains has never been more pronounced. Peripheral regions, historically perceived as marginal players in frameworks such as global production networks (GPNs), global value chains (GVCs), and global commodity chains (GCCs), are increasingly pivotal as states seek to secure critical components for national security, economic resilience, and competitive advantage in emerging technologies.

State-led strategies such as reshoring, friend-shoring, and industrial policies are transforming the dynamics of these value chains. Simultaneously, the rapid pace of technological innovation introduces new cycles of first-mover advantages and catch-up strategies, reshaping the competitive landscape for both core and peripheral regions. Peripheral regions must navigate these shifts, balancing local development needs with global pressures and state-driven agendas while asserting their agency in networked and spatial contexts.

This session seeks to explore how peripheral regions adapt to these transformations, engage with state strategies, and contribute to the governance and development of strategic resources and technologies. It welcomes research grounded in diverse theoretical frameworks, including GPN, GVC, GCC, and other approaches, to enrich the understanding of the evolving role of peripheries in global systems.

Key Themes

Reconfiguring Value Chains for National Security
- The role of peripheral regions in reshoring and friend-shoring strategies.
- The impact of national security concerns on the localization or globalization of key industries.
Technological Leadership and Catch-Up Dynamics
- How peripheral regions engage with first-mover advantages and catch-up cycles in emerging technologies (e.g., batteries, AI, renewable energy technologies).
- The role of peripheral regions in adapting or co-developing technologies to fit local needs and global standards.
Technological Innovations in Governance
- The use of blockchain, IoT, AI, and other technologies to enhance traceability, transparency, and accountability in value chains.
- Peripheral regions as testbeds for new governance mechanisms in strategic value chains.
Peripheral Contributions to Strategic Resource Flows
- Governance and responsible sourcing of critical inputs such as water, energy, and minerals.
- How peripheral regions balance local development needs with global supply chain demands.
Geopolitical and Policy Impacts
- The influence of trade restrictions and state-led export controls on peripheral economies.
- Peripheral responses to international regulatory frameworks, such as the European Supply Chain Law.

Key Questions to Address

How do state-led strategies impact the roles and agency of peripheral regions across GPN, GVC, and GCC frameworks?
What strategies enable peripheral regions to navigate cycles of first-mover advantage and technological catch-up?
How do peripheral regions balance competing demands for economic development, global trade integration, and local sustainability?
What theoretical and methodological approaches best capture the evolving dynamics of state-periphery interactions in global value chains?

Submission Guidelines

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Kirsten Martinus (kirsten.martinus@uwa.edu.au) and Natsuki Kamakura (c-natsuki.kamakura@g.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp) by Friday 10th January 2025. After the acceptance of abstracts to the session on Monday, 13th January 2025, authors will need to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. Should you have any questions or require additional information, please feel free to reach out.

Revitalisation of the periphery in the wake of green transition?

Session organisers:

Atle Hauge, INN University Norway

Trond Nilsen, INN University Norway

The transition towards sustainable business and industry is a major focus in politics, public discourse, and academic research. This transition appears to favour less central areas, which often possess abundant less-mobile resources such as clean energy, water, air, and land. This shift contrasts an elongated development where immaterial intangible assets such as knowledge and innovation have dominated the debate on competition and development. However, rather than diminishing the importance of said assets, the processes underpinning a green transition seem to promote the value of locally embedded and natural resources. The socio-institutional context is crucial, as it necessitates considering both intangible and tangible resources without prioritizing one over the other. Moreover, as this shift occurs, it is essential to critically examine the traditional challenges associated with resource-led growth. These include the risk of rent-seeking behaviour and the cyclical nature of resource-dependent economies.

In this session, we will explore the increasing significance of locally embedded resources in today’s digital economy and discuss its implications for regional development.

This theme welcomes submissions on topics including:

What are the potential benefits and challenges for regions in the green transition?
How can regions strategically leverage these resources to drive development?
The political economy of sustainability transitions for peripheral regions
The role of policy in fostering sustainable regional development.
How can regions with abundant natural resources transition to sustainable economies while minimizing environmental impact?
What are the social and economic implications of a shift towards locally embedded resource-based economies?
How can regional development strategies be aligned with global sustainability goals?
How can we enhance the analysis of regional development to better account for the complex interplay of social and material factors?

Submission Guidelines:
We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Atle Hauge atle.hauge@inn.no , by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2025), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

Reinterpreting regional resilience against the background of sustainability, digitalization, and (de)globalization

Organizers:

Han Chu, Kiel University, Germany

Huiwen Gong, University of Stavanger, Norway

Robert Hassink, Kiel University, Germany

Jesse Sutton, Western University, London, Ontario, Canada

Michaela Trippl, University of Vienna, Austria

In current times of crises, the notion of resilience is often used by economic geographers and regional economists to analyse both the recovery processes of regional economies from a shock and the building up of capabilities to deal with future shocks (Martin & Sunley, 2020; Sutton & Arku, 2022; Sutton et al., 2023, 2024; Martin & Sunley, 2020; Evenhuis, 2017; Gong & Hassink, 2017). Partly in a reaction to the specific characteristics of the recent pandemic crisis, three new directions of research on regional resilience can be observed.

First, transformative resilience, as a type of resilience, has increasingly been discussed and refers to a situation in which the severity of a shock causes an economy to shift to entirely new functions, structures, and performances. The notion of transformative resilience has brought to light the full spectrum of reactions that could take place, ranging from short duration bounce-back resilience to long duration transformative resilience (Manca et al., 2017; Sutton et al., 2024; Trippl et al., 2024). Many scholars, policy-makers and media reports hope that the COVID-19 crisis has created a chance for a transformation towards more sustainable regional economies, creating a window of opportunity for a sustainability transition and related innovations (Oliva & Lazzeretti, 2021). Indeed, scholars (Giovannini et al., 2020) emphasize the importance of bouncing forward through adaptive behaviour, instead of bouncing back to pre-crisis conditions.

Secondly, resilience has been recently discussed and analyzed in relation to digitalization and digital platforms in more general terms (Copestake et al., 2024; Khlystova & Kalyuzhnova, 2023; Floetgen et al., 2021). However, the literature on regional resilience has largely ignored the effects of the digital part of the regional economy on resilience during and after crises. The digital parts of a regional economy can, however, on the one hand raise resilience, due to the stability of the infrastructure, as well as alternative sales channels, which has been particularly the case during the recent COVID-19 crisis. On the other hand, due to monopolistic tendencies in the digital platform economy vulnerabilities can potentially be large, which would lower the resilience. Digital infrastructure could potentially also make rural areas more resilient (Knuepling et al., 2024).

Thirdly, regional resilience is increasingly related to the position of regional economies in global value chains and global production networks (Jicha et al., 2025; Yeung 2024). Given the increase changes and dynamics in disruptions and reconnections of these chains and networks in the background of (de)globalisation, regional resilience has to be rethought and be combined with value chain resilience (Gereffi et al., 2022), particularly in those regional economies that are strongly embedded and hence dependent on this chains and networks (Jicha et al., 2025).

Moreover, these three directions are not mutually exclusive and may even intersect in meaningful ways. For instance, digital transition can intersect with the first direction, potentially disrupting existing industries and economic organizations while simultaneously driving new transformative motivations. Digitalization may also intersect with global value chains or production networks, as seen in discussions of digital value chains (López et al., 2022), which inspire further exploration of resilience within chains and networks in a digitalized context. This intersectoral approach can offer a more comprehensive and profound understanding of regional resilience.

Against this background, this session aims at presenting recent research on regional resilience along these three new directions and their intersections, but we are of course open to other new directions (e.g., the role of agency and the influence of foreign direct investment). We welcome theoretical, conceptual, and (quantitative and qualitative) empirical papers.

We will submit a proposal for a special issue to an international peer-reviewed journal, such as Regional Studies, European Planning Studies, or Growth and Change, after the conference.

Submission Guidelines

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 300 words to Han Chu chu@geographie.uni-kiel.de by Friday 10^th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13^th January 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

References

Copestake, A., Estefania-Flores, J., & Furceri, D. (2024). Digitalization and resilience. Research Policy, 53(3), 104948.

Evenhuis, E. (2017). New directions in researching regional economic resilience and adaptation. Geography Compass 11, 1-15.

Gereffi, G., Pananond, P., & Pedersen, T. (2022). Resilience decoded: the role of firms, global value chains, and the state in COVID-19 medical supplies. California Management Review, 64(2), 46-70.

Giovannini, E., Benczur, P., Campolongo, F., Cariboni, J., & Manca, A. R. (2020). Time for transformative resilience: the COVID-19 emergency (No. JRC120489). Joint Research Centre (Seville site).

Gong, H., & Hassink, R. (2017). Regional resilience: The critique revisited. In Creating Resilient Economies. Edward Elgar Publishing.

Floetgen, R. J., Strauss, J., Weking, J., Hein, A., Urmetzer, F., Böhm, M., & Krcmar, H. (2021). Introducing platform ecosystem resilience: leveraging mobility platforms and their ecosystems for the new normal during COVID-19. European Journal of Information Systems, 30(3), 304-321.

Jicha, F., Hassink, R., & Chu, H. (2025). Advancing Regional Economic Resilience Theorizing by Integrating Global Value Chain Resilience. In The Changing Economic Geography of Companies and Regions in Times of Risk, Uncertainty, and Crisis (pp. 32-46). Routledge.

Khlystova, O., & Kalyuzhnova, Y. (2023). The impact of the creative industries and digitalization on regional resilience and productive entrepreneurship. The Journal of Technology Transfer, 48(5), 1654-1695.

Knuepling, L., Sternberg, R., & Otto, A. (2024). Rural areas as winners of COVID-19, digitalization and remote working? Empirical evidence from recent internal migration in Germany. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, rsae033.

López, T., Riedler, T., Köhnen, H., & Fütterer, M. (2022). Digital value chain restructuring and labour process transformations in the fast‐fashion sector: Evidence from the value chains of Zara & H&M. Global Networks, 22(4), 684-700.

Manca, A. R., Benczur, P., & Giovannini, E. (2017). Building a scientific narrative towards a more resilient EU society. JRC Science for Policy Report.

Martin, R. & Sunley, P. (2020). Regional economic resilience: evolution and evaluation. In: G. Bristow & A. Healy, eds., Handbook on Regional Economic Resilience, 10-35. Cheltenham: Edward Elgar.

Oliva, S., & Lazzeretti, L. (2021). Unravelling the Sustainable Resilient Region: Exploring Regional Resilience in Sustainable Transition. In Rethinking Clusters (pp. 3-16). Springer, Cham.

Sutton, J., & Arku, G. (2022). Regional economic resilience: towards a system approach. Regional Studies, Regional Science, 9(1), 497-512.

Sutton, J., Arcidiacono, A., Torrisi, G., & Arku, R. N. (2023). Regional economic resilience: A scoping review. Progress in Human Geography, 47(4), 500-532.

Sutton, J., Arku, G., Sadler, R., Hutchenreuther, J., & Buzzelli, M. (2024). Practitioners’ ability to retool the economy: The role of agency in local economic resilience to plant closures in Ontario. Growth and Change, 55(1), e12716.

Trippl, M., Fastenrath, S., & Isaksen, A. (2024). Rethinking regional economic resilience: Preconditions and processes shaping transformative resilience. European Urban and Regional Studies, 31(2), 101-115.

Yeung, H. W. C. (2024). From regional to global and back again? A future agenda for regional evolution and (de) globalised production networks in regional studies. Regional Studies, 1-12.

Digital Platforms and Global Production Networks

Session organizers:
Philip Verfürth, Osnabrück University, Germany
Chun Yang, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong

Since the late 2000s, digital platforms have become essential components of the global economy, actively shaping its geographical dynamics (Kenney and Zysman 2020; Bearson et al. 2021). As infrastructures, digital platforms not only serve as spaces for socio-technical interactions, but as companies they are increasingly involved in value activities of globally organized production networks (Grabher and van Tuijl 2020; Ibert et al. 2022). However, the importance of digital platforms had long been underexplored in Global Production Network (GPN) research (e.g., Grabher and van Tuijl 2020; Butollo et al. 2022). This has changed in recent years, as new studies demonstrate that digital platforms often restructure existing production and labor processes in GPN and lead to significant geographical changes by organizing social and economic activities in novel ways (e.g., Butollo and Schneidemesser 2022; Coe and Yang, 2022; Yang 2022; Verfürth and Helwing 2024). Nonetheless, research is still in its early stages, and further studies on digital platforms in global production networks across different sectors and variegated territories are needed.

Thus, this session aims to bring together papers that conceptually and/or empirically continue to deepen our understanding of 1) the diverse relationships between digital platforms and GPN, 2) the implications of digital platforms on the organizational and spatial configuration of GPN, and 3) labor in platform-based production networks. Potential topics might include, but are not limited to:

Theorising the diverse relationships between digital platforms and GPN
The multiple roles of digital platforms in GPNs
GPNs orchestrated by platform conglomerates
Internationalization of digital platforms
Variations of platform governance in GPNs
Power of digital platforms and their limits in GPNs
Trajectories of platformization of GPNs
Platform induced organizational and spatial reconfigurations of GPNs
Labor in platform-based production networks
The role of data as a source of value and power in platform-based production networks
Varieties of digital capitalism in the platform economy
Role of digital platforms in local and regional development

Submission Guidelines:
We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Philip Verfürth at philip.verfuerth@uos.de and Chun Yang at chunyang@hkbu.edu.hk, by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2025), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

References:
Bearson, D., Kenney, M., and Zysman, J. (2021) ‘Measuring the Impacts of Labor in the Platform Economy: New Work Created, Old Work Reorganized, and Value Creation Reconfigured’, Industrial and Corporate Change 30: 536–563.7
Butollo, F., Gereffi, G., Yang, C., Krzywdzinski, M. (2022) Digital transformation and value chains: Introduction. Global Networks, 22, 585–594.
Butollo, F., Schneidemesser, L. (2022) Who runs the show in digitalized manufacturing? Data, digital platforms and the restructuring of global value chains. Global Networks, 22(4): 595–614.
Coe, N. M., Yang, C. (2022) Mobile gaming production networks, platform business groups and the market power of China’s Tencent. Annals of the American Association of Geographers, 112 (2): 307-330.
Grabher, G., van Tuijl, E. (2020) Uber-production: From global networks to digital platforms. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(5): 1005–1016.
Ibert, O., Oechslen, A., Repenning, A., Schmidt, S. (2022) Platform ecology: A user-centric and relational conceptualization of online platforms. Global Networks, 22: 564–579.
Kenney, M., Zysman, J. (2020) The platform economy: restructuring the space of capitalist accumulation. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 13(1): 55–76.
Kenney, M., Bearson, D., Carlton, C., Zysman, J. (2021) Geographic Implications of Platforms for Labor and Work: Cases and Questions. BRIE Working Paper 2021-8. Berkeley University of California.
Verfürth, P., Helwing-Hentschel, V. (2024) Digital platforms and the reconfiguration of global production networks. Journal of Economic Geography, lbae039.
Yang, C. (2022) Cross‐border expansion of digital platforms and transformation of the trade and distribution networks of imported fresh fruits from Southeast Asia to China. Global Networks, 22(4): 716–734.

The Geopolitics of Regional Development: Emerging Firm Strategies in Uncertain Times

Session organizers:

Chun Yang, Hong Kong Baptist University, Hong Kong
Robert Hassink, Kiel University, Germany
Linus Kalvelage, University of Cologne, Germany
Petr Pavlínek, University of Nebraska at Omaha, United States
Charles University, Czechia

Geopolitical uncertainty and its effects on Global Production Networks (GPNs) and regional development is emerging as an important topic in Economic Geography. Recent research has tended to explore geopolitical decoupling of some regions from GPNs in specific industries in times of geopolitical risks and rivalry (Blažek and Lypianin, 2024; Coe, 2021; Gong et al., 2022; Kalvelage and Walker, 2024; Pavlínek, 2024). From global trade realignments to state-driven technological ambitions, the changing dynamics of geopolitics are driving new patterns of regional competition and cooperation (Kalvelage and Tups, 2024). Regions housing essential manufacturing sectors, such as semiconductors and critical minerals, have become focal points of geopolitical competition (World Economic Forum, 2024). While some regions that can leverage their strategic positions are poised to thrive, others may be marginalized as global supply chains realign and fragment (Yang and Chan, 2023). Nevertheless, regional evolution and resilience in the dynamic global geopolitics and geoeconomics should not overlook the role of individual actors and firms (Yeung, 2024).

This session aims to invite papers which conceptually and empirically examine how firm-level actors, both TNCs and domestic firms in host and home regions respond to geopolitical turmoil, uncertainty, decoupling, war and other forms of state-induced geopolitical instability, and how their various strategic responses reshape GPNs and regional development. Unlike the nation-centric analysis of multiple crises or poly-crisis and their broad effects in the literature, this session invites papers focusing on the specifics of how contemporary geopolitics affects local and regional development in the global North and South. This would include exploring the effects of dynamic firm strategies to cope with geopolitical challenges on local development in subnational regions of both host and home countries of TNCs.

We welcome both theoretical, empirical as well as policy-related papers, as well as comparative papers, on the geopolitics of regional development in uncertain times from a broad range of economic sectors and regions, addressing but not limited to, the following questions:

– What are the new concepts and frameworks for analyzing the geopolitics of regional development in uncertain times?

– How do firms strategically respond to attempts by nation states to tighten their grip on the spatial formation of GPNs in order to achieve geopolitical objectives?

– What strategies are firms using to deal with heightened geopolitical risks?

– To what extent can firms influence geopolitical agendas?

– How does geopolitical (de)coupling affect regions and what strategies are used by firms and regions to cope with it?

– To what extent can the reshoring of strategic industries be a hope for path creation in left-behind places?

– What does geopolitics mean for regional resilience?

– Why do some regions grow in spite of geopolitical turmoil?

Submission Guidelines

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Chun Yang at chunyang@hkbu.edu.hk, Robert Hassink at hassink@geographie.uni-kiel.de, Linus Kalvelage at linus.kalvelage@uni-koeln.de and Petr Pavlínek at ppavlinek@unomaha.edu by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

References

Aoyama, Y., Song, E., & Wang, S. Y. (2024) Geopolitics and geospatial strategies: the rise of regulatory supply chain controls for semiconductor GPN in Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. ZFW–Advances in Economic Geography. doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2024-0046.

Blažek, J. and Lypianin, A. (2024) Geopolitical decoupling and global production networks: the case of Ukrainian industries after the 2014 Crimean annexation. Journal of Economic Geography, 24 (1): 23–40.

Coe, N. (2021) Advanced introduction to global production networks. Edward Elgar.

Gong, H., Hassink, R., Foster, C., Hess, M. and Garretsen, H. (2022) Globalisation in reverse? Reconfiguring the geographies of value chains and production networks, Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 15, 165–181.

Kalvelage, L., and Tups, G. (2024) Friendshoring in global production networks: State-orchestrated coupling amid geopolitical uncertainty. ZFW – Advances in Economic Geography. doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2024-0042.

Kalvelage, L., and Walker, B. (2024). Strategic coupling beyond borders: Germany’s extraterritorial agency in Namibia’s green hydrogen industry. Journal of Economic Geography 2024.

Pavlínek, P. (2024) Geopolitical decoupling in Global Production Networks. Economic Geography, 100 (2):138-169.

World Economic Forum (2024). Global Risks Report 2024: The Fragmentation of Global Economies.

Yang, C. and Chan, D. Y-T. (2023) Geopolitical risks of strategic decoupling and recoupling in the mobile phone production shift from China to Vietnam: Evidence from the Sino-US trade war and COVID-19 pandemic. Applied Geography, Vol. 158, 103028.

Yeung, H. W. C. (2024) From regional to global and back again? A future agenda for regional evolution and (de) globalised production networks in regional studies. Regional Studies, 58 (7): 1-12.

The Geopolitical Economy of Global China

Session organisers: Pádraig Carmody (Trinity College Dublin and the University of Johannesburg) and James T. Murphy (Clark University)

China now exerts substantial influence on “global development”. “It” does this through a variety of vectors, including trade, investment, aid, standards, loans, and others. Particularly significant has been China’s signature Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), a truly global project that has been restructured recently to emphasise smaller and “greener” projects, rather than large-scale infrastructure ones which were often associated with the meme of “debt trap diplomacy”. How China’s geoeconomic and geopolitical influences and initiatives are received, mediated, refracted and transformed in situ is largely responsible for determining their developmental outcomes and the degree to which global development is being transformed as a result. In recent decades, there has been voluminous research on this subject with economic geographers and others contributing a diverse array of perspectives on the drivers, mechanisms, and impacts of “Global China” on the world economy. This session aims to take stock of what we know about Global China, and to explore its evolving economic-geographic nature and impacts. We welcome papers which examine both the “internal” drivers and restructuring of Chinese foreign economic policy and engagements, and those which address its impacts in locations/regions around the world. Topics may include:

Chinese state capitalism – its varieties and variegations in world economy
Comparative analyses of Global China’s vectors and impacts
The BRI and its post-COVID evolution
Chinese development finance – mechanisms, means, and implications
The impact of Global China on cities
Global China and the “second Cold War”
Global China and technology transfer, innovation diffusion
Global China’s implications for sustainability transitions
The economic geographies of the “Digital Silk Road”

Submission Guidelines:

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Padraig (carmodyp@tcd.ie) and Jim (jammurphy@clark.edu) by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

The state and global production networks in a turbulent world economy

Session organisers: Martin Hess & Rory Horner (University of Manchester)

While the state has always been recognised as a crucial non-firm actor in research on global production networks (GPNs) (e.g. Henderson et al. 2002), its role and agency has only begun to receive more substantive theoretical and empirical attention over the last decade (cf. Smith 2015, Horner 2017, Werner 2020; McGregor and Coe 2023). Whether it be in relation to the multiple crises affecting politics, society and economy, the return of industrial policy (if it ever went away), the rise of nationalism and protectionism, or responses to geopolitical tensions, conflict and war, amongst other factors, increasingly -or so it seems – the state cannot be sidelined in research on GPNs and related global value chains (GVCs) (cf. Glassman 2011). More than two decades on from the initial conceptualisation of GPNs, the regulator, producer (i.e. state-owned enterprises) and buyer (i.e. public procurement, cf. Hughes et al.2019) roles of the state are increasingly prominent in shaping, and being shaped by, the ongoing reconfiguration of GPNs. The actors, dynamics, challenges and tensions of the contemporary turbulent world economy mean that the state-GPN nexus is not just a central question facing research on GPNs, but also arguably economic geography and related fields more broadly (cf. Coe and Yeung 2019, Yeung 2023).

The ongoing dynamism and flux in the involvement of the state in global production networks has already raised a series of key advances which arguably warrant greater scrutiny in relation to both governance and processes of uneven development. So far neo-Weberian, strategic-relational and neo-Gramscian approaches have emerged, yet how best to theorise the state-GPN nexus is a growing matter of debate (cf. Hess 2021). Moreover, while GPN (and GVC) research have helped significantly deepen our understanding of private governance in the global economy, the interaction of public and private governance explored to date (cf. Amengual 2010, Bartley 2011, Alford and Phillips 2018, Bair et al. 2020) warrants further consideration at this historical conjuncture. Strategic coupling remains a central concept in relation to understanding the prospects for territorial development in GPNs, but processes of decoupling and recoupling have become increasingly relevant – and not just with global, but also (supra-national) regional and domestic production networks (cf. Gong et al. 2022, Kalvelage and Tups 2024).

This session aims to bring together papers which – conceptually and/or empirically – continue to deepen our understanding of the state and its influence on GPNs. We welcome papers which address, but are not limited to, the following:

· Theorising the state-GPN nexus

· The governance of GPNs – public and private and their various interactions

· The influence of new (and old) drivers on state policy in GPNs – including resilience, security, risk and conflict

· The multiple roles of the state in GPNs– as facilitator, regulator, producer and buyer, and their interactions and limits

· The influence of the state at multiple scales in processes of strategic coupling, decoupling and recoupling

· Regulating the digital realm in GPNs

Submission Guidelines:

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Martin Hess (martin.hess@manchester.ac.uk) and Rory Horner (rory.horner@manchester.ac.uk) by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/ [gceg.org]) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

References:

Alford, M., and Phillips, N. (2018) The political economy of state governance in global production networks: Change, crisis and contestation in the South African fruit sector, Review of International Political Economy, 25 (1), 98-121.

Amengual, M. (2010) Complementary labor regulation: The uncoordinated combination of state and private regulators in the Dominican Republic, World Development, 38 (3), 405–14.

Bair, J., Anner, M. and J. Blasi (2020) The Political Economy of Private and Public Regulation in Post-Rana Plaza Bangladesh, ILR Review, 73 (4): 969-994.

Bartley, T. (2011) Transnational governance as the layering of rules: Intersections of public and private standards, Theoretical Inquiries in Law, 12 (2), 517–42.

Coe, N. M. and H. W.-c. Yeung (2019). Global production networks: mapping recent conceptual developments, Journal of Economic Geography, 19 (4), 775-801.

Glassman, J. (2011) The geo‐political economy of global production networks, Geography Compass, 5 (4), 154–164.

Gong, H., Hassink, R., Foster, C., Hess, M., and H. Garretsen (2022) Globalisation in reverse? Reconfiguring the geographies of value chains and production networks. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 15(2): 165-181.

Henderson, J., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N., and H. Yeung (2002) Global production networks and the analysis of economic development, Review of International Political Economy, 9 (3), 436–464.

Hess, M. (2021) One: Global production networks: the state, power and politics, In Palpacuer, F. and Smith, A. (eds.) Rethinking Value Chains. Bristol, UK, Policy Press: 17-35.

Horner, R. (2017) Beyond facilitator? State roles in global value chains and global production networks, Geography Compass, 11 (2), e12307.

Hughes, A., Morrison, E., and Ruwanpura, N. (2019) Public sector procurement and ethical trade: Governance and social responsibility in some hidden global supply chains, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 44 (2), 242-255.

Kalvelage, L. and Tups, G. (2024) Friendshoring in global production networks: state-orchestrated coupling amid geopolitical uncertainty, ZfW – Advances in Economic Geography. https://doi.org/10.1515/zfw-2024-0042 [doi.org]

McGregor, N., and Coe, N. (2023) Hybrid governance and extraterritoriality: Understanding Singapore’s state capitalism in the context of oil global production networks, Environment and Planning A, 55 (3), 716-741.

Smith, A. (2015) The state, institutional frameworks and the dynamics of capital in global production networks, Progress in Human Geography, 39 (3), 290-315.

Werner, M. (2021) Geographies of production II: Thinking through the state, Progress in Human Geography, 45 (1), 178-189.

Yeung, H. W.-c. (2023). Troubling economic geography: New directions in the post-pandemic world, Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 48 (4), 672-680.

Decolonize innovation: technology innovation in Asia

Session organizer: Yu Zhou, Vassar College

Description:

Between the 1980s and 2000s, economic geographers argued that innovative activities are most likely to take place in selected high-tech clusters in the most advanced economies, i.e., the US, Europe, and Japan (Scott, 1988; Storper 1997, Florida 2002, Cooke 2001, Feldman 2005, Saxenian 1994). Between 2000 and 2020, increasing attention was paid to Asian economies such as South Korea, Taiwan, China, and India in their effort to foster innovation at home(Parthasarathy, 2004, Aoyama, Yuko, 2009, Banerjee 2017, Sunder Rajan 2006, Zhou 2008, Lan and Zhang, 2024, Kim 1997, Kushida, 2011, Ong and Chen 2010). Yet, these innovative activities are commonly framed as derivatives of the core regions through various forms of strategic coupling (Hobday 1995, Coe et al. 2004, Ernst and Kim 2002, Saxenian 2006; Naughton, 1997; Breznitz and Murphree 2012; Yang, Hsu, and Ching 2013, Yeung 2016). In other words, technological actors in these Asian countries are often conceptualized as traveling on well-established technological paths laid out by the core countries with modifications and extensions. Silicon Valley in California, or more precisely, an idealized and stylized version of Silicon Valley, is viewed as the model of the innovative cluster. Other regions are expected to develop a similar combination of talents and venture capital institutions to achieve innovation (Sexenian, 2004; Stoper, 1997) despite the long-standing criticism of how such a model deepened inequalities in America and abroad (Lazonick 2009, Brezitz 2021). Asian countries are among the most eager followers of Silicon Valley stories, with Hsinchu in Taiwan, Bangalore and Hyderabad in India, Zhongguancun and Shenzhen in China at various times claimed to be the “Silicon Valley” in their respective countries. Measured by the yardstick of the Bay Area in California, though, they inevitably fall short.
We argue that this “derivative” understanding of Asian innovation missed crucial motivations, technological networks, and transformative changes. The conception reflects the profound influence of a colonial mindset that elevates the experiences in advanced countries as universalized or superior while dismissing or underestimating the distinct patterns and trajectories of innovation elsewhere (Ang 2021, Zhang and Datta Burton 2022). In the 2020s, as some Asian countries become global leaders, such as semiconductors in South Korea and Taiwan and electric vehicles and renewable energy in mainland China, such discourses are no longer sufficient to describe the patterns of innovation and even less adequate to predict future pathways of technology.
The effort of decolonizing innovation does not seek to deny the Western roots of much technological progress nor to advocate decoupling with Western corporations. Instead, it emphasizes the need for a more inclusive approach to broaden the theorization of innovation and understand how such innovation is governed globally and regionally based on local drivers and networks. Roberts and Cisneros (2021), using the term “decolonizing innovation,” criticize the individualist assumptions of Silicon Valley models and advocate attention to the different worldviews of indigenous people. Zhang and Datta Burton (2022) call for decolonizing global science governance. They argue that decoloniality “challenges the dominance of a Western or Northern rationality as ‘the only and only desirable and universal’ framework to appreciate and guide research and innovation” (P. 9). Decolonality also requires us to recognize that different communities are living in “different reals” (Harding 2019:61). We call attention to work on the following:

1. Recognizing specific social conditions as instrumental in shaping forms and trajectories of innovation locally. Taking the local conditions seriously means analyzing what confluence of factors has led to specific sectors/innovative activities/products gaining strategic importance in particular historical and geographical junctures and attracting state and private investment. Non-Western markets often demand products with functions or prices different from those of wealthy markets. A deeper engagement with the contexts in Asia’s political, social, and economic dynamics is necessary to appreciate innovation’s local roots and path dependency.
2. Identifying the unique and locally appropriate features of organizations and innovation pathways: The leading actors, capital, labor, market, and supporting institutions may be articulated differently, but they are not necessarily inferior, less dynamic, or less sustainable. Innovative institutions in the “core regions” are not the ultimate yardstick everywhere.
3. Understanding the incentives and rewards in pluralistic terms. Innovation “at the core” is predominantly financial market-driven, so key institutional structures such as IPR protection or stock prices, which allow innovative actors to profit disproportionately, are favored. However, this financial market orientation often overlooks other incentives and rewards the innovators might have gained, such as social reputation, more opportunities from peers or partners, new markets, and state support. In Asia, innovative sectors are competitive and dynamic even though many innovators cannot enjoy financial rewards from IPR or stock prices. So, we must broaden our explanations of what incentivizes and sustains innovation.
4. Examining technological dynamics and social implications: The elites-driven innovation models in the West are blamed for perpetuating social inequalities. Whether Asian countries’ performances on social equity are worse or better, drawing lessons from how the relationships between innovation and social consequences are articulated in dynamic sectors would be helpful.
5. Uncovering the international dimensions of Asia’s technological innovation: From Dr. Reddy’s generic drugs to Transsion’s inexpensive smartphones, innovative products from Asia have provided socioeconomic opportunities to people in low-income countries who would otherwise lack access. More recently, companies from the region have begun to upgrade their positions in value chains, leading to direct competition with manufacturers and service providers from developed countries. This competition, bearing both similarities and differences to prior contests among Western multinational corporations, has given rise to increasing trade tensions. How Asian firms navigate the intricate patent networks and existing power structures established by Western MNCs will reshape global production networks and, ultimately, geopolitical relations worldwide.

In short, it is not enough to look for innovative centers on the “periphery” by examining how places, sectors, people, or institutions resemble the “core regions.” Instead, we should take seriously the ideological foundations, social conditions, labor structure, market configuration, political, financial, and legal institutions, and international relations as key elements in discovering divergent innovative models.

This paper session calls for contributions that theoretically and empirically engage in on-the-ground experiences of innovative Asian industries and sectors. We value the pluralist discourses of innovation and open spaces for different institutional arrangements while fully acknowledging the crucial connections Asian actors have with the technological centers in the core. We expect the contributors to articulate how their studies challenge the idealized and stylized innovative sectors or regions from the West. The topics can be any of or a combination of the following. If you have questions, please get in touch with the organizers. Decolonization has deeply influenced geographical subdisciplines such as political ecology and urban studies; it is time we turn our attention to innovation studies.
1) Organization of the innovative sectors, clusters, ideologies, or social conditions behind the organization
2) Capital and labor practices
3) State strategies and their impacts
4) Social consequences and effects of innovation, both positive and negative; social implications of inequalities
5) Comparative studies with other countries, either in the core or other Asian countries
6) Interactions and ties with the other economies and global impacts of the innovative development

If you are interested, please email yuzhou@vassar.edu.

Reference:
Ang, Yuen Yuen, 2021. Beyond Elite Innovation, Boston Review, available at https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/beyond-elite-innovation/
Aoyama, Yuko, 2009. “Entrepreneurship and Regional Culture: The case of Hamamatsu and Kyoto, Japan.” Regional Studies 43 No.3 (April): 495-512.
Banerjee, D. 2017. Markets and molecules: A pharmaceutical primer from the south. Medical Anthropology: Cross-Cultural Studies in Health and Illness 36(4): 363–80.
Breznitz, Dan and Michael Murphree, 2012. Run of the red queen: government innovation, globalization and economic growth in China, Yale University Press.
Breznitz, Dan, 2021. What Silicon Valley gets wrong about innovation, Boston Review, available at https://www.bostonreview.net/forum/what-silicon-valley-gets-wrong-about-innovation/
Coe, N. M., Hess, M., Yeung, H. W. C., Dicken, P., and Henderson, J. 2004. “Globalizing” regional development: A global production networks perspective. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 29(4): 468–84.
Cooke, P. 2001. Regional innovation systems, clusters, and the knowledge economy. Industrial and Corporate Change 10(4): 945–74.
Ernst, D., and Kim, L. 2002. Global production networks, knowledge diffusion, and local capability formation. Research Policy 31(8–9): 1417–29.
Feldman, M. 2005. The locational dynamics of the U.S. biotech industry: Knowledge externalities and the anchor hypothesis. Research and Technological Innovation, ed. A Curzio Quadrio and M. Fortis: 311-329. Berlin: Phisica Verlag, Springer.
Florida, Richard, 2002, The rise of the creative class, New York: Hachette books
Harding, S. (2019). State of the field: Latin American decolonial philosophies of science. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science, 78, 48–63.
Hobday, M. 1995. Innovation in East Asia: The challenge to Japan. Brookfield, VT: Edward Elgar.
Kim, L. 1997. Imitation to innovation: The dynamism of Korea’s technological learning, Boston, MA: Harvard Business School Press.
Kushida, K. (2011), “Leading without Followers: How Politics and Market Dynamics Trapped Innovations in Japan’s Domestic ‘Galapagos’ Telecommunications Sector,” Journal of Industry, Competition and Trade, 11, 279–307.
Lazonick, William, 2009, Sustainable Prosperity in the New Economy: Business Organization and High-Tech Employment in the United States. WE Upjohn Institute.
Naughton, Barry, 1997. The China circle: economics and technology in the PRC Taiwan and Hong Kong. Brooking’s institution press.
Ong, A., and Chen, N., eds. 2010. Asian biotech: Sovereignty, governance, bioethics. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Parthasarathy, Balaji . 2004. India’s Silicon Valley or Silicon Valley’s India?: Socially embedding the computer software industry in Bangalore. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. 28(3):664-685.
Roberts, Tony and Andrea Jimenez Cisneros, 2021, Decolonizing Innovation: Indigenous worldviews demonstrate that a radically different kind of innovation is possible. Boston Review. Available at https://www.bostonreview.net/forum_response/decolonizing-innovation/
Saxenian, A 1994 Regional Advantage: Culture and competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
Saxenian, AnnaLee, 2006. The New Argonauts: regional advantage in a global economy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Scott, Allen 1988, New Industrial Spaces: Flexible Production Organization and Regional Development in North America and Western Europe. Pion
Storper, M. 1997. The regional world: Territorial development in a global economy. New York, NY: Guilford Press.
Sunder Rajan, S. K. 2006. Biocapital: The constitution of post-genomic life. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.
Yang, Daniel You-Ren, Jinn-Yuh Hsu, Chia-Ho Ching 2010, Revisiting the Silicon Island? The Geographically Varied ‘Strategic Coupling in the Development of High–technology Parks in Taiwan, Ch. 3 in Globalizing Regional Development in East Asia Production Networks, Clusters, and Entrepreneurship, Edited by Henry Yeung, Routledge.
Yeung, H. W. C. 2016. Strategic Coupling: East Asian industrial transformation in the new global economy. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Zhang, Joy and Datta-Burton, 2022. The global science race and the decolonial imperative for governance. Ch. 1. In The elephant and the dragon in contemporary life sciences: A call for decolonising global governance.Manchester University Press. Available at https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctv2bndf5t.5/
Zhou, Yu, 2008. The inside story of China’s high-tech industry: Making Silicon Valley in Beijing. Lanham, MA: Rowman and Littlefield

Regional economic geographies

Session Organizer: Tommi Inkinen, University of Turku

Description:

Economic dynamics at regional levels is crucial for sustainable development and policy-making. This session invites abstracts recognizing the multifaceted complexity of regional economic geographies. The topics may focus on, but are not limited to, questions how economic activities, resources, and policies shape and are shaped by geographical locations, scales, and contexts. Four key-dimensions are identified: First, spatial economic disparity studies that examine causes and consequences of economic inequalities between and within regions. Second, globalization and localization inviting papers analyzing the impact of global economic trends on local economies and the resurgence of localism. Third, studies on innovation and regional development. For example, investigations on the role of innovation hubs and technology clusters in regional economic growth are highly welcome. Forth, and finally, policy and planning studies examining effective regional policies and planning strategies to foster balanced economic development. Both theoretical and empirical works on this topic are warmly welcome to foster a deeper understanding of how regional economic geographies can inform more equitable and resilient economic policies. The session encourages interactive discussions in order to improve views and communications in the latest research, methodologies, and practical approaches to addressing these (regional) economic challenges.

Services and Development in the Global South

Organisers: Ivan Turok & Sören Scholvin

Services generate more than half of global gross domestic product and more than 60 per cent of all jobs. Trade in services has been growing faster than trade in manufactured goods. This is because services have become increasingly tradable as a result of technology and globalisation dynamics. They no longer have to be consumed at the time and place of their provision. The delivery of services across national borders is marked by greater complexity and variety than the delivery of goods. IT companies offer platforms and programmes across national borders, often without having representation in each target market. Management consultants and other professional services increasingly provide their advice remotely. Firms with a more traditional approach such as banks and insurance companies, meanwhile, have internationalised by opening branches in new markets. They keep certain activities centralised for control and economies of scale. The growth dynamics of the service sector call exclusively manufacturing-oriented development strategies into question. At the very least, the availability of high-quality intermediary services boosts the productivity of manufacturing firms (Hoekman & Shepherd, 2017). This reflects the decisive role of services, especially advanced business services, in enabling firms to access markets and connecting the various segments of production networks and value chains (Coe et al., 2014). Rodrik and Sandhu (2024) suggest that labour-absorbing services must be a priority for developing countries because the manufacturing sector is increasingly capital-intensive. From a firm perspective, competitiveness and profitability have become closely associated with services or, more correctly, product–service systems because manufactured goods are typically sold along with services such as after-sales support. These embedded services generate more revenues than the initial sale of the product (Yusuf, 2015). An extreme argument is that countries can leapfrog from agricultural societies into service-based economies (Fforde, 2018). The optimism about tradable services is exemplified by Fernández Stark et al. (2011). They argue that services that are outsourced and offshored by Northern lead firms foster development and, in particular, innovation through enhanced connectivity with global markets, also offering good jobs across the Global South. Others have been more sceptical. India, which is widely regarded as a role model of service-led development, suffers from a huge gap between the successful IT industry and lagging sectors (D’Costa, 2011). Research on the Philippines indicates that service offshoring is prone to low value-adding, routinised tasks, with almost no upgrading over time (Kleibert, 2016). Fintech has expanded access to financial services, but it can also deepen disparities and inequalities, as observed in Latin America (Ioannou & Wójcik, 2022). There is, moreover, a sharp divide between a few jobs in advanced, tradable services and many low-paid, low-skilled non-tradable service jobs (Bhorat et al., 2018; Turok & Visagie, 2019). The platform economy has exacerbated the problem in some respects with the precarisation of labour, even for skilled IT professionals (Anwar & Graham, 2020, 2021).

The purpose of this special session is to investigate opportunities and drawbacks of service sector development for Southern nations. It is not limited to North–South relations, meaning global outsourcing and offshoring. We are particularly interested in dynamics that originate in the Global South. Presentations are welcome that deal with:

● patterns of investment and trade in services across the Global South,
● socio-economic disparities that result from service sector growth,
● business strategies of Southern service providers for expansion into distinct markets,
● relocation of tasks between countries and related production networks/value chains at global and regional levels,
● developmental effects of investment and trade in services, including sustainable development through green finance, and
● the impact of technology on the service sector (artificial intelligence, digitalisation of work, fintech etc.)
● policies that affect investment and trade in services, including regional integration.

For questions, please contact the organisers, Ivan Turok (iturok@hsrc.ac.za) and Sören Scholvin(soren.scholvin@ucn.cl).

References
Anwar, M. A. & Graham, M. (2020) Digital labour at economic margins: African workers and the global information economy. Review of African Political Economy, 163, 95–105. https://doi.org/10.1080/03056244.2020.1728243

Anwar, M. A. & Graham, M. (2021) Between a rock and a hard place: freedom, flexibility, precarity and vulnerability in the gig economy in Africa. Competition & Change, 25(2), 237–258. https://doi.org/10.1177/1024529420914473

Bhorat, H., Rooney, C. & Steenkamp, F. (2018) Understanding and characterizing the services sector in South Africa: an overview. In: Industries without Smokestacks: Industrialization in Africa Reconsidered, edited by Newfarmer, R. S., Page, J. & Tarp, F., pp. 275–295. Oxford University Press.

Coe, N. M., Lai, K. P. & Wójcik, D. (2014) Integrating finance into global production networks. Regional Studies, 48(5), 761-777. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2014.886772

D’Costa, A. P. (2011) Geography, uneven development and distributive justice: the political economy of IT growth in India. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 4(2), 237–251. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsr003

Fernández Stark, K., Bamber, P. & Gereffi, G. (2011) The offshore services value chain: upgrading trajectories in developing countries. International Journal of Technological Learning, Innovation and Development, 4(1–3), 206–234. https://dx.doi.org/10.1504/IJTLID.2011.041905

Fforde, A. (2018) Yes, but what about services: is development doctrine changing? Canadian Journal of Development Studies, 39(4), 550–568. https://doi.org/10.1080/02255189.2018.1410469

Hoekman, B. & Shepherd, B. (2017) Services productivity, trade policy and manufacturing exports. World Economy, 40(3), 499–516. https://doi.org/10.1111/twec.12333

Ioannou, S. & Wójcik, D. (2022) The limits to fintech unveiled by the financial geography of Latin America. Geoforum, 128, 57–67. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2021.11.020

Kleibert, J. M. (2016) Global production networks, offshore services and the branch-plant syndrome. Regional Studies, 50(12), 1995–2009. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2015.1034671

Rodrik, D. & Sandhu, R. (2024) Servicing development productive upgrading of labor-absorbing services in developing countries. https://drodrik.scholar.harvard.edu/sites/scholar.harvard.edu/files/dani-rodrik/files/servicing_develop ment_may_2024_0.pdf

Turok, I. & Visagie, J. (2019) Tradable services, value chains and the Gauteng economy. In: Value Chains in Sub-Saharan Africa: Challenges of Integration into the Global Economy, edited by Scholvin, S., Black, A., Revilla Diez, J. & Turok, I., pp. 253–275. Springer. 2

Yusuf, S. (2015) The brave new world of services-led growth. Eurasian Geography and Economics, 56(6), 602–617. https://doi.org/10.1080/15387216.2016.1158120

Labor Geographies and the State

Chair(s):
Siobhan McGrath, Clark University

Description:

Call for Papers: Labor Geographies and The State
Session Organizers: Madhumita Dutta (Ohio State), Siobhán McGrath (Clark), and Eunyeong Song (Clark)

Scholarship on labor within economic geography is characterized by a number of long-standing concerns – such as regulation, restructuring, and migration – that draw attention to the role of the state and state actors. However, these far from exhaust the ways that labor relations and conditions of (paid and unpaid) work are shaped by and through the state. In particular, labor geography has been critiqued for an “ontology of production defined by the wage relation” (Strauss 2020) and a dominant focus on the Global North (Raj-Reichert 2021). This leaves many forms of labor and groups of workers – and their relations with different types of states – out of view. This session seeks to expand work on the relations between labor and the state within economic geography. We define both key terms broadly such that “labor” includes varied forms of work and remuneration, while “the state” may be conceived of as including “’shadow state’ institutions” (Peck 2018) and “state-like activities” (Strauss 2018). We invite papers which expand our analyses of labor and the state empirically, conceptually, and theoretically.

Please send abstracts of up to 200 words to: simcgrath@clarku.edu by Wednesday, January 8th, 2025.

Works Cited:
Peck, J. (2018). Pluralizing labor geography. In: Clark, G.L., Feldman, M.P., Gertler, M.S., Wójcik, D. (eds.) The New Oxford Handbook of Economic Geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Raj-Reichert, G. (2023). Labour geography I: Labour agency, informal work, global south perspectives and the ontology of futures. Progress in Human Geography, 47(1), 187-193.
Strauss, K. (2018). Labour Geography 1: towards a geography of precarity? Progress in Human Geography, 42(4), 622-630.
Strauss, K. (2020). Labour geography II: Being, knowledge and agency. Progress in Human Geography, 44(1), 150-159.

Ideational economic geographies

Chair(s):
Jamie Peck, UBC

Description:

Organisers: Jamie Peck, Chris Meulbroek, and Rachel Phillips (UBC)

The claim that “ideas matter” is a well-established (if still contentious) one in heterodox political economy, economic sociology, international relations, and intellectual history, but it has received much less attention in economic geography. These sessions will explore what it means to prioritize and problematize the role of ideas in the making and remaking of economic geographies. We invite paper presentations that address these issues from a variety of perspectives and vantage points. Questions to be explored in the sessions include, but are not limited to:

o What is the role of ideas—and processes and practices of ideation—in the (re)construction of economic-geographical worlds?
o What role do ideas play in the framing and formation of reform projects, policy programs, and models of restructuring staged from different sites or scales?
o How do particular sites, spaces, scales, and networks of knowledge-production shape the construction, circulation, and embeddedness of economic ideas, frames, and imaginaries?
o What can economic geographers learn from approaches to ideas and ideation in science studies, intellectual history, historical institutionalism, economic sociology, etc.?
o What are the contributions (and limits) of different methodological approaches to the geographical study of ideas and ideation, such as discourse analysis, genealogy, intellectual and group biography, archival work, and ethnography?

Abstracts of 150-250 words, along with a one paragraph bio sketch, should be submitted to: Jamie Peck (jamie.peck@ubc.ca), Chris Meulbroek (chrismeulbroek@gmail.com) or Rachel Phillips (rachel.j.phillips@gmail.com) no later than January 6, 2025. The sessions will be finalized, and authors notified, by January 10, 2025. Note that those invited to join the sessions will need to register and submit abstracts via the GCEG website by January 15, 2025. In the meantime, informal inquiries about potential submissions are welcome.

Geographies of Inequalities that Matter

Chair(s):
Juergen Essletzbichler, Vienna University of Economics and Business

Sebastian Breau, McGill University

Description:

Abstract: The rise of inter- and intra-spatial inequalities in conjuncture with rising inter-personal inequalities since the 1970s is well established. Most research has focused on the causes for the rise of interpersonal inequality with a strong emphasis (i) on the role of technological change and import competition on skill requirements/changes in the labor markets/wage distributions in countries of the Global North and (ii) the consequences of those processes for shifting patterns of interregional inequality and socio-spatial segregation. In this session, we welcome work examining the causes and consequences of rising inequality between and within spatial units from global to local scales but encourage particularly the submission of papers that work across spatial scales and highlight the consequences of rising inequalities that matter for people’s wellbeing. How does income and material consumption affect wellbeing in different spatial contexts? How does the rise in inter-personal inequalities influence levels of segregation and inter-urban inequality? What does living in rich/poor cities/neighborhoods mean for people at different parts of the income distribution? How are those relationships mediated by gender and ethnicity? How do rising median and/or top incomes across cities and regions affect jobs, cost of living and access to universal basic services (UBS) (housing, education, health care, mobility services, food, recreation, nature, environmental quality, etc.)? How does living in rich/poor cities/neighborhoods affect social mobility?

We invite contributions on topics including but not limited to:

Measuring inequalities that matter
§ Measures of wellbeing
§ Beyond wages and monetary incomes: Universal Basic Services (UBS)

Geographies of inequality
§ Regional, urban and urban-rural inequalities
§ Socio-spatial segregation
§ Geographies of opportunities / income mobility
§ Cross-scalar inequalities

Consequences of rising inequalities
§ Wealth concentration and political capture
§ Growing polarization, fear of status decline and the rise of the radical right
§ Affordability crises and poverty
§ The rich, the poor, the environment and climate change

Technoeconomic Geographies: Imaginaries, Technologies, Epistemologies

Chair(s):
Desiree Fields, UC Berkeley, Jillian (Lee) Crandall, UC Berkeley

Description:

New and emerging computational technologies such as artificial intelligence, algorithms, blockchain, big data, and digital platforms are increasingly transforming economic and spatial relations at an accelerating pace. However, technological development and economic development have long been entangled in historic processes of spatial transformation. The Western valorization of technological innovation has transformed core aspects of political economy, shifting the power to reconfigure land, accumulate capital, and produce nature (Smith, 2007), from lords to states to tech companies to wealthy VC elites (Burrell & Fourcade, 2021). In this session, we invite scholars and researchers to submit abstracts for a session focused on how economies and processes of economization (Caliskan & Callon, 2009) are mediated through technologies (Mirowski, 2002; Birch, 2017), spatially, and how technologies are mediated through economic and spatial forms.

To examine technoeconomic development is to consider the role of socio-technical imaginaries (Jasanoff & Kim, 2015) in (re)producing economic geographies, e.g. the role of cryptoeconomic imaginaries in devising new modes of land appropriation(Crandall, 2024). Scholarship concerned with the technoeconomic also examines how economic technologies (ex. predatory instruments of finance, Sassen, 2017) are used to institutionalize inequality (based on race, class, gender) in housing (Fields and Raymond, 2021) and the built environment under the rhetoric of “economic growth,” “development,” or “social good”. Crucially, expansive epistemologies of technology may be leveraged to not only imagine but enact alternative economic futures outside of extractive capitalism (Gibson-Graham, 1996; Barker, 2005; Taylor & Kukutai, 2016; Duarte, 2017; Lynch, 2019; Sadowski, 2021; Fujikane, 2021; Vadiati, 2022; Benjamin, 2024).

In this session, we question not only how “the economy” is understood (Mitchell, 1998; Massey, 2013), but ask what constitutes an “economic technology” and how do economic technologies condition spatial relations? We are interested in pluralistic, expansive knowledges and understandings of technologies and economic processes. This includes research and practices that critique or decenter Western notions of linear “progress” and “innovation” – narratives that perpetuate legacies of colonial violence in relation to Indigenous communities and people of color (Harding, 1993, 1998; Green, 2008; Pulley, 2014; Benjamin, 2019). We seek critical perspectives on how historic and emerging technologies — such as artificial intelligence, automation, digital platforms, renewable energy, biotechnology, geo-engineering, blockchain, etc. — have reshaped spatial hierarchies, power geometries, labor markets, industrial to digital production, trade networks, urban development, and forms of agrarian conquest (Bhattacharya, 2020). Example relevant themes include, but are not limited to:

Histories, cultures, customs of economic technologies and production of space;
Emerging financial technologies and economic development;
Digital identification/passports, economic mobility, and migration;
Digital platforms, digital experiments with property;
“Off-label” or unintended uses and productive failures of economic technologies
Data economies, network, data, land sovereignty;
Economic experiments with rural or agrarian geographies;
Platform cooperativism and commoning;
Online game economies and digital economic geographies;
Economic geographies of telecommunications infrastructure;
Innovation districts, tech corridors, smart cities;
Technological labor and geographies of work;
Environmental technologies, geo-engineering, carbon markets, resource extraction;
(Techno)economic policy, regulatory frameworks, geopolitics

Submission Guidelines
We invite abstracts (250 words maximum) that critically address technoeconomic geographies. While economic geography is the impetus for this conference, we are interested in interdisciplinary work that may intersect urban studies, political economy, sociology, anthropology, new media, science and technology studies, and more. We also encourage submissions that incorporate empirical research, and/or explorations of future technoeconomic geographies. We welcome contributions from scholars at all stages of their careers, including early-career researchers and graduate students. We look forward to a dynamic session that questions how technological change is embedded in and continually reshaping economic and spatial relations.

For inquiries or further details, please contact Desiree Fields, desireefields@berkeley.edu, and/or J. Lee Crandall, j.crandall@berkeley.edu.

Submission Deadline: January 7, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: January 10, 2025
Abstracts should be submitted by completing this form: https://tinyurl.com/mtsfmnz7

Sources

Barker, J. (2005). Sovereignty matters : locations of contestation and possibility in indigenous struggles for self-determination. University of Nebraska Press.

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race after technology : abolitionist tools for the New Jim Code. Polity.

Benjamin, R. (2024). Imagination : a manifesto. W.W. Norton & Company.

Birch, K. (2017). Techno-economic Assumptions. Science as Culture, 26(4), 433–444. https://doi.org/10.1080/09505431.2017.1377389

Bhattacharya, N. (2020). Great Agrarian Conquest, The Colonial Reshaping of a Rural World. SUNY Press.

Burrell, J. & Fourcade, M. (2021). The Society of Algorithms. Annual Review of Sociology. 47. 10.1146/annurev-soc-090820-020800.

Çalışkan, K., & Callon, M. (2009). Economization, part 1: shifting attention from the economy towards processes of economization. Economy and Society, 38(3), 369–398

Crandall, J. (2024). Plotting cryptoeconomic imaginaries and counterplotting the network state. Progress in Economic Geography. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.peg.2024.100028

Duarte, M. (2017). Network sovereignty : building the internet across Indian country. University of Washington Press.

Green, L.J.F. (2008). ‘Indigenous Knowledge’ and ‘Science’: Reframing the Debate on Knowledge Diversity. Arch 4, 144–163.

Easterling, K. (2014). Extrastatecraft : the power of infrastructure space. Verso.

Fields, D and Raymond, R. (2021). Racialized geographies of housing financialization.
Progress in Human Geography, 45(6), 1625-1645.

Fujikane, C. (2021). Mapping abundance for a planetary future : Kanaka Maoli and critical settler cartographies in Hawai’i. Duke University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1215/9781478021247

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996). The end of capitalism (as we knew it): A feminist critique of political economy. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.

Harding, S. (1993). The “racial” economy of science : toward a democratic future. Indiana Univ. Press.

Harding, S. (1998). Is science multicultural? : postcolonialisms, feminisms, and epistemologies. Indiana University Press.

Jasanoff, S., & Kim, S.-H. (2015). Dreamscapes of modernity : sociotechnical imaginaries and the fabrication of power. The University of Chicago Press.

Lynch, C. R. (2019). Contesting Digital Futures: Urban Politics, Alternative Economies, and the Movement for Technological Sovereignty in Barcelona.

Massey, D. (2013). Vocabularies of the economy. Soundings. 54.

Mirowski, P. (2002). Machine dreams : economics becomes a cyborg science. Cambridge University Press.

Mitchell, T. (1998). Fixing the Economy. Cultural Studies, Vol.12(1), p.82-101

Pulley, N. A. (2014). “Indigitechs: The Original Time-Space Traveling Native Americans and Our Modern World Hyper-Pow-Wow.” Western Humanities Review.

Sadowski, J. (2021). Who owns the future city? Phases of technological urbanism and shifts in sovereignty. Urban Studies 58(8): 1732–1744.

Sassen, S. (2017). Predatory formations dressed in Wall Street suits and algorithmic math. Science, Technology & Society 22(1): 6–20.

Saxenian, A. (1996). Regional advantage : culture and competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128 (1st Harvard University Press pbk. ed). Harvard University Press.

Scholz, T. & Schneider, N. (2017). Ours to Hack and to Own: The Rise of Platform Cooperativism.

Smith, N. (2008). Uneven Development : Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space (3rd Edition). University of Georgia Press.

Taylor, J., Kukutai, T., & Australian National University Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research. (2016). Indigenous data sovereignty toward an agenda. Australian National University Press.

Vadiati, N. (2022) Alternatives to smart cities: A call for consideration of grassroots digital urbanism. Digital Geography and Society 3: 100030. Antipode, 52(3), 660-680.

Zukin, S. (2020). The Innovation Complex: Cities, Tech, and the New Economy. New York: Oxford University Press.

Black Economic Geographies: Theory, Policy, Organizing, Action

Session Organizers
Desiree Fields, University of California, Berkeley, desireefields@berkeley.edu
Juleon Robinson, University of California, Berkeley, juleon.robinson@berkeley.edu

Session Description
How have conceptions of Blackness fundamentally shaped our understanding of “the economic” (Hall 2021; Robinson 2000; Wynter 2003)? In what ways are current networks of production and circulation articulated through race (Lowe 2015; Bledsoe & Wright 2019)? How do economic institutions that now rely on digital platforms–real estate, finance, etc.–reproduce racialized logics of capital accumulation despite the apparent neutrality of algorithmic decision-making (Fields 2024; Benjamin 2019)? At the heart of each of these questions is W.E.B. Du Bois’ observation that global capitalism has been built on “surplus value filched” from the “dark proletariat” who “[spawned] the world’s raw material” (Du Bois 1998). As capitalism has evolved over centuries of expansion, crisis, and revolution, so too has the role of the “dark proletariat” in facilitating mechanisms of accumulation. For this session, we seek papers that explore the inextricable relationship between Black geographies and economic geography, the resulting social and spatial implications, and the potential political interventions that emerge in response to different mechanisms of exploitation and expropriation.

While many scholars throughout the 20th century reflected on how the development of capitalism as a world system has always been racial (Du Bois 1998; Robinson 2000; Williams 1994; Best 2009; Beckford 1972), Blackness has often been relegated to the margins of mainstream economic geography. Drawing on the long tradition of radical Black scholarship, recent work in Black geographies has offered a powerful rejoinder to traditional economic geography, emphasizing the critical role of Black space in geographies of capitalist accumulation (Woods 1998; Wilson 2000; Connolly 2014). Foremost, these insights highlight the presumption that Black populations can neither legitimately produce nor occupy space. This assumed “Black lack of cartography (McKittrick 2011) has enabled dominant spatial actors–from industrialists and landowners to the state–to reproduce Black populations as intrinsically open to dispossession and exploitation. As Bledsoe and Wright observe, “spaces that were once marginal to the perpetuation of capital accumulation become sites of appropriation precisely because Black populations receive no recognition as viable spatial actors” (Bledsoe & Wright 2019).

Through this set of interventions, the field of Black geographies interrupts the disciplinary tendency to minimize the importance of Blackness for reckoning with the uneven geographies of capital accumulation. In thinking Black and economic geographies together, this emergent body of scholarship asserts the fundamental importance of Black space to the production and sustainability of capitalist geographies–from the local to the global. Now, as explicit paeans to racist logics are again infused into politics at every scale, it is critical to theorize the linkages between Black geographies and economic geography, from the anti-Blackness of global capital (Bledsoe & Wright 2019; Rodney 2018) to uneven (sub)urban development (Connolly 2014; Woods 1998; Gilmore 2007; Zaimi 2021).

Submission Guidelines
We invite abstracts (250 words maximum) that reckon with the historic and contemporary role of Blackness in producing, sustaining, disrupting, and transforming geographies of racial capitalism. Ideally, papers will not only raise theoretical questions but will also consider their ramifications and potential resolutions, whether through public policy, organizing, or activism. Topics can include any of the myriad ways race operates as the modality through which space is produced and fought through, from environmental justice to policing to (un)housing politics and urban governance.

For inquiries or further details, please contact Desiree Fields, desireefields@berkeley.edu, and/or juleon robinson, juleon.robinson@berkeley.edu

Submission Deadline: January 7, 2025
Notification of Acceptance: January 10, 2025
Abstracts should be submitted by completing this form: https://tinyurl.com/mr3f3fu7

Sources

Benjamin, R. (2019). Race After Technology: Abolitionist Tools for the New Jim Code. Polity.
Beckford, G. (1972). Persistent poverty: Underdevelopment in plantation economies of the Third World. Oxford University Press.
Best, L. (with Levitt, K.). (2009). Essays on the theory of plantation economy: A historical and institutional approach to Caribbean economic development / Lloyd Best and Kari Polanyi Levitt ; foreword by Norman Girvan. University of West Indies Press.
Bledsoe, A., & Wright, W. J. (2019). The anti-Blackness of global capital. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(1), 8–26.
Connolly, N. D. B. (2014). A World More Concrete: Real Estate and the Remaking of Jim Crow South Florida. University of Chicago Press.
Du Bois, W. E. B. (1998). Black Reconstruction in America. The Free Press.
Gilmore, R. W. (2007). Golden gulag: Prisons, surplus, crisis, and opposition in globalizing California. University of California Press.
Hall, S. (2021). Selected Writings on Race and Difference (R. W. Gilmore & P. Gilroy, Eds.). Duke University Press.
Lowe, L. (2015). The Intimacies of Four Continents. Duke University Press.
McKittrick, K. (2011). On plantations, prisons, and a black sense of place. Social & Cultural Geography, 12(8), 947–963.
Robinson, C. J. (2000). Black marxism: The making of the Black radical tradition. University of North Carolina Press.
Rodney, W. (2018). How Europe Underdeveloped Africa. Verso.
Williams, E. (1994). Capitalism & Slavery. University of North Carolina Press.
Wilson, B. M. (2000). America’s Johannesburg: Industrialization and Racial Transformation in Birmingham. The University of Georgia Press.
Woods, C. (1998). Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. Verso.
Wynter, S. (2003). Unsettling the Coloniality of Being/Power/Truth/Freedom: Towards the Human, After Man, Its Overrepresentation–An Argument. CR: The New Centennial Review, 3(3), 257–337.
Zaimi, R. (2021). Rethinking “Disinvestment”: Historical geographies of predatory property relations on Chicago’s South Side. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 026377582110130.

Just Transitions in Global Production Networks: Navigating Trade-offs and Upgrading trajectories

Session organisers: Aarti Krishnan, University of Manchester; Rachel Alexander, Copenhagen Business School; Peter Lund-Thomsen, Copenhagen Business School; Frank Boons, Maastricht University and University of Manchester

As the world grapples with the twin transitions of environmental sustainability and digitalization (Diodato et al., 2023), the concept of just transitions has emerged as a critical framework to ensure that no one is left behind (Wang and Lo, 2021). A just transition emphasizes processes that balance socio-economic equity and environmental sustainability while navigating the complex dynamics of global production networks (GPNs) (e.g. Truffer et al 2015).

While the green transition seeks to reduce carbon emissions and promote ecological balance, it can create significant socio-economic challenges, particularly in industries reliant on traditional energy and extractive practices (Bridge, 2008). Simultaneously, digital transformation introduces concerns around technological unemployment, skills gaps, and uneven access to benefits across geographies and demographics (Heeks et al. 2023). Additionally, GPNs present specific challenges due to their transnational nature and the involvement of multiple actors with varying levels of power, resources, and influence (Henderson et a. 2002; Coe and Yeung, 2015). This necessitates unpacking how concepts of just transitions are adapted to address production network-specific contexts.

The literature on just transitions and GPNs are often not studied in conjunction, drawing on varying theoretical domains (e.g. Geels 2011, Köhler et al 2019). Within GPNs, the framing of just transitions is crucial to understanding how justice principles—such as distributional, procedural, and recognitive justice—are conceptualized and operationalized (Wand and Lo, 2021), the extent to which decoloniality is embedded. The framing (re)shapes the priorities, trade-offs, and strategies adopted by diverse stakeholders, influencing whose voices are heard and whose interests are addressed (Weller 2019). For example, how justice is interpreted in the context of agricultural GPNs may differ significantly from energy or technology sectors, yet all require nuanced approaches to align local realities with global imperatives.

At the same time, two major shifts, (a) the broader technological shifts towards (disruptive) sustainable innovation that create new regimes and feedback loops within and beyond GPNs; (b) the associated reconfiguration of actors—governments, corporations, civil society, and worker organizations—in fostering equitable transitions in a GPN context. These new alliances are critical to addressing trade-offs, navigating uncertainties, and enabling upgrading within GPNs.

We welcome papers which address, but are not limited to, the following:

Framing just transitions in GPNs: Unpacking how concepts of just transitions are framed and interpreted in different sectors, regions, and scales. For example, different framings in the global South versus global North or different framing between actors in different contexts.
Geographies of just: how are the geographies where the term ‘just’ is enacted differently? Does this effect the translation/diffusion of such enactments from one place to another, as these are mediated through power dynamics in GPNs.
Conceptual frameworks: Expanding theories that integrate just transitions with GPNs, considering justice dimensions such as distributional, procedural, and recognitive justice
New actor configurations and governance (including regulatory frameworks): Exploring how multi-stakeholder alliances can facilitate just transitions, and how they negotiate power dynamics and conflicting priorities within GPNs. For example, papers could consider the role of standards, changing governance global and local structures
Production network-specific dynamics: Examining the unique challenges and opportunities for just transitions in industries such as agriculture, textiles, and energy, with attention to local-global linkages and sectoral differences.
Upgrading/downgrading and Navigating trade-offs: Analysing the socio-economic and ecological trade-offs inherent in the twin green and digital transitions, and implications for upgrading/downgrading.
Labour and livelihoods: Assessing the impacts of automation, decarbonization, and digitalization on employment and exploring pathways for inclusive and equitable labour transitions.
Technological shifts and disruptive innovations: Assessing the implications of digitalization and automation for equity and inclusion within GPNs
Methodological approaches: Innovative research methods, including participatory, art-based, and digital tools, for studying just transitions in GVCs.
Just transitions in an era of uncertainty in GPNs: how crisis effect how transitions occur/create externalities.

Submission Guidelines:

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Aarti Krishnan, aarti.krishnan-2@manchester.ac.ukand/or Rachel Alexander, ral.msc@cbs.dk by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (on Monday 13th January 2025), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/ [nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com]) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

References:

Bridge, G. (2008). Global production networks and the extractive sector: governing resource-based development. Journal of economic geography, 8(3), 389-419.

Coe, N. & Yeung, H. W.-C. (2015). Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development in an Interconnected World. Oxford University Press.

Diodato, D., Huergo, E., Moncada-Paternò-Castello, P., Rentocchini, F., & Timmermans, B. (2023). Introduction to the special issue on “the twin (digital and green) transition: handling the economic and social challenges”. Industry and Innovation, 30(7), 755-765.

Geels, F. W. (2011). The multi-level perspective on sustainability transitions: Responses to seven criticisms. Environmental innovation and societal transitions, 1(1), 24-40.

Henderson, J., Dicken, P., Hess, M., Coe, N., & Yeung, H. W. C. (2002). Global production networks and the analysis of economic development. Review of international political economy, 9(3), 436-464.

Köhler, J., Geels, F. W., Kern, F., Markard, J., Onsongo, E., Wieczorek, A., … & Wells, P. (2019). An agenda for sustainability transitions research: State of the art and future directions. Environmental innovation and societal transitions, 31, 1-32.

Truffer, B., Murphy, J. T., & Raven, R. (2015). The geography of sustainability transitions: Contours of an emerging theme. Environmental Innovation and Societal Transitions, 17, 63-72.

Wang, X., & Lo, K. (2021). Just transition: A conceptual review. Energy Research & Social Science, 82, 102291.

Weller, S. A. (2019). Just transition? Strategic framing and the challenges facing coal dependent communities. Environment and Planning C: Politics and Space, 37(2), 298-316.

Transformative Entrepreneurship for Diverse Economies

Organizers: Alica Repenning & Christine Tamásy, Greifswald University, Germany

Entrepreneurs are increasingly recognized not merely as uncritical profit maximizers but as advocates for fostering positive, low-carbon futures and just transitions. Rather than being primarily driven by traditional growth paradigms, they are often regarded as pioneers and agents of change because they challenge mainstream practices and promote environmental, social, and ethical transformations within society (Affolderbach & Krueger, 2017; Christmann et al., 2020; Dean & McMullen, 2007; Dijkstra et al., 2021; North, 2016). These transformative economic activities often remain metaphorically “below the surface” and might be overlooked (Gibson-Graham, 2008).

We argue for a more capacious conceptualization of entrepreneurship, in particular in a spatial perspective. That is, innovating toward transformation means practicing novelty and re-interrogating given structures and norms to construct diverse economies. Against this background, this session seeks to connect theories on diverse economieswith those on transformative entrepreneurship, offering new insights into this underexplored intersection.

Possible topics and themes:

Overall, in this session, we aim to expand our understanding of the dynamic interconnections between transformation, entrepreneurship, and the future-oriented intersections of innovating for society and the environment. Research topics could include but are not limited to:

Transformative entrepreneurship in the blue and green economy

· Contributions of eco-entrepreneurship to blue and green economy agendas

· Empirical studies on transformative entrepreneurship addressing plastic reduction, sustainable agri-food systems, carbon capture, water quality improvement, or waste reduction

Eco-entrepreneurship, social enterprises, social innovation, and just transitions

· Analyzing sustainable start-ups addressing environmental and social issues such as eutrophication, carbon capture, and pollution mitigation

A gendered lens on entrepreneurial diversity

· Studies focusing on diverse and intersectional perspectives on transformative entrepreneurship

Diverse constructs of value and valuation

· Exploring how transformative entrepreneurs redefine value

· Theoretical and empirical approaches to measuring success and impact beyond traditional profit metrics

Challenges and opportunities of transformative entrepreneurship

· Temporal and spatial barriers to transformative environmental and social change

· Discussing issues of scale: localized utopias or proper alternatives to globe-spanning concerns?

Submission Guidelines

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 300 words to Alica Repenning and Christine Tamásy (alica.repenning@uni-greifswald.de; christine.tamasy@uni-greifswald.de ) by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025.

References

Affolderbach, J., & Krueger, R. (2017). “Just” ecopreneurs: Re-conceptualising green transitions and entrepreneurship. Local Environment, 22(4), 410–423. https://doi.org/10.1080/ 13549839.2016.1210591

Christmann, G. B., Ibert, O., Jessen, J., & Walther, U.-J. (2020). Innovations in spatial planning as a social process – phases, actors, conflicts. European Planning Studies, 28(3), 496–520. https://doi.org/10.1080/09654313.2019.1639399

Dean, T. J., & McMullen, J. S. (2007). Toward a theory of sustainable entrepreneurship: Reducing environmental degradation through entrepreneurial action. Journal of Business Venturing, 22(1), 50–76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2005.09.003

Dijkstra, H., van Beukering, P., & Brouwer, R. (2021). In the business of dirty oceans: Overview of startups and entrepreneurs managing marine plastic. Marine Pollution Bulletin, 162, 111880. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpolbul.2020.111880

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: Performative practices for `other worlds’. Progress in Human Geography, 32(5), 613–632. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132508090821

North, P. (2016). The business of the Anthropocene? Substantivist and diverse economies perspectives on SME engagement in local low carbon transitions. Progress in Human Geography, 40(4), 437–454. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132515585049

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Christine Tamásy
Professor of Human Geography
University of Greifswald
Institute of Geography and Geology
F.-L.-Jahn-Straße 17a
17489 Greifswald, Germany
Phone: +49 (0) 3834 420-4535
christine.tamasy@uni-greifswald.de

Technological Transformations in Global Value Chains: Emerging Geographies of Services Outsourcing and the Futures of Work

Session Organisers: Dr Aditya Ray (UWE Bristol, UK), Dr Uma Rani (ILO Geneva)

Session Description: 

The integration of new digital technologies of automation such as artificial intelligence, machine learning and blockchain is poised to transform global services value chains. These new technologies are redefining how services are being organised and delivered — from entry-level data work to more complex Information Technology (IT) & IT-enabled services. With their capacity to collect, monitor and process large amounts of data in real time, they also challenge conventional business outsourcing models, their underlying political economy and the dynamics of work, employment and labour.

This panel is interested in papers that explore how emerging digital technologies are reshaping work, labour and employment in service supply/ value chains from multiple perspectives. We encourage contributions to link these technological shifts to their human dimensions, including for instance, to changes in workers’ routine tasks, professional status, skill-building, career trajectories and to broader (regional) developmental pathways.

We encourage panellists to critically address any or as many of the following key topics through their presentations:
• Careful mapping of transformations aided by introduction of new technologies of automation within specific services value chains (for e.g. different IT consulting, ITeS-BPOs, back-offices, call centres etc.) 
• Implications of new technological shifts for workers in services value chains, including workplace experiences, professional identity / status, re-/de-skilling, job (in-)security and career pathways.
• Implications for understanding(s) of ‘knowledge work’ in massified entry-level and more specialised ‘mid-/-high-end’ services (for e.g. in call centres, data service workers, software consulting, medical and legal outsourcing etc.).
• Understanding risks and opportunities from new digital technologies for established hubs and emergent geographies or regions in global services outsourcing.
• ‘Developmental’ implications of automation and other new digital technologies for regions – particularly in their effects on local labour markets, intermediation and decent work opportunities.  

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Aditya Ray – aditya.ray@uwe.ac.uk, by the 8th of January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts by 10 January 2025, presenters must submit their abstracts through the conference registration website of the GCEG 2025

Critical Perspectives on Valuation in a Globalized Economy: Hidden Geographies, Obscured Production Networks, and Beyond

Session organisers:

Oliver Ibert, Leibniz Institute for Research on Society and Space & BTU Cottbus, Germany

Jana Kleibert, University of Hamburg, Germany

Martin Hess, University of Manchester, UK

Dominic Power, Stockholm University, Sweden

In the last two decades a growing body of work has focused on exploring the so-called “dark sides” of value creation in the context of a globalized economy, highlighting how common it is that marketing claims and distanciated global value chains obscure exploitative labour relations or the appropriation of nature’s value (Werner, 2022). We aim to take stock of approaches that have supported such critical empirical analysis, including the literature on marketisation and valuation, as well as approaches of dis/articulations and the geographies of dissociations (Bair and Werner, 2011; Bigger and Robertson, 2017; Ibert et al. 2019). These literatures have collectively contributed to shift the attention towards economic resources denied recognition, places excluded from participation, adversely incorporated in global production networks, or relations hidden away from consumer’s views so as not to tarnish the carefully crafted image of a product. On the one hand, there is now more information on the conditions of production available to consumers and many firms proactively highlight the provenance of used materials and disclose details of the production processes. On the other hand, the complex dynamics of global production networks provide ripe opportunities for “strategic ignorance” (McGoey, 2019) and “greenwashing” (Williams, 2024) to selectively determine which social and ecological relations are revealed and which ones are obscured or ignored. In contemporary consumer capitalism it seems that valuation involves both spectacle and secrecy, and that these are intertwined in dialectical and sometimes counter-intuitive ways (Murray and Bradshaw, 2024). The relational and dialectical practices of association and dissociation can also lead to shifting and even less transparent supply chains (Thomsen and Hess, 2022).

We interrogate the benefits and limits of existing approaches and perspectives and give the floor to novel empirical and conceptual work in the field that critically maps the omissions, missing links and hidden geographies of global production as well as the (strategic) actions of global producers to bring these formations into being.

We invite papers that speak to the theme through theoretical or empirical contributions, for instance on the following topics:

• Empirical investigations of the dark sides of global production networks and the dialectics and ambivalences of association and dissociation, hiding and highlighting, or inclusion and exclusion

• Spatial conceptualizations of the dark sides of geographies of valuation, such as hidden geographies, dark places, relational distance and/or missing links

• Conceptual contributions to critical valuation and global production network perspectives

• Reflections on the links and tensions between different types of value (symbolic value, use value, exchange value)

Submission Guidelines: Please send your abstract (max. 250 words) to the session organisers (jana.kleibert@uni-hamburg.de) by Friday 10th January 2025.

References:

Bair, J., & Werner, M. (2011). Commodity chains and the uneven geographies of global capitalism: A disarticulations perspective. Environment and Planning A, 43(5), 988-997.

Bigger, P. & Robertson, M. (2017). Value is simple. Valuation is complex. Capitalism Nature Socialism 28 (1), 68–77 Ibert, O., Hess, M., Kleibert, J., Müller, F., & Power, D. (2019). Geographies of dissociation: value creation, ‘dark’ places, and ‘missing’ links. Dialogues in Human Geography, 9(1), 43-63.

McGoey, L. (2019). The Unknowers: How Strategic Ignorance Rules the World. London. Zed.

Murray, A. & Bradshaw, A. (2024). Could commodities themselves speak? An introduction to the agnotology of the spectacle. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 42(2), 275-293.

Thomsen, L., & Hess, M., (2022), Dialectics of Association and Dissociation: Spaces of valuation, trade and retail in the gems and jewelry sector. Economic Geography 98(1). 49-67.

Werner, M. (2022). Geographies of production III: Global production in/through nature. Progress in Human Geography, 46(1), 234-244.

Williams, J. (2024). Greenwashing: Appearance, illusion and the future of ‘green’ capitalism. Geography Compass, 18(1), e12736.

The Role(s) of Science, Technology, and Innovation in Regional Growth and Uneven Development

Organizers: Dieter F. Kogler (dieter.kogler@ucd.ie) and Sebastián Baeza (sebaeza@udec.cl).

The study of spatial patterns of knowledge production and associated uneven economic development outcomes are central to Economic Geography. The Geography of Innovation (Feldman, 1994) and the Evolutionary Economic Geography (EEG) literatures (Kogler et al., 2023a) have highlighted how local capabilities and institutions affect the rate and direction of scientific and technological advancements, and how these patterns are linked to firm competition and uneven development within the capitalist space economy (Bouba-Olga, 2005; Crescenzi et al., 2020; Feldman and Kogler, 2010).

EEG focuses on the evolution of regional economies, exploring how firms and other economic agents develop and abandon place-based assets in pursuit of competitive advantage. Processes of innovation and creative destruction take center-stage in much of this work that has often focused on new technological trajectories in high-growth regions (Sternberg, 1996). However, recent work explores the so-called “dark-side” of innovation and the hollowing-out of left-behind places (Boschma et al., 2024; Rodriguez-Pose et al., 2024), linking the introduction and diffusion of disruptive ideas to periods when regional growth disparities narrow and widen (Kemeny et al., 2022). The proposed special sessions seek to encourage discussion on the creation of new scientific ideas, their commercialization as new technologies (Kogler et al., 2024), the role(s) of geography in innovation and how these processes impact regional growth and development (Asheim et al., 2016; Grillitsch et al., 2018; Maggioni et al., 2024). Particular emphasis is directed toward investigating the spatial and temporal dynamics of scientific creativity and technological change, of phases of incremental, path-dependent innovation and on periods of creative destruction, recombination and new path creation. Within these themes, we reflect on the following key questions: Do the geographies of stable and unstable scientific and technological development look similar or very different? How do different regional economies and their economic agents navigate shifts in technological trajectories and how do the scientific, technological and occupational capabilities found in regions lead to lock-in, lock-out, inertia and the restructuring of economic geographies? What are the processes connecting innovation and well-being, and how do they reinforce or weaken spatial disparities?

Many of the issues noted above are readily linked to questions about equity and policy. Attempts to clone high-tech, fast growth economies has long been a staple of regional development policy. For instance, the Smart Specialization Strategy (S3) of the European Union represents another framework linking innovation-based diversification to improved regional fortunes (Hassink and Gong, 2021). While Balland et al. (2019) and Marrocu et al. (2023) unveil some of the opportunities and challenges of S3 policy, related policy conversations converge upon the advantages of regional specialization and diversification, on the spatial and technological structure of knowledge production and its complexity and, ultimately, the emergence of core and peripheral dynamics that are both distinct and dependent. Ultimately, we question if innovation provides a basis for inclusive growth (Eder, 2018; Glückler et al., 2023), what kinds of policy might help, and how do we overcome the gap of ‘vision and reality’ dividing policy initiatives and the socio-economic realities that guide the economic development potentials of regional economies (Kim et al., 2024).

We invite contributions that are related to the following themes:

Geographical histories of scientific and technological creative destruction
Spatial inequalities of knowledge production, recombination and diffusion
Regional resilience, technological trajectories, path dependent development and path creation
Links between scientific knowledge production, technological change and regional fortunes
The roles of technological structure and complexity, related and unrelated variety to fast/slow growth
The interplay of agents, organizations, institutions and place in innovation systems and dynamics
Firm and regional linkages, the relatedness of firms, regions and technologies, relatedness dynamics and uneven development
Regional policy for technological change, transformation/transition and inclusive growth

The organizers welcome abstracts of no more than 250 words by the 5th of January 2025. Please send inquiries and abstracts to Dieter F. Kogler (dieter.kogler@ucd.ie) and Sebastián Baeza (sebaeza@udec.cl). Following feedback (latest by January 10th) authors will be required to register via the conference website at https://gceg.org/index.php/register/. We hope you can join us, and we are looking forward to hearing from you soon.

Best wishes,

David, Dieter, Emanuela, Natsuki, Sebastian & Stefano

Session Organizers

Dieter F. Kogler (University College Dublin, Ireland)

Sebastian Baeza (Universidad de Concepción, Chile)

Natsuki Kamakura (University of Tokyo, Japan)

Emanuela Marrocu (Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy)

David Rigby (UCLA, USA)

Stefano Usai (Università degli Studi di Cagliari, Italy)

References:

Asheim, B. T., Grillitsch, M., & Trippl, M. (2016). Regional innovation systems: Past–present–future. In Handbook on the geographies of innovation (pp. 45-62). Edward Elgar Publishing.

Balland, P.A., Boschma, R., Crespo, J., & Rigby, D. (2019). Smart specialization policy in the European Union: relatedness, knowledge complexity and regional diversification. Regional Studies, 53(9), 1252-1268. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2018.1437900

Boschma, R., Fitjar, R., Giuliani, E., & Iammarino, S. (2024). Unseen costs: the inequities of the geography of innovation. Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography #24.28, Utrecht University.

Bouba-Olga, O. (2005). Innovation, proximities and regional development. European Journal of Economic and Social Systems, 18(3), 285–305.

Crescenzi, R., Iammarino, S., Ioramashvili, C., Rodríguez-Pose, A., & Storper, M. (2020). The geography of innovation and development: Global spread and local hotspots. Geography and Environment Discussion Paper Series, 37.

Eder, J. (2018). Innovation in the periphery: A critical survey and research agenda. International Regional Science Review. https://doi.org/10.1177/0160017618764279

Feldman, M. P. (1994). The geography of innovation. Kluwer Academic Publishers.

Feldman, M. P., & Kogler, D. F. (2010). Stylized facts in the geography of innovation. In B. H. Hall & N. Rosenberg (Eds.), Handbook of the economics of innovation, Vol. 1 (pp. 381–410). North-Holland.

Glückler, J., Shearmur, R., & Martinus, K. (2023). Liability or opportunity? Reconceptualizing the periphery and its role in innovation. Journal of Economic Geography, 23(2), 231–249. https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbac028

Hassink, R., & Gong, H. (2021). Six critical questions about smart specialization. In Rethinking Clusters (pp. 171-187). Routledge.

Kemeny, T., Petralia, S., & Storper, M. (2022). Disruptive innovation and spatial inequality. Regional Studies 56, 1-18. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2076824

Kim, K., Ferrante, C., & Kogler, D. F. (2024). Smart Specialisation Strategies and regional knowledge spaces: how to bridge vision and reality. Regional Studies, 58(12), 2501–2517. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2024.2355985

Kogler, D. F., Evenhuis, E., Giuliani, E., Martin, R., Uyarra, E., & Boschma, R. (2023a). Re-imagining evolutionary economic geography. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 16(3), 373–390. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsad029

Kogler, D. F., Brenner, T., Celebioglu, F., & others. (2024). The science-innovation nexus in a regional context—introduction to the special issue, policy and future research directions. Regional Science Policy & Practice, 44(1), 141–149. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10037-024-00212-0

Grillitsch, M., Asheim, B. T., & Trippl, M. (2018). Unrelated knowledge combinations: The unexplored potential for regional industrial path development. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 11(2), 257–274. https://doi.org/10.1093/cjres/rsy012

Maggioni, M. A., Marrocu, E., Uberti, T. E., & Usai, S. (2024). The role of localised, recombinant and anticipated technological change in European regions. Economics of Innovation and New Technology, 1–24. https://doi.org/10.1080/10438599.2024.2435032

Marrocu, E., Paci, R., Rigby, D., & Usai, S. (2023). Evaluating the implementation of Smart Specialisation policy. Regional Studies, 57(1), 112–128. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2047915

Rodriguez-Pose, A., Bartalucci, F., Lozano-Gracia, N., & Dávalos, M. (2024). Overcoming left-behindness. Moving beyond efficiency versus equity in territorial development. Papers in Evolutionary Economic Geography #24.34, Utrecht University.

Sternberg, R. (1996). Regional growth theories and high-tech regions. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 20(3), 518-538.

Contesting and Reclaiming Regional Futures in Uncertain and Polarised Times

Chair(s):
Huiwen Gong, University of Stavanger

Johan Miorner, Lund University

Description:

Over the last two decades, the world has become increasingly polarised, resulting in heightened uncertainties. While some regions benefit from unexpected growth due to the opening of “windows of locational opportunity” for new technologies (Boschma, 1996), others face economic stagnation, rising inequality, and increasing discontent (Henn and Hannemann, 2023; Rodríguez-Pose, 2012). For many regions, the prospects for prosperity and renewed economic dynamism appear bleak, as encapsulated by the concept of “regional development traps” (Diemer et al., 2022). In these uncertain times, characterised by growing polarisation in the interests, experiences, and perceptions among different social groups, contestation over regional futures is intensifying. Some adhere to conventional narratives centred on growth, material prosperity, innovation and technological progress, and increased connectedness, believing these approaches are also the best means to address environmental degradation, rising inequalities, and security concerns. Others propose alternative regional futures and development models that prioritise values such as sustainability, democracy, well-being, sufficiency, autonomy, and various forms of justice. These visions have materialised in concepts like the Foundational Economy, New Municipalism, Community Wealth Building, the Well-being Economy, Degrowth and Post-Growth. A third response reflects a retreat into nostalgia and a desire to return to an idealised past (e.g., Elgenius and Rydgren, 2022; Reckwitz, 2024), juxtapositing and unfavorably comparing between an idealised glorious past, a decaying present, and the creation of a utopian future that in many ways resemble Christian narratives of fall and redemption. Yet another reaction is one of “futurelessness” (Tutton, 2022), marked by feelings of hopelessness, despair and resentment (cfm. Harvey, 2000), leading to populist voting behaviours, intensified social divides, and similar trends (e.g., Rodríguez-Pose, 2018).

These visions and imaginaries of regional futures and development modes – and the politics around these – also importantly shape the direction that development in regions will actually take. Indeed, in recent years scholars have increasingly called for more attention to how the engagement with the future (by leaders, planners, communities, etc.) is also a determining factor for the development outcomes of regions (e.g. Grillitsch and Sotarauta, 2020; Gong, 2024; Tups et al., 2024); as a counterbalance to the current emphasis on structural factors and path dependencies. Yet, there has so far not been much work on regional futures and developments as a distinct topic of research as part of the study of regional development in regional studies and economic geography.
This special session aims to address this gap. We welcome both theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions along three lines of inquiry: the politics of regional futures and development, agency in future shaping, and the implications for research and methods.
The politics of regional futures and development
• What is the prevalence of certain visions and imaginaries of regional futures and development in different contexts, and at different levels of scale?
• In particular, how to understand the current emotional geographies of hope, despair and futurelessness in both regions that are labeled as ‘left behind’ or ‘places that don’t matter’, as well as in economically successful regions?
• How and why do different actors in a region (e.g., governments, communities, corporations) promote or resist different visions and imaginaries of the future and development?
• What kinds of futures and development modes are empowered or marginalized in processes of politics and contestation, and why?
• How do visions and imaginaries of regional futures and development modes influence debates on key issues for the development of regions, both within a region as well as at higher levels of scale?

Regional futures and agency
• By what mechanisms do vested interests and powerful actors in a region, constrain the agency of other actors by limiting their capacity to imagine alternative development trajectories, and by instilling apathy or cynicism instead?
• How do structural inequalities and existing power relations, influence possibilities to realise visions and imaginaries of a future for the region that are more progressive, sustainable, and equitable?

Implications for research and methods
• How can the development and application of futuring tools and techniques—such as foresight, scenario-building, storytelling, and research-by-design— be used in regional studies?
• How do the responsibilities and relationships with stakeholders change for researchers when they actively participate in formulating and debating visions and imaginaries for regional futures? What are key ethical aspects to consider?

Promises and pitfalls of sustainable finance: Critical Geographies of Reparative Accumulation

Organizers: Dan Cohen (Queen’s University) and W. Nathan Green (National University of Singapore)

Over the past fifteen years, financial actors and governments have promised that a new day is over the horizon – one where the trillions in financial markets come to be available for projects of social and ecological repair (Cohen et al. 2022). From the UN’s Green Climate Fund and the UAE’s Alterra fund to the World Bank’s Maximizing Finance for Development plan, private finance has consistently been touted as the solution to the so-called public funding gap needed to address social and environmental crises (Gabor 2021; Mawdsley 2018).

However, geographers have critiqued the efficacy of these projects, exploring their connections to processes of neoliberalization and financialization (Mawdsley and Taggart 2022; Mitchell and Sparke 2016) as well as their impacts on human and non-human life (Beer 2023; Bigger and Webber 2021; Yunita et al. 2023). Despite well-documented cases of greenwashing and exposes highlighting the limits of such projects (e.g. Greenfield 2023), these projects yet again illustrate “the turgid reality of neoliberalism failing and flailing forward” (Peck 2010, 7). New metrics, regulatory regimes, and other technologies of governance promise that – this time – the right mix of market-based incentives will repair the social and environmental harms of past capitalist development (Green 2024). Moreover, rather than existing in isolation or solely as acts of financialization, these projects instead require a complex mix of state and non-state actors to build the market structures that unite private profit-making, public legitimation, and the supportive institutional structures needed for the advancement of sustainable finance (Alami et al. 2023; Hughes-McLure and Mawdsley 2022).

This paper session will bring together economic geographers and others studying such projects of ‘reparative accumulation’ in an effort to think across geographies, sectors, and realms of life where such projects are active. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, investigating the following:

The discourses, metrics, and evaluation tools, etc. which attempt to make social and environmental projects legible to investors.
How projects of sustainable finance are socially and spatially interwoven with other projects of socio-environmental repair in often conflicting ways.
The diverse roles of the state, private finance, and civil society in systems of sustainable finance.
The contestation of sustainable finance projects, both emancipatory (anti-capitalist, feminist, abolitionist, decolonial) and reactionary (anti-ESG, anti-woke investing, etc.).
The openings and contradictions within sustainable finance projects that present possibilities for enacting more far-reaching social-environmental change.
The geographies of places impacted by sustainable finance projects.

If you are interested in joining our session, please send a 200-word abstract, along with author information, to Dan Cohen (dan.cohen@queensu.ca) and W. Nathan Green (geowng@nus.edu.sg) by 6 January 2025. The session will be in person.

Don’t hesitate to contact us if you have any questions!

References

Alami, Ilias, Jack Copley, and Alexis Moraitis. 2023. “The ‘Wicked Trinity’ of Late Capitalism: Governing in an Era of Stagnation, Surplus Humanity, and Environmental Breakdown.” Geoforum, February, 103691. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2023.103691.

Beer, Clare M. 2023. “Bankrolling Biodiversity: The Politics of Philanthropic Conservation Finance in Chile.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 6 (2): 1191–1213. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486221108171.

Bigger, Patrick, and Sophie Webber. 2021. “Green Structural Adjustment in the World Bank’s Resilient City.” Annals of the American Association of Geographers 111 (1): 36–51. https://doi.org/10.1080/24694452.2020.1749023.

Cohen, Dan, Sara Nelson, and Emily Rosenman. 2022. “Reparative Accumulation? Financial Risk and Investment across Socio-Environmental Crises.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 5 (4): 2356–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486211030432.

Gabor, Daniela. 2021. “The Wall Street Consensus.” Development and Change 52 (3): 429–59. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12645.

Green, W. Nathan. 2024. “The Anti-Politics of Impact Investment: Financial Self-Regulation, Market Competition and over-Indebtedness in Cambodia.” Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space: 0308518X241239797. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X241239797.

Greenfield, Patrick. 2023. “Revealed: More than 90% of Rainforest Carbon Offsets by Biggest Certifier Are Worthless, Analysis Shows.” The Guardian, January 18, 2023, sec. Environment. https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/jan/18/revealed-forest-carbon-offsets-biggest-provider-worthless-verra-aoe.

Hughes-McLure, Sarah, and Emma Mawdsley. 2022. “Innovative Finance for Development? Vaccine Bonds and the Hidden Costs of Financialization.” Economic Geography 98 (2): 145–69. https://doi.org/10.1080/00130095.2021.2020090.

Mawdsley, Emma. 2018. “‘From Billions to Trillions’: Financing the SDGs in a World ‘beyond Aid.'” Dialogues in Human Geography 8 (2): 191–95. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820618780789.

Mawdsley, Emma, and Jack Taggart. 2022. “Rethinking d/Development.” Progress in Human Geography 46 (1): 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211053115.

Mitchell, Katharyne, and Matthew Sparke. 2016. “The New Washington Consensus: Millennial Philanthropy and the Making of Global Market Subjects.” Antipode 48 (3): 724–49. https://doi.org/10.1111/anti.12203.

Peck, Jamie. 2010. Constructions of Neoliberal Reason. Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press.

Yunita, Abbie, Frank Biermann, Rakhyun E Kim, and Marjanneke J Vijge. 2023. “Making Development Legible to Capital: The Promise and Limits of ‘Innovative’ Debt Financing for the Sustainable Development Goals in Indonesia.” Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 6 (4): 2271–94. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486231159301.

Smart as green? Untangling twin (energy-digital) transitions

Session Organizers

Ricardo Barbosa, Jr., PhD Student, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University

Maddy Kroot, PhD Candidate, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University

Discussant

James McCarthy, Professor, Graduate School of Geography, Clark University

In an era of unfolding polycrisis, industry actors and policymakers are increasingly turning to the so-called “twin transitions” as a framework for solutions (Rehman et al., 2023; Kovacic et al., 2024; Siedschlag et al., 2024). This approach combines the shift towards low-carbon energy sources, known as the energy transition, with the rapid expansion of digital technologies, termed the digital transition. Framed as operating not only in parallel but in synergy (Mäkitie et al., 2023), these transitions are presented as mutually enabling and reinforcing each other. These twin transitions are evoked, for example, in the simultaneous rollouts of electric and autonomous vehicles (Alvarez León & Aoyama, 2022; Yu et al., 2024) and through the promotion of “climate-smart” cities, agriculture, and extractive industries (Mendes, 2022; Paiho et al., 2023; Tretter & Burns, 2023; Myshko et al., 2024). Central to the European Union’s (2022) green development agenda (see also Fouquet & Hippe, 2022), the discourse of “twin transitions” is gaining tractions across geographies (Diodato et al., 2023; Faggian et al., 2024).

However, the twin transitions are not always seamlessly aligned. The rapid development of artificial intelligence (AI), for instance, is seen as both imperiling and enabling energy transitions (van der Ven et al., 2024; Alvarez León, 2024; see also Lally et al., 2022). While industry and regulatory stakeholders tout AI’s potential to optimize the siting and operation of renewable energy facilities (DiGangi, 2024; Nost, 2024), recent reports indicate that the expansion of AI-driven data centers could account for 44% of the projected growth in U.S. electricity demand over the next five years (Rouch et al., 2024). This surge risks discouraging the decommissioning of existing fossil fuel power plants, as the grid struggles to keep up with rising energy demands. In this way, even as AI-assisted analysis promises a technological fix to the social, political, and ecological dilemmas of energy infrastructure, digital transitions work towards ensuring that renewables buildout constitutes energy additions rather than energy transitions away from fossil fuels (McCarthy, 2015; York & Bell, 2019; Ortar et al., 2023).

In this session, we problematize the easy ‘twinning’ of energy and digital transitions, challenging the ways in which these two transitions are increasingly framed as already and inevitably intertwined. What tensions are disguised by this discursive linking between energy transitions and digital transitions? How does the twinning of energy and digital transitions obscure their contradictions and exacerbate their frictions? In what ways do energy and digital transitions intersect with the political economy of critical minerals, labor, and infrastructure, and how are these intersections shaping new geographies of economic dependence and resource extraction? What does it mean to think about “smart” futures as inherently “green” and “sustainable” ones, and what does this reveal about the commodification of sustainability and its influence on economic decision-making at different scales? How does the “digitization” of energy systems obscure the material, ecological, and spatial footprints of energy transitions?

We invite paper submissions that engage conceptually, empirically, or through activism with the effects of technological innovation on sustainable development and environmental degradation, and on how green development influences the trajectory of technological innovation. Possible paper topics include, but are not limited to:

· Sustainability politics of digital technologies

· Socioecological impact of data centers

· Sustainability and AI, cryptocurrency, and other new digital technologies

· Critical minerals, smart mining, and energy transitions

· Politics of increasing electricity demand and new geographies of electricity load

· Smart energy grids

· Climate-smart agriculture, Agriculture and Food 4.0

· Twin transitions and the built environment

If you are interested in participating, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words to the organizers Ricardo Barbosa, Jr. (RiBarbosa@clarku.edu) and Maddy Kroot (Mkroot@clarku.edu) by January 5^th, 2025. You will be notified if your abstract is accepted by January 6^th, 2025.

Authors will need to submit abstracts via the GCEG conference website by the deadline of January 15^th, 2025. For general information on the conference, see: https://gceg.org/

GCEG organizers are providing fifteen $1,000 Travel Grants awarded competitively to those who apply by January 7, 2025. Preference for funding will be given to graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other early career applicants traveling long distances and/or from the Global South. For further details, see: https://gceg.org/index.php/travel-grants/

References:

Alvarez León, L. F., & Aoyama, Y. (2022). Industry emergence and market capture: The rise of autonomous vehicles. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 180, 121661. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2022.121661

Alvarez León, L. F. (2024). AI and Global Climate Change: The political economy of data and energy in geographic perspective. Geo: Geography and Environment, 11(1), e00134. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.134

DiGangi, D. (2024, December 10). The AI paradox: Energy-hungry technology could speed clean energy transition. Utility Dive. www.utilitydive.com/news/artificial-intelligence-ai-data-center-energy-clean-transition-renewables/735061/

Diodato, D., Huergo, E., Moncada-Paternò-Castello, P., Rentocchini, F., & Timmermans, B. (2023). Introduction to the special issue on “the twin (digital and green) transition: Handling the economic and social challenges.” Industry and Innovation, 30(7), 755–765. https://doi.org/10.1080/13662716.2023.2254272

European Commission: Joint Research Centre, Muench, S., Stoermer, E., Jensen, K., Asikainen, T., Salvi, M., & Scapolo, F. (2022). Towards a green & digital future – Key requirements for successful twin transitions in the European Union. Publications Office of the European Union. https://doi.org/10.2760/977331

Faggian, A., Marzucchi, A., & Montresor, S. (2024). Regions facing the ‘twin transition’: Combining regional green and digital innovations. Regional Studies, 1–7. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2024.2398555

Fouquet, R., & Hippe, R. (2022). Twin transitions of decarbonisation and digitalisation: A historical perspective on energy and information in European economies. Energy Research & Social Science, 91, 102736. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2022.102736

Kovacic, Z., García Casañas, C., Argüelles, L., Yáñez Serrano, P., Ribera-Fumaz, R., Prause, L., & March, H. (2024). The twin green and digital transition: High-level policy or science fiction? Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 7(6), 2251–2278. https://doi.org/10.1177/25148486241258046

Lally, N., Kay, K., & Thatcher, J. (2022). Computational parasites and hydropower: A political ecology of Bitcoin mining on the Columbia River. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space, 5(1), 18–38. https://doi.org/10.1177/2514848619867608

Mäkitie, T., Hanson, J., Damman, S., & Wardeberg, M. (2023). Digital innovation’s contribution to sustainability transitions. Technology in Society, 73, 102255. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102255

McCarthy, J. (2015). A socioecological fix to capitalist crisis and climate change? The possibilities and limits of renewable energy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 47(12), 2485–2502. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X15602491

Mendes, V. (2022). Climate smart cities? Technologies of climate governance in Brazil. Urban Governance. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ugj.2022.08.002

Myshko, A., Checchinato, F., Colapinto, C., Finotto, V., & Mauracher, C. (2024). Towards the twin transition in the agri-food sector? Framing the current debate on sustainability and digitalisation. Journal of Cleaner Production, 452, 142063. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.142063

Nost, E. (2024). Governing AI, governing climate change? Geo: Geography and Environment, 11(1), e00138. https://doi.org/10.1002/geo2.138

Ortar, N., Taylor, A. R. E., Velkova, J., Brodie, P., Johnson, A., Marquet, C., Pollio, A., & Cirolia, L. (2023). Powering ‘smart’ futures: Data centres and the energy politics of digitalisation. In S. Abram, K. Waltorp, N. Ortar, & S. Pink (Eds.), Energy Futures: Anthropocene Challenges, Emerging Technologies and Everyday Life (pp. 125–168). De Gruyter. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110745641-005

Paiho, S., Wessberg, N., Dubovik, M., Lavikka, R., & Naumer, S. (2023). Twin transition in the built environment – Policy mechanisms, technologies and market views from a cold climate perspective. Sustainable Cities and Society, 98, 104870. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2023.104870

Rehman, S. U., Giordino, D., Zhang, Q., & Alam, G. M. (2023). Twin transitions & industry 4.0: Unpacking the relationship between digital and green factors to determine green competitive advantage. Technology in Society, 73, 102227. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techsoc.2023.102227

Rouch, M., Denman, A., Hanbury, P., Renno, P., & Gray, E. (2024, December 10). Utilities Must Reinvent Themselves to Harness the AI-Driven Data Center Boom. Bain & Company. https://www.bain.com/insights/utilities-must-reinvent-themselves-to-harness-the-ai-driven-data-center-boom/

Siedschlag, I., Mohan, G., & Yan, W. (2024). Twin transitions across enterprises: Do digital technologies and sustainability go together? Journal of Cleaner Production, 481, 144025. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jclepro.2024.144025

Tretter, E., & Burns, R. (2023). Digital transformations of the urban – carbon – labor nexus: A research agenda. Digital Geography and Society, 5, 100062. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2023.100062

van der Ven, H., Corry, D., Elnur, R., Provost, V. J., & Syukron, M. (2024). Generative AI and Social Media May Exacerbate the Climate Crisis. Global Environmental Politics, 24(2), 9–18. https://doi.org/10.1162/glep_a_00747

York, R., & Bell, S. E. (2019). Energy transitions or additions?: Why a transition from fossil fuels requires more than the growth of renewable energy. Energy Research & Social Science, 51, 40–43. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.erss.2019.01.008

Yu, G., Ye, X., Xia, X., & Chen, Y. (2024). Digital twin enabled transition towards the smart electric vehicle charging infrastructure: A review. Sustainable Cities and Society, 108, 105479. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.scs.2024.105479

Searching for economic difference beyond binary thinking: a pragmatist approach

Organizers: Paolo Giaccaria (University of Turin); Chiara Certoma’ (Sapienza University of Rome)

In their long-lasting (re)search for a way off capitalocentrism, Gibson-Graham (1996) developed the notion of “diverse economies” (2006 and 2008). In their original account, “reading for economic difference” implies abandoning the obsession with the neoliberal project that innervates much of the critical approaches in Economic Geography.

Practicing diverse economies implies accepting the move into a gray zone where communities involved in social innovation processes need to engage with both political institutions at different scales and other actors explicitly belonging to the capitalist side of the economy. When this occurs – and it occurs often – binary thinking strikes back. Allegations of cooptation or of being ancillary have often arisen against diverse economies for not being alternative enough to capitalism and neoliberalism.

On the one hand, to build community economies in place, we must be open to diversity rather than searching for alternatives – which is a binary notion itself. It is a creative process where aprioristic judgment can clip the possibility of novelty and serendipity. This openness makes “reading for economic difference” similar to social innovation. On the other hand, innovation is risky, and cooptation and subjugation to capitalistic imperatives are the risks that community economies have to engage with.

This session focuses on the contribution of critical social innovation and philosophical pragmatism in making non-binary understandings of “diverse economies.” Philosophical pragmatism enjoyed erratic fortune in Geography (see the 2008 special issue on Geoforum; see also Wills and Lake’s edited volume). From a non-foundational perspective, pragmatism suggests that (geographical) concept should be interpreted as (Barnes, 2008: 1551): tools for achieving particular goals (hence their “truth” should be assessed consistently); being dependent on the community that uses them and sensitive to the context; provisional, uncertain, and fluid; experimental and targeted to the making of a better world; incomplete, inconsistent, and untidy.

As such, philosophical pragmatism has often been accused of being an “everything goes” approach, prone to ethical and political compromise, in particular to neoliberalism. On the other hand, its non-ontological character makes pragmatism a purposeful framework for pursuing engaged pluralism in Economic Geography (Barnes and Sheppard, 2010; Barnes, 2024). Also pragmatism has been recently praised as a standpoint to address the issue of community (Shannon et al. 2021). Recently, also the proximity of Actor-Network-Theory and pragmatism has been investigated in Geography (Bridge, 2021).

Against this backdrop, contributes are invited on the following non-exhaustive topics: theoretical exploration and practices of Gibson-Graham’s “reading for economic difference”; pragmatist understandings of place and community; critical social innovation; non-binary and non-judgemental reading of socio-economic practices; post-capitalist encounters of pragmatism, material semiotics, and assemblage theory; engaging “diverse economies” into a dialogue with different economic geographies (political, evolutionary, institutional, relational, and more).

If you are interested in participating, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words to the organizers Paolo Giaccaria (paolo.giaccaria@unito.it) and Chiara Certomà (chiara.certoma@uniroma1.it) by January 10th, 2025. You will be notified if your abstract is accepted by January 11th, 2025.

References

Barnes, T. J. (2008). American pragmatism: Towards a geographical introduction. Geoforum, 39(4), 1542-1554.

Barnes, T. J. (2024). Towards a pragmatist economic geography. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 56(5), 1541-1547.

Barnes, T. J., & Sheppard, E. (2010). ‘Nothing includes everything’: towards engaged pluralism in Anglophone economic geography. Progress in Human Geography, 34(2), 193-214.

Bridge, G. (2021). On pragmatism, assemblage and ANT: Assembling reason. Progress in Human Geography, 45(3), 417-435.

Geoforum (2008). Pragmatism and Geography.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996). The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy. Cambridge, Blackwell.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006). A Postcapitalist Politics. University of of Minnesota Press.

Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2008). Diverse economies: performative practices for other worlds’. Progress in human geography, 32(5), 613-632.

Shannon, J., et al. (2021). Community geography: Toward a disciplinary framework. Progress in Human Geography, 45(5), 1147-1168.

Wills, J. & Lake R. (2020). The power of pragmatism. Knowledge production and social inquiry. Manchester University Press.

Working in the digital age: Exploring precarity, agency, and spatiality

Session Organizers:
Han Chu, Kiel University, Germany, chu@geographie.uni-kiel.de
Alica Repenning, Greifswald University, Germany alica.repenning@uni-greifswald.de
Brian J. Hracs, University of Southampton, UK B.J.Hracs@soton.ac.uk

The rapid rise of digital labor, driven by digital platforms, is reshaping traditional work models and creating new forms of economic engagement. As the landscape of labor geography continues to evolve, researchers have been exploring the structures, spatial dynamics and implications of different types of work. For example, gig work involves short-term flexible, and task-based work organized via ride-hailing, booking, or delivery platforms such as Uber, delivero, Airbnb, or Helpling (van Slageren et al., 2023; Wood et al., 2019; Koutsimpogiorgos et al., 2020; Montgomery & Baglioni, 2020; Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2021; Graham et al., 2017). Platform mediated creative entrepreneurship, is performed by independent artists, musicians and fashion designers who operate within trans-local scenes through digital spaces such as Spotify, Instagram, or YouTube (Repenning, 2022; Repenning & Oechslen, 2023; McAdam et al., 2019; Richardson, 2018; Cutolo & Kenney, 2020; Hracs et al., 2013). Whereas these traditional creatives have ‘gone digital’ a new group of creators, including bloggers, Instagrammers, and Youtubers rely on digital platforms for creating content, cultivating audiences and generating partnerships and income (Florida, 2022, p. 3; Slater & Wruuck, 2012).
This session will discuss the nature of working in the digital age while paying particular attention to intersections and contradictions associated with precarity, agency, and spatiality. For example, the creator economy reflects an inherent tension and complexity arising from the unique way precarity and individual agency intersect in digital space. While it often promises greater autonomy and flexibility, work-related instability and risks can be exacerbated. On one hand, the opaque platform algorithms and regulations of digital platforms impose systemic structural precarity by creating unpredictable working conditions, income instability, limited access to social benefits and job security such as health insurance and paid leave (Montgomery & Baglioni, 2020; Wood & Lehdonvirta, 2021). On the other hand, individual agency is represented by associating digital work with creativity, independence and fun.

Platform algorithms frequently enforce a “winner-takes-all” model, where only a small fraction of platform workers achieve significant financial stability, leaving the majority in precarious circumstances (Strauss, 2018; Engels, 2022). Moreover, while creative entrepreneurs seek independence through their digital work, the dependency on the opaque mechanisms of the digital platform creates new constraints and challenges (Repenning & Oechslen, 2023; Cutolo & Kenney, 2020). The precarious structure of this environment has spurred debates among scholars: some emphasize the economic vulnerabilities inherent in such platform structures, highlighting issues such as income inequality, algorithmic bias, and dependence on platform policies. Others focus on the entrepreneurial potential of digital platforms, highlighting empowering aspects that enable creators to reach global audiences while also emphasizing opportunities to create jobs, reduce unemployment, and alleviate poverty in certain regions (Barratt et al., 2020; Braesemann et al., 2022; Chu et al., 2023; Zhang, 2023). Despite these opportunities, the tension between structural constraints and individual agency remains central to understanding digital labor.
Like all forms of work, digital labor is spatially embedded and there is a need to consider a range of spatial dynamics and implications (Repenning, 2022; Hracs et al., 2013). For instance, creators, digitally mediated creative entrepreneurs, and gig-workers often cluster in specific physical locations to benefit from cultural and information exchange, creative networks, local forms of branding, and the agglomeration effects that foster networking and collaboration. Importantly, platform-mediated work is not merely done with a click or swipe online but has substantial offline components, as the cases of fashion design and gig work indicate (Repenning, 2024; Lehdonvirta, 2021). However, blogging and other platform-mediated work arrangements do include characteristics of digital nomads, who can theoretically operate in a “flat world” free from geographical constraints. In the case of creators, this reduction in spatial restrictions has led to a unique intersection of identities, such as Chinese YouTubers based in the U.S. or German creators on China’s Bilibili platform. Contractually, some creators are formal employees of unrelated companies, universities, or governments, while others are independent contractors or temporary employees working with multi-channel networks (MCN).
Given the dynamism of contemporary labor markets, ongoing scholarly research, consideration and debate is valuable. In particular, applying labor geography’s theoretical frameworks, can help us to understand the inherent tensions, conflicts, and opportunities within the fields of digital work, while identifying potential challenges and pathways for future research.

Suggested Themes and Topics
• The spatial concentration and diffusion of platform work: What kinds of spatial work arrangements associated with digital work are emerging and where? What are the connections or overlaps between online and offline spaces? How do digital workers navigate between these spaces to exercise their agency? How and why do platform mediated workers cluster in certain geographic areas? What factors determine the concentration or dispersion of digital work? How, if at all, do these processes impact the spatial organization of creative industries?
• The influence of platform work on culture and economies: How do digital workers and the circulation of digital content shape the cultural and economic spaces of their communities? In what ways do digitally mediated forms of work resemble or differ from the traditional forms of creative work? What kinds of social and economic impacts arise from their presence and clustering?
• The organization and regional development of creators: How do creators form and operate collective organizations, e.g. MCN companies or Live Streamer Associations, and what impact do these organizations have on local and regional development? What role do organizations play in enhancing creators’ economic resilience and influence within the broader digital labor landscape?
• Creator communities and social inclusion/exclusion: What roles do creator communities play in fostering social inclusion or exclusion, and how do these dynamics unfold in both digital and physical spaces? How do creators build communities, and what are the broader social impacts of these networks?
• The heterogeneity of identities and cross-cultural influences: How do intersecting identities—such as race, gender, age, nationality, and social background—shape the experiences and opportunities within the platform economy? In what ways do these cross-cultural influences and diverse backgrounds affect the engagement and success of digital work on platforms?
• Algorithmic/platform power and resistance: How do platform workers respond to algorithmic control and other platform-imposed limitations on their visibility and income? What resistance or adaptation strategies are employed, and how do these exemplify agency within the platform ecosystem?
• Additional topics and future directions: We welcome further contributions that explore the future direction of digital labor, considering the needs and challenges faced today. Contributions that approach the topic from innovative theoretical, empirical, or policy-oriented perspectives are especially encouraged.
Overall, this session aims to foster interdisciplinary dialogue among scholars in labor geography, economic geography, the sociology of work, digital media, and platform studies. By bridging these fields, we hope to enhance our understanding of the dynamic interplay between precarity and agency within the creator economy and examine the roles that place and space play in shaping the contours and experiences of digital labor.

Submission Guidelines
We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 300 words to Han Chu chu@geographie.uni-kiel.de. by Friday 10th January 2025. Following acceptance of abstracts to the session (Monday 13th January 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the GCEG deadline of 15th January 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

Reference
Barratt, T., Goods, C., & Veen, A. (2020). ‘I’m my own boss…’: Active intermediation and ‘entrepreneurial’ worker agency in the Australian gig-economy. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(8), 1643–1661. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X20914346
Braesemann, F., Lehdonvirta, V., & Kässi, O. (2022). ICTs and the urban-rural divide: Can online labour platforms bridge the gap? Information, Communication & Society, 25(1), 34–54. https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2020.1761857
Chu, H., Hassink, R., Xie, D., & Hu, X. (2023). Placing the platform economy: the emerging, developing and upgrading of Taobao villages as a platform-based place making phenomenon in China. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 16(2), 319-334.
Cutolo, D., & Kenney, M. (2020). Platform-dependent Entrepreneurs: Power Asymmetries, Risks, and Strategies in the Platform Economy. Academy of Management Perspectives, 35(4), 584–605. https://doi.org/10.5465/amp.2019.0103
Florida, R. (2022). The rise of the creator economy. https://creativeclass.com/reports/The_Rise_of_the_Creator_Economy.pdf
Graham, M., Hjorth, I., & Lehdonvirta, V. (2017). Digital labour and development: Impacts of global digital labour platforms and the gig economy on worker livelihoods. Transfer-European Review of Labour and Research, 23(2), 135–162. https://doi.org/10.1177/1024258916687250
Hracs, B. J., Jakob, D., & Hauge, A. (2013). Standing Out in the Crowd: The Rise of Exclusivity-based Strategies to Compete in the Contemporary Marketplace for Music and Fashion. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 45(5), 1144–1161. https://doi.org/10.1068/a45229
Koutsimpogiorgos, N., Van Slageren, J., Herrmann, A. M., & Frenken, K. (2020). Conceptualizing the Gig Economy and Its Regulatory Problems. Policy & Internet, 12(4), 525–545. https://doi.org/10.1002/poi3.237
Kraus, S., Vonmetz, K., Orlandi, L. B., Zardini, A., & Rossignoli, C. (2023). Digital entrepreneurship: The role of entrepreneurial orientation and digitalization for disruptive innovation. Technological Forecasting And Social Change, 193, 122638. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2023.122638
Kubler, K. (2023). Influencers and the attention economy: The meaning and management of attention on Instagram. Journal of Marketing Management, 39(11–12), 965–981. https://doi.org/10.1080/0267257X.2022.2157864
McAdam, M., Crowley, C., & Harrison, R. T. (2019). “To boldly go where no [man] has gone before”—Institutional voids and the development of women’s digital entrepreneurship. Technological Forecasting and Social Change, 146, 912–922. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.techfore.2018.07.051
Montgomery, T., & Baglioni, S. (2020). Defining the gig economy: Platform capitalism and the reinvention of precarious work. International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, 41(9/10), 1012–1025. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJSSP-08-2020-0400
Parry, J., & Hracs, B. J. (2020). From leisure to labour: towards a typology of the motivations, structures and experiences of work‐related blogging. New Technology, Work and Employment, 35(3), 314-335.
Rees-Roberts, N. (2020). After fashion film: Social video and brand content in the influencer economy. Journal of Visual Culture, 19(3), 405–421.
Repenning, A. (2024). Speeding up, slowing down, losing grip: On digital media metronomes and timespace friction in the platformised temporalities of fashion design. EPA: Economy and Space, 56(5), 1503–1520. https://doi.org/10.1177/0308518X241231691
Repenning, A., & Oechslen, A. (2023). Creative Digipreneurs: Artistic Entrepreneurial Practices in Platform-mediated Space. Digital Geography and Society, 4, 100058. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.diggeo.2023.100058
Repenning, A. (2022). Workspaces of Mediation: How Digital Platforms Shape Practices, Spaces and Places of Creative Work. Tijdschrift Voor Economische En Sociale Geografie (TSEG), 113(2), 211–224. https://doi.org/10.1111/tesg.12508
Richardson, L. (2018). Feminist geographies of digital work. Progress in Human Geography, 42(2), 244-263.
Zhang, W., & Tong, T. (2024). Contesting the intermediary power: How Chinese MCNs interact with platforms, creators, and advertisers. Media, Culture & Society, 01634437241229306.
Slater, D., & Wruuck, P. (2012). We Are All Content Creators Now: Measuring Creativity and Innovation in the Digital Economy. The Global Innovation Index 2012, 163.
van Slageren, J., Herrmann, A. M., & Frenken, K. (2023). Is the online gig economy beyond national reach? A European analysis. Socio-Economic Review, 21(3), 1795–1821. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/mwac038
Wood, A. J., Graham, M., Lehdonvirta, V., & Hjorth, I. (2019). Networked but Commodified: The (Dis)Embeddedness of Digital Labour in the Gig Economy. Sociology, 53(5), 931–950. https://doi.org/10.1177/0038038519828906
Wood, A., & Lehdonvirta, V. (2021). Platform Precarity: Surviving algorithmic insecurity in the gig economy. Available at SSRN 3795375.
Zhang, L. (2023). The Labor

Geographies of skilled migration, innovation, and economic performance

Organizers: Tom Kemeny (University of Toronto, tom.kemeny@utoronto.ca), Francesco Lissoni (University of Bordeaux, francesco.lissoni@u-bordeaux.fr), Ernest Miguelez (CSIC, ernest.miguelez@csic.es), Andrea Morrison (University of Pavia, andrea.morrison@unipv.it), Max Nathan (University College London, max.nathan@ucl.ac.uk), Anna Rosso (University of Insubria, annacecilia.rosso@uninsubria.it)

This special session – or sessions – will explore the roles that skilled migrants can play in ideas generation, knowledge diffusion and the wider economic performance of firms, communities, cities and nations. Migrants are over-represented as inventors, star scientists and entrepreneurs, both through selection and sometimes deliberate policy. Globalisation has created further channels for knowledge generation and its diffusion – through diasporic networks, the operation of multinational firms, and cross-national networks of academics and other researchers. Immigration – and the diversity it produces – is also closely related to innovation, especially at micro and urban scales, and more broadly to urban economic complexity. International students are a key component of highly skilled migration, with a direct impact on innovation in host countries and possibly some diffusion effect in the home countries. A growing body of theory and evidence seeks to explain, and shows causal effects of international talent flows on innovation, productivity, trade and entrepreneurship (see reviews by Lissoni and Morrison, 2025; Chodavadia et al 2024; Azoulay et al 2022; Ozgen 2021; Lissoni 2018; Akcigit et al 2017; Cooke and Kemeny 2017; Kerr et al 2017; Kerr et al 2015; Nathan 2014).

We invite contributions related to the following themes:

Mechanisms linking skilled migration and firm/city/nation/global economic outcomes;
How effects play out across different industrial sectors and activities, and within different parts of firms and their value chains;
How far cities and urban places may amplify these effects;
How migration and diasporic linkages connect places into cross-national production systems;
Distributional impacts of migration ~ performance links, and localised winners and losers;
How recent/future ‘de-globalisation’ might affect these processes;
Policy evaluations, for example on researcher mobility; high-skill visa programmes, etc;
Studies using frontier methods and data sources, especially at-scale.

Please submit 250-word abstracts to max.nathan@ucl.ac.uk no later than 5 January 2025. Sessions will be finalised and authors notified by 10 January 2025. Those invited to join will need to register and submit abstracts via the GCEG website by 15 January 2025.

Blue economies, communities, geographies

Organizers: Dhruv Gangadharan (Rutgers University) and Noelle King (Mary Immaculate College)

Across the world, ocean-based activities from fisheries and aquaculture, offshore wind and deep-sea mining, to marine spatial planning and coastal ecotourism are now being approached as part of an interdependent Blue Economy. Normatively defined in relation to broader ideas of sustainable development, it enables the economic use and ecological protection of ocean resources. Key institutions such as the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO) and the World Bank have shaped Blue Economy discourses and policies – and how they’re being practiced in different regions by various states.

On a dominant key, such a Blue Economy is one in which capital investments, large-scale development and individualized accumulation forge marine futures. For critics, it corresponds with coastal/marine enclosures and the expansion of neoliberalism – and neoliberal natures – in the oceans. The transformation of seafood production over the years from wild-caught community-based fisheries to a competitive and technologically advanced activity driven by seafood corporations (e.g. tuna) and increasingly, privatized farm-based aquaculture (e.g. shrimp, salmon) is an example of such a reality.

Yet, such a story of capitalism-at-sea often blurs the experiences of coastal communities, including fishers, and their situated engagements with the oceans. Considering economy as a site of possibility rather than subjection, a focus on communities and community formations offers perspectives of working with-and-against the Blue Economy. It attends to diverse economic practices of care and commoning resources, and vital ecological relations with the oceans and marine life, that together conjure and sustain alternative realities beyond a singular Blue Economy.

Therefore, this session foregrounds the work, meanings and metaphors of community in the Blue Economy, and asks how this can lead to locally meaningful connections between economy and ecology.

We invite contributions on the following topics:

Case studies on Blue Economy at various scales (regional/national/local)
Blue Economy narratives, sustainable development and inter-governmental institutions
Geo-politics, marine resource governance and the Blue Economy
Marine/coastal conservation and the role of non-human animals in the Blue Economy
Storytelling communities in the Blue Economy
Feminist, decolonial, subaltern and abolitionist perspectives on the Blue Economy

We welcome theoretical, methodological, and empirical contributions to broaden our understanding of the Blue Economy in the sub-discipline of economic geography. Our goal is to inspire dialogue and integrate critical ideas on the Blue Economy into discussions on sustainability and development. We also aim to have a prospective compilation on blue economies, communities and geographies (in the form of an edited volume or special issue) based on the papers we receive.

This session is supported by the Blue Economy Reading Group convened at Southern Connecticut State University.

Submission guidelines:

Please submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Noelle King (kingn12@southernct.edu) and Dhruv Gangadharan (dhruv.gangadharan@rutgers.edu) by Monday, January 6th. Notifications of acceptance will be sent by Friday, January 10th, and paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the GCEG page (gceg.org/index.php/register) by the GCEG deadline of January 15th.

References:

Bear, Christopher. 2017. “Assembling ocean life: More-than-human entanglements in the Blue Economy.” Dialogues in Human Geography 7(1): 27–31. https://doi.org/10.1177/2043820617691635.

Bennett, N. J., Blythe, J., White, C. S., & Campero, C. (2021). Blue growth and blue justice: Ten risks and solutions for the ocean economy. Marine Policy, 125, 104387. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104387

Campbell, Lisa M., Luke Fairbanks, Grant Murray, Joshua S. Stoll, Linda D’Anna, and Julia Bingham. 2021. “From Blue Economy to Blue Communities: reorienting aquaculture expansion for community wellbeing.” Marine Policy 124: 1–4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.marpol.2020.104361.

Community Economies Collective (2019) Community Economy. In: Antipode Editorial Collective, eds., Keywords in Radical Geography: Antipode at 50. 1st ed, pp. 56-63. New York: John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Garland, M., Axon, S., Graziano, M., Morrissey, J., & Heidkamp, C. P. (2019). The blue economy: Identifying geographic concepts and sensitivities. Geography Compass, 13(7), e12445. https://doi.org/10.1111/gec3.12445

Germond-Duret, C., Morrissey, J. Garland, M. and C.P. Heidkamp. Encyclopedia Entry: The Blue Economy. International Encyclopedia of Geography: People, the Earth, Environment and Technology. Wiley. doi.org/10.1002/9781118786352.wbieg2166

Germond-Duret, Celine. 2022. “Framing the Blue Economy: Placelessness, Development and Sustainability.” Development and Change 52(2): 308–334. https://doi.org/10.1111/dech.12703.

Roelvink, Gerda, Kevin St. Martin and Julie Katherine Gibson-Graham, J. K, eds. 2015. Making Other Worlds Possible: Performing Diverse Economies. Minneapolis, London: University of Minnesota Press.

Winder, G. M., & Le Heron, R. (2017). Assembling a Blue Economy moment? Geographic engagement with globalizing biological-economic relations in multi-use marine environments. Dialogues in Human Geography, 7(1), 3–26.doi.org/10.1177/2043820617691643

The Political Economy of Remote Sensing

Organizers: Luis Alvarez Leon and Matthew Zook

We invite submissions for a session on the Political Economy of Remote Sensing at the upcoming Global Conference on Economic Geography (June 2025). From satellites to drones, remote sensing technologies are central to agriculture, climate modeling, defense, insurance risk assessment, disaster management, urban planning, and beyond. As remote sensing is increasingly available for a wider range of commercial uses it is important for Geographers to consider how it reshapes economic systems, industries, and governance frameworks This session seeks to address the economic geography of remote sensing, including its industrial dynamics, emerging markets, and its implications for global and local economies and questions around how it helps shape economic power, inequality, and resource control.

We welcome papers that explore topics such as:

The role of remote sensing in land governance, resource management, and market commodification
How remote sensing is transforming industries, such as agriculture, real estate, or insurance-particularly in response to climate change and risk management
The political economy of geospatial data production, access, and control, including public-private partnerships and state-led initiatives
Inequalities in the availability, use, and benefits of remote sensing data across regions and sectors
Case studies on firms, markets, and labor within the remote sensing industry
The financialization of remote sensing, including the rise of special purpose acquisition companies (SPACs) and investment trends in Earth observation firms
The global division of labor and supply chains involved in remote sensing technology development and data processing
The integration of remote sensing data and platforms with other aspects of the digital economy (business analytics, media, Internet of Things, AI, etc.)
The consequences of remote sensing for governance, regulatory regimes, and economic decision-making.

We encourage submissions from scholars engaging with the intersections of technology, economy, and geography through theoretical, empirical, or applied lenses. Please submit abstracts (250-300 words) by January 10, 2024 to Luis Alvarez Leon (Luis.F.Alvarez.Leon@dartmouth.edu) and Matthew Zook (zook@uky.edu).

Debt and the metropolis: urban fiscal governance in cities around the world

Session organisers: Mark Davidson (Clark University) and Kevin Ward (University of Manchester)

Global debt is now over 300 trillion (USD). A third of this is “public debt”, that is debt held by governments. The indebtedness of sub-national governments (SNG) varies, of course, largely depending on where a country is on the federal-unitary spectrum. Where federal fiscalism is the norm, such as in the US, SNG debt tends to run around 40%, while where the fiscal systems is more centralized, for example Australia, the figure is around 20%. Nevertheless, and despite these important differences, in general across the world, SNG debt levels continue to rise as an increasing number of their activities are funded through incorporation into the global financial system.

Yet, while these absolute headline figures are of interest (and perhaps, concern), not all-sovereign debt is the same. There are some established means of debt-generation, of course. Most nations have historically allowed SNGs to issue debt, often in the form of bonds, to fund infrastructure, for example. However, other means are newer, and riskier. More bespoke, sophisticated, and tailored debt. We have seen growth in this debt in recent decades, part of the wider process through which cities borrow against actual or anticipated revenue streams. The Global Financial Crisis and subsequent Great Recession shifted the use of these “exotic” forms of debt by many SNGs around the world. Some forms of debt became (re)regulated, others grew to become a more significant part of SNG balance sheets.

Fast forward to early 2020 and the COVID-19 pandemic hit. What this meant for SNGs depended on where they were in the world, as nations and cities responded differently. In some places, initial monetary worries relating to the pandemic’s economic impacts turned into a cash surplus as other levels of government provided financial relief. For some, however, there was no subsidising of the effective closing for eighteen months of the economies of SNGs. Understanding this turbulent fiscal landscape has proven an enduring challenge to scholars from across geography, planning, political science, public administration and sociology.

This session therefore invites papers that offer either/or theoretical and empirical contributions to understanding the contemporary (and future) global urban debt situation: What kinds of theoretical developments (e.g. “conjunctural analysis”) might we require? What cities, or types of cities, are indicative of general conditions? How has the past twenty years changed how cities govern their fiscal situation, and to what effect on their households and residents? What are the major challenges (e.g. climate change, infrastructural decline, pension liabilities, populism) that will shape global urban fiscal governance moving forward? How are these challenges leading to changes in the various national and global financial markets and what does this mean for the level and type of debt borne by the city governments of different nations?

Please send 200 word abstracts to Mark (MDavidson@clarku.edu) and Kevin (kevin.ward@manchester.ac.uk) by 5pm (GMT) on Monday 6 January 2025 with an email header of “GCEG abstract”. We will get back to those who submit abstracts with a decision on Wednesday 8 January, and the abstract submission/registration deadline is Wednesday 15 January.

Central banks, monetary policy, and overlapping crises: Bringing space into the picture

Organizers: Martine August (University of Waterloo), Dan Cohen (Queen’s University, Canada), Emily Rosenman (Penn State), Martin Sokol (Trinity College Dublin) and Jennie Stephens (Maynooth University).

Since the COVID crisis, economic geographers have been paying increasing attention to the politics of monetary policy in shaping the global macroeconomy (August et al., 2022; Langley & Morris, 2020; Sokol & Pataccini, 2022). As the quick ricochet between expansionary quantitative easing policies and then tightening restrictions on credit have shaped the context within which financial geographies operate, geographers have begun to ask (or drawn on existing work asking) what it means to think about monetary policy with a spatial lens (Bieri, 2020; Mann, 2008). How do hundreds of billions of dollars in central bank infusions of capital shape landscapes of wealth inequality (August et al., 2023; Sokol & Pataccini, 2022)? In what ways does the global hierarchy of money shape geopolitics (Gibadullina, 2022) and state capitalism (Sokol, 2023)? How has the contraction of credit reworked the green economy (Burger & Wojcik, 2024; Langley & Morris, 2020; Stephens & Sokol, 2023) and shifted local labour and housing markets to the disadvantage of the working class (August et al., 2022; Green & Lavery, 2018 )?

This CFP expands upon this work to bring together scholars investigating the links between monetary policy and the overlapping crises that economic and financial geographers have long been interested in. We invite both theoretical and empirical papers that examine the connections between monetary policy and questions of uneven development, the climate crisis, and work in financial geographies. This may included, but is not limited to, the following:

Monetary policy and struggles over the green transition.
Monetary policy, housing, and urban change.
Labour geographies and the macroeconomy.
The role of expertise and policy networks in shaping monetary policy.
Geopolitics, dollar dominance, and uneven development.
The potential of monetary policy in enabling progressive futures and promoting climate justice.

If you have any questions or are interested in being part of this session, please send a 200-word abstract, along with author information, to Dan Cohen (dan.cohen@queensu.ca) by 6 January 2025.

References:

August, M., Cohen, D., Danyluk, M., Kass, A., Ponder, C. S., & Rosenman, E. (2022). Reimagining geographies of public finance. Progress in Human Geography, 46(2), 527-548.

August, M., Cohen, D., & Rosenman, E. (2023). Walls of capital: quantitative easing, spatial inequality, and the winners and losers of Canada’s pandemic-era housing market. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 16(1), 225-238.

Bieri, D. S. (2020). Central banks and the governance of monetary space. In The Routledge Handbook of Financial Geography (pp. 483-509). Routledge.

Burger, C., & Wojcik, D. (2024). The geography of climate change risk analysis at central banks in Europe. GeoJournal, 89(5), 213.

Gibadullina, A. (2022). Rent and financial accumulation: locating the profitability of American finance. New Political Economy, 28(2), 259–283.

Green J., Lavery S. After neoliberalisation? Monetary indiscipline, crisis and the state. Trans Inst Br Geogr. 2018; 43: 79–94

Langley, P., & Morris, J. H. (2020). Central banks: Climate governors of last resort?. Environment and planning A: economy and space, 52(8), 1471-1479.

Mann, G. (2010). Hobbes’ redoubt? Toward a geography of monetary policy. Progress in Human Geography, 34(5), 601-625.

Sokol, M. (2023). Financialisation, central banks and ‘new’state capitalism: The case of the US Federal Reserve, the European Central Bank and the Bank of England. Environment and planning A: economy and space, 55(5), 1305-1324.

Sokol, M., & Pataccini, L. (2022). Financialisation, regional economic development and the coronavirus crisis: a time for spatial monetary policy?. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 15(1), 75-92.

Stephens, J. C., & Sokol, M. (2023). Financial innovation for climate justice: central banks and transformative ‘creative disruption’. Climate and Development, 1-12.

Redevelopment Impacts and Citizens’ Agency in Shaping Informal Economic Activities

Organizer: Hakeem Bishi, Concordia University

Informality has rapidly become a dominant mode of economic sustenance across sub-Saharan Africa. Some recent estimates put it at 89.2% of the employed workforce (ILO, 2018). Such activities include street hawking/vending, waste picking, water vending, and para-transits (e.g., Okada in Nigeria and Trotro in Ghana). For decades, modernization theorists inspired by the Rostovian takeoff model predicted that informal economic activities would be subsumed by the formal sector and disappear. Yet, despite technological advancements and huge national economic gains, the informal economy keeps expanding. Recent scholarship (e.g., Cobbinah, 2023; Finn, 2024; Azunre et al., 2022) shows that their contribution to socio-economic and environmental sustainability cannot be overstated.

However, with recent neoliberal-lite ideals filtering into the redevelopment efforts of African cities, there have been very mixed impacts on informal activities. On the one hand, some projects emulate Western-style imaginaries and try to relegate informal activities to the background (equating to what Vanessa Watson [2014] called ‘urban fantasies’). Such projects envision informal activities as antithetical to creating a global and world city but are often at odds with local realities (Olajide et al., 2018; Olajide & Lawanson, 2021). On the other hand, some contemporary initiatives funded by the World Bank and UN-Habitat are embracing hybridity and making space for the agency and spontaneity of informal actors.

Following this complex ideological convolution, the future of informal economic activities is fuzzy. Informal spaces of exchange are increasingly becoming the hotspot of this fuzziness. Thus, inspired by Berndt et al. (2020), it is crucial to understand the wider context of how such spaces are “contested, constructed, and placed.”

Submission Guidelines

We invite abstracts (250 words maximum) that interrogate the intricacies of informal activities along one or more of the following non-exhaustive sub-themes:

1. Impacts (positive or negative) of contemporary redevelopment projects on informal economic activities

2. Perceptions and opinions of informal actors on improving the informal sector

3. Nexus between informal settlement redevelopment and informal activities

4. Commercial gentrification and project-induced displacements of informal activities

5. Governmentality, counterpower, and the limits of resistance to exclusionary informal redevelopments

6. Geographies of informal markets and their socio-political and economic linkages

For inquiries, please contact Hakeem Bishi, hakeem.bishi@concordia.ca, and/or Gideon Azunre, gideon.azunre@concordia.ca

Submission Deadline: 10th January 2025
Notification of Acceptance: 13th January 2025

References

Azunre, G. A., Amponsah, O., Takyi, S. A., Mensah, H., & Braimah, I. (2022). Urban informalities in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): A solution for or barrier against sustainable city development. World Development, 152, 105782.

Berndt, C., Rantisi, N. M., & Peck, J. (2020). M/market frontiers. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 52(1), 14-26.

Cobbinah, P. B. (2023). The oddity of desiring informality. Dialogues in Human Geography, 1–5.

Finn, B. M. (2024). Informality at the heart of sustainable development. Dialogues in Human Geography.

ILO. (2018). Women and men in the informal economy: a statistical picture. Geneva: International Labour Organisation (ILO).

Olajide, O. A., Agunbiade, M. E., & Bishi, H. B. (2018). The realities of Lagos urban development vision on livelihoods of the urban poor. Journal of Urban Management, 7(1), 21–31.

Olajide, O. A., & Lawanson, T. (2021). Urban paradox and the rise of the neoliberal city: Case study of Lagos, Nigeria. Urban Studies, 004209802110144.

Watson, V. (2014). African urban fantasies: Dreams or nightmares? Environment and Urbanization, 26(1), 215–231.

Prosperity Without Growth: Development Planning Under Demographic Transition:

Session Organizers:

Patrick Adler, The University of Hong Kong, HK SAR

Maxx Hartt, Queen’s University, Canada

Yuanyuan Cai, The University of Hong Kong, HK SAR

The world is witnessing a profound demographic shift. While global population is projected to reach 9.7 billion by 2050, two-thirds of this growth is driven by the momentum of previous generations, and almost all of it is occurring in less-developed regions such as sub-Saharan Africa, Oceania (excluding Australia and New Zealand), Northern Africa, and Western Asia (UNDESA, 2022). Outside of these areas, fertility rates are roughly 1.5, and the 65+ share of the population is growing significantly. This “demographic dilemma” (World Bank, 2024) is a pressing issue on global and national policy agendas (see European Commission, 2024), with the Millennium Project ranking it third among fifteen “Global Challenges.”

A less-studied aspect of this transition is its impact on regional economic development planning, broadly defined as policies to increase regional income-per-capita. The imperative to generate higher levels of regional productivity is all the more pressing in ageing and shrinking areas, where the working-age population bears greater burdens, and social service financing is threatened by a declining tax base (Mallach, 2023; McCann, 2017). Existing economic development models either fail to account for the possibility of declining populations and workforces or assume that development comes from growth (Logan and Molotch, 2010). The economic geography scholarship is still in the early stages of identifying frameworks to inform planning in transitioning regions.

For this special session, we invite theoretical, empirical and methodological contributions related to economic development in ageing and/or shrinking regions that will help scholars and policymakers update standard paradigms.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Case studies of demographically transitioning regions worldwide, and
Analyses of regional demographic and development trajectories, and
Analyses of place-based policies targeting such areas, and
Theoretical and empirical contributions on the interaction between demographics and growth.

Submission Guidelines:

If you are interested in participating, please submit an abstract of up to 250 words to the organizers Patrick Adler (adler@hku.hk), Maxwell Hartt (m.hartt@queensu.ca), and Yuanyuan Cai (yuancai@hku.hk) by January 10th, 2025. You will be notified if your abstract is accepted by January 11th, 2025. Contributors may submit their accepted abstracts via the conference registration page here on the GCEG conference website (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/) by the deadline of January 15th, 2025. For general information on the conference, see: https://gceg.org/. Direct all questions to Patrick Adler (Adler@hku.hk).

GCEG organizers are providing fifteen $1,000 Travel Grants awarded competitively to those who apply by January 7, 2025. Preference for funding will be given to graduate students, postdoctoral researchers, and other early career applicants travelling long distances and/or from the Global South. For further details, see: https://gceg.org/index.php/travel-grants/

Work Cited

Ehrenfeucht, R. (2023). Smaller cities in a shrinking world: Learning to thrive without growth, by Alan Mallach: Washington, DC, Island Press, 2023. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–2.

Logan, J. R., & Molotch, H. L. (2010). Urban fortunes: The political economy of place (20th anniversary ed). Univ. of California Pr.

Logan, J. R., & Molotch, H. L. (2013). The city as a growth machine. In The Gentrification Debates (pp. 87–102). Routledge.

McCann, P. (2017). Cities, Regions and Population Decline. Demographic Transition, Labour Markets and Regional Resilience, 17-27.

Institutions, development and inequality

Organizers:

Harald Bathelt, University of Toronto (harald.bathelt@utoronto.ca)

Hao Wang, University of Toronto (haow.wang@mail.utoronto.ca)

Session Description:

The role of institutions in shaping divergent development outcomes and trajectories across nations and regions is central to economic geography, regional studies and related research. Recently, several strands of research have unveiled new shifts in the landscape of uneven development. These include the growing disconnect between central cities and their relational hinterlands, the interpersonal dimensions and intertwined effects of intra- and interregional inequality, the impacts of unexpected internal or external disruptions, and the “left-behindness” and geography of discontent. In extant research, however, the impact of institutions is still widely underexplored when examining these shifts. The complexity of spatial inequality and its dynamics require more targeted research that aims to unpack how institutions evolve, respond, adapt to or are replaced by these the changes and how this affects economic performance in different regions.

This session invites submissions covering different disciplinary and methodological approaches to advance and deepen our understanding of diverging developments in multiple types of places and regions, from superstar cities to left-behind regions, but also including average places and ordinary cities. We aim to understand how underlying economic factors interact with local institutional settings and contextual conditions to influence regions’ growth paths.

We welcome contributions that are comparative in nature, using qualitative and/or quantitative methods to investigate causal processes in the context of regional development in developed and developing economies – and the disparities that go along with development. Our preference is a specific focus on investigations of institutional contexts (institutional actors, rules and practices) and how these are linked with different regional outcomes.

Please submit your abstract (max. 250 words) to the session organizers. As a kind reminder, you are asked to register to the conference via the conference website https://gceg.org/ by January 15.

Democratising the economy: theories, approaches, and case studies of alternative economic development

Organizer: Franziska Paul, University of Glasgow

People across the world are beginning to rethink and reorganise their local economic systems, including their public provision, goods and infrastructures towards more democratic, equitable and sustainable models. Efforts towards democratising our economies can be seen as a response to both long-term economic inequality as well as multiple crises, which have recently highlighted and exacerbated issues of access, participation, and decision-making in economic activities: from the global financial crisis and its harmful austerity policy responses that decimated local social and cultural services and caused high unemployment, to the COVID-19 pandemic’s exposure of complex geographies of inequality and structural issues of healthcare under capitalism, and the climate emergency, which all too regularly shows the crisis of public infrastructure created by decades of underinvestment. For too long our economies prioritised profits over the needs of people, communities and the planet. Democratising the economy has thus become not just a desirable but fundamental mandate in the face of the polycrisis.

The democratisation of economy relations is, of course, closely related to the concept of economic democracy (Cumbers et al 2020), but the vision of a democratic economy also has many ‘sibling’ theories and approaches: from the foundational economy, the social and solidarity economy, the wellbeing economy, and the circular economy and doughnut economics (Raworth 2019), we do not lack alternative ideas (cf Thompson 2024). In practice, too, we can increasingly see a push to democratise economic activities, particularly at the local and regional level. For example, a return of public ownership exemplified by the global phenomenon of remunicipalisation has seen the de-privatisation of public services, infrastructures and assets across a wide range of sectors (Kishimoto et al 2020; Cumbers and Paul 2022). The global cooperative movement has a long history of mutual economic development and alternative economic practice, and newer approaches such as community wealth building are taking hold in cities and communities across the world (Guinan and O’Neill 2020).

The democratisation of economic relations poses both opportunities and challenges, and this session seeks to bring together cutting-edge theories, approaches, and case studies of alternative economic development and organisation in theory and practice. The session invites theoretical and/or empirical contributions on the broader theme of democratising the economy, including but not limited to public, collective and community ownership, (re)municipalisation and de-privatisation, cooperatives, democratic governance, and alternative economic theory and models.

Please submit abstracts (planned or already submitted via the GCEG website) by the end of Monday, 13 January to < franziska.paul@glasgow.ac.uk >. If you have any questions about the GCEG process feel free to get in touch, and there is also some info on the website

Challenges in Agglomeration and Internationalization Amid Escalating Disruptions

Chair(s):
Pengfei Li, University of Calgary

Harald Bathelt, University of Toronto

Description:

In a regime of globalization, regional innovation has been driven through the mobilization of resources and knowledge at the local and global scale, facilitated by agglomeration and internationalization processes, respectively. Related growth processes have relied fundamentally on the openness of foreign markets and the accessibility of knowledge across borders, albeit with frictions and barriers. However, this foundational assumption appears increasingly untenable in the current context with escalating geopolitical tensions and disrupted global networks of production systems, value chains, clusters and cities.
How can local production and innovation systems navigate the risks associated with tariff wars and techno-nationalism? When “the new Argonauts” are not able to fly across innovative clusters – or are not even targeted – how can local knowledge pools remain vibrant and maintain their depth, cohesion and variety? In a gated global economy, how can firms and regions internationalize effectively to access markets and extend knowledge networks? And are firms and regions even the right building blocks to tackle such discussions?
In the new regime of disruptions and disconnections, these and other questions call for critical reflection and creative construction of concepts and ideas within economic geography to make meaningful and impactful contributions toward addressing pressing challenges in communities and societies.
We welcome contributions that target these and associated challenges in conceptual or empirical ways, using qualitative and/or quantitative methods. Please submit your abstract (max. 250 words) to the session organizers. As a kind reminder, you are asked to register to the conference via the conference website https://gceg.org/ by January 15.

Work, migration and regional political economy

Session organizers: Suzanne Mills (McMaster University), Dr Janet Merkel (TU Berlin)

The Covid-19 pandemic spurred dramatic shifts in work, social reproduction and regional development (Brail & Kleinman, 2022; Bürgin et al., 2021; MacLeavy et al., 2024). A rapid uptake of remote work (Felstead, 2022), coupled with rising house prices and a social shift in the importance and meaning of work spurred new geographies patterns of work and residence (Althoff et al., 2022). These shifts, of course, were not experienced evenly, as gender, class, race, and ‘skill’ shaped the contours of these changes (Ewers & Kangmennaang, 2023). While some workers experienced greater autonomy and fulfillment, others experienced increased precarity and exclusion. These shifts also intensified longstanding gendered divisions of reproductive labour, interrupting access to waged work for some while securing it for others. At the same time, the pandemic amplified trends of rural gentrification, as large numbers of people moved to underdeveloped regions.

Less understood is how shifts in the realm of work have influenced broader processes of regional political economic change. Whether through the dramatic re-organization of urban economies, the suburbanization of remote white-collar workers, the increased reliance and exploitation of temporary migrant workers, or the sudden appeal of long-disinvested peripheral places as offering a better quality of life: changes in the location, modality, accessibility, and importance of work played out spatially.

This session brings together scholarship broadly interested in the connection between work and regional political economy. We welcome papers that either explore or might help make sense of longstanding and more recent shifts in the relationship between work and regional political economy. Possible topics include but are not limited to:

· New and expanding forms of precarious, temporary, and mobile work

· Remote work/work from home and rural development

· New patterns of internal migration

· Downshifting and ‘back to the land’ movements

· Rural and regional economic development strategies related to remote work/working from home

· Shifting inter-regional dynamics

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) to the session organisers (smills@mcmaster.ca and janet.merkel@tu-berlin.de) byMonday 20 January 2025. We will send notifications of acceptance to the session by Wednesday 22 January. Please take note that you are asked to register for the conference via the conference website https://gceg.org/ before you submit an abstract by Saturday 1 Feb 2025 (new deadline!) through the conference registration page.

References:

Althoff, L., Eckert, F., Ganapati, S., & Walsh, C. (2022). The Geography of Remote Work. Regional Science and Urban Economics, 93, 103770.

Brail, S., & Kleinman, M. (2022). Impacts and implications for the post-COVID city: the case of Toronto. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 15(3), 495-513.

Bürgin, R., Mayer, H., Kashev, A., & Haug, S. (2021). Digital multilocality: New modes of working between center and periphery in Switzerland. Journal of rural studies, 88, 83-96.

Ewers, M., & Kangmennaang, J. (2023). New spaces of inequality with the rise of remote work: Autonomy, technostress, and life disruption. Applied Geography, 152, 102888.

Felstead, A. (2022). Remote working: A research overview. Routledge.

MacLeavy, J., Mills, S., Mazer, K., & Reuschke, D. (2024). Reshaping the Geography of Work: Remote Worker Migration and Regional Dynamics in the Post-Pandemic Era. In The Handbook for the Future of Work (pp. 299-313). Routledge.

Boston in the World System

Submission guidelines: please submit an abstract of no more than 250 words to jbhartman@cornell.edu by Monday, January 27th. Notice of acceptance will be given by Tuesday, January 28th. The GCEG abstract deadline is February 1.

Session organizer: Julian B. Hartman, ALI postdoctoral fellow, Cornell University department of City and Regional Planning

This session calls for submissions on the economic geography of the greater Boston region, the host region for this year’s GECG.

Boston has been a global city since its founding in 1630, first as a settler colonial node of increasing importance in the emerging Atlantic World, before pivoting to the globe-spanning China trade and becoming an early center in the first industrial revolution. As an imperial center on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States, Boston developed distinctive institutions of finance, trade, and industry. After a long period of stagnation starting from the end of the 19th to the mid 20th century, a “New Boston” emerged with an economy centered around medicine, R&D, education, advanced producer services, and the real estate to house them. Boston’s tech economy, while it has developed unevenly across space, time and sector, has continued to be a driver of growth in the region, and has resulted in the development of several urban “innovation districts” that have drawn attention from scholars and policymakers around the world.

But the fact that Boston has largely managed to rebuild and retain its economic dynamism into the 21st century is no guarantee of a providential future. The region faces continued economic and racial inequality, as well difficulties relating to climate change, transportation, housing, and geopolitics. What is the infrastructure to be built in the face of climate change and how can it be paid for? What would it take to fix the transportation system, or the housing problem? What should be done about the racial wealth gap? How have these challenges arisen from the prior successes and failures of the Boston region, and how can they be addressed? What are the forces that shape the region in the present and will constrain its options in the future?

We welcome submissions about any aspect of Boston’s economic history and future. We especially seek submissions that are empirically grounded and theoretically ecumenical.

Of particular interest are accounts of:

Boston and globalization
Boston and its hinterlands
The economic dimensions of immigration
Race, ethnicity and wealth distribution in the region
The evolution of Boston’s financial and governance institutions
Boston’s nonprofit complex
The making and remaking of Boston’s physical environment, especially in relation to climate change
Innovation districts, the tech economy, and anchor institutions like universities and hospitals
Boston and the military industrial complex
Housing and transportation: issues and solutions

Bibliography

Allen, D. G. (2015). Investment Management in Boston: A History. University of Massachusetts Press.

Bathelt, H. (2001). Regional competence and economic recovery: divergent growth paths in Boston’s high technology economy. Entrepreneurship & Regional Development, 13(4), 287–314. https://doi.org/10.1080/08985620110067502

Best, M. H. (2015). Greater Boston׳s industrial ecosystem: A manufactory of sectors. Technovation, 39-40, 4–13. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2014.04.004

Crockett, K. (2018). People before Highways: Boston Activists, Urban Planners, and a New Movement for City Making (First edition). University of Massachusetts Press.

Dalzell, R. F. (1987). Enterprising Elite: The Boston Associates and the World They Made. Harvard University Press.

Domosh, M. (1990). Shaping the Commercial City: Retail Districts in Nineteenth-Century New York and Boston. Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 80(2), 268–284.

Dunning, C. (2022). Nonprofit Neighborhoods: An Urban History of Inequality and the American State. University of Chicago Press.

Florida, R., & King, K. M. (2018). Urban Start-up Districts: Mapping Venture Capital and Start-up Activity Across ZIP Codes. Economic Development Quarterly, 32(2), 99–118.

Geismer, L. (2014). Don’t Blame Us: Suburban Liberals and the Transformation of the Democratic Party. Princeton.

Glaeser, E. L. (2005). Reinventing Boston: 1630–2003. Journal of Economic Geography, 5(2), 119–153.

Harrison, B., & Glasmeier, A. K. (1997). Response: why business alone won’t redevelop the inner city: a friendly critique of Michael Porter’s approach to urban revitalization. Economic Development Quarterly, 11(1), 28–39.

Jennings, J. (2016). Gentrification as Anti-Local Economic Development: The Case of Boston, Massachusetts. Trotter Review, 23(1). https://scholarworks.umb.edu/trotter_review/vol23/iss1/4

Johnson, M. S. (2015). The New Bostonians: How Immigrants Have Transformed the Metro Area since the 1960s. University of Massachusetts Press.

Katz, B., & Wagner, J. (2014). The Rise of Innovation Districts: A New Geography of Innovation in America (p. 34). Brookings.

Levine, J. R. (2021). Constructing Community: Urban Governance, Development, and Inequality in Boston. Princeton University Press.

Loh, P., & Agyeman, J. (2019). Urban food sharing and the emerging Boston food solidarity economy. Geoforum, 99, 213–222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geoforum.2018.08.017

Miao, J. T., & Phelps, N. A. (2024). Art for art’s sake? Artists as partners in urban regeneration. Journal of Urban Affairs, 1–18. https://doi.org/10.1080/07352166.2024.2390902

Miletsky, Z. V. (2022). Before busing: A history of Boston’s long Black freedom struggle. The University of North Carolina Press.

Munenzon, D., & Titelboim, Y. (2022). Transformative Actions in the Boston Harbor: Lessons Learned from Past Projects Toward a Resilient and Sustainable Urban Future. In F. Alberti, M. Amer, Y. Mahgoub, P. Gallo, A. Galderisi, & E. Strauss (Eds.), Urban and Transit Planning (pp. 55–74). Springer International Publishing.

Muñoz, A. P., Kim, M., Chang, M., Jackson, R., Hamilton, D., & Darity, W. A. (2015). The Color of Wealth in Boston (SSRN Scholarly Paper ID 2630261). Social Science Research Network. https://papers.ssrn.com/abstract=2630261

O’Connell, J. (2021). What makes Boston a “Global” city? [Working Paper]. Boston University Initiative on Cities Working Paper Series. https://open.bu.edu/handle/2144/39103

O’Connor, T. H. (1995). Building A New Boston: Politics and Urban Renewal, 1950-1970. Northeastern University Press.

Peterson, M. (2019). The City-State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. Princeton University Press.

Kennedy, L. W. (1992). Planning the city upon a hill: Boston since 1630. University of Massachusetts Press.

Porter, M. E. (1995). The Competitive Advantage of the Inner City. Harvard Business Review, 20.

Rissola, G., Bevilacqua, C., Monardo, B., & Trillo, C. (2019). Place-Based Innovation Ecosystems: Boston-Cambridge Innovation Districts (USA) (p. 49) [Technical Report]. European Commission.

Rosegrant, S., & Lampe, D. (1992). Route 128: Lessons From Boston’s High Tech Community. Basic Books.

Temin, P. (2000). Engines of Enterprise: An Economic History of New England. Harvard University Press.

Tissot, S. (2015). Good Neighbors: Gentrifying Diversity in Boston’s South End. Verso Books.

Geoeconomics and Geopolitics of Energy Transition

Session Organizers: Jessie P.H. Poon, (SUNY-Buffalo), Julie Silva (SUNY-Buffalo), Dariusz Jacek Wojcik (National University of Singapore)

The global energy transition has gained saliency as concerns about climate risks grow. A low carbon economy based on renewable and clean energy technologies is expected to be more mineral-intensive. For instance, the International Energy Agency has estimated that an electric vehicle needs six times more minerals than a gas-driven vehicle. Replacing conventional vehicles with electric vehicles would increase demand for lithium by 50-fold in fifteen years. Similarly, demand for aluminum, cobalt, manganese and nickel to produce energy storage batteries could rise by 450% in 2050 according to a World Bank study. Electricity transmission infrastructure such as grid networks have transformed relationships between states with the emergence of trans-border regional grid communities in Europe and Asia. The attempt to reshore and friend-shore clean technology global production networks in Europe and the US has triggered debates on the merits of free trade and globalization, broadened energy security concerns from fossil fuels to renewable energy security, and prompted new South-South relations and regionalisms led by China. It has also revitalized the role of minerals, particularly critical minerals, in regional development despite adverse environmental impacts. Industrial policy, once taboo in the West, is being pursued as a regional policy to address the plight of left-behind regions by integrating them to renewable energy production networks and value chains. Under the new Trump administration, trade instruments as part of industrial policy are expected to persist, intensifying geoeconomic-geopolitical tensions and competition. We invite presentations on the following but not exclusive themes:

Renewable energy geopolitics and geoeconomics
Geoeconomics of critical mineral transition
Geoeconomics and geopolitics of green global production networks
Geographies of renewable energy grid and power infrastructure
Nearshoring, restoring, and friend-shoring
Global value chains of clean/green technology and uneven development
Renewable energy and global south regionalisms
Climate finance and energy transition
Global financial networks of energy and critical minerals

Submission Guidelines:
We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Jessie Poon (jesspoon@buffalo.edu), Julie Silva (jasilva3@buffalo.edu), and/or Dariusz Wojcik (dwojcik@nus.edu.sg) by January 24, 2025. Once abstracts are accepted to the session (Monday January 27, 2015), paper authors will be required to submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (gceg.org/index.php/register) by the GCEG deadline of February 1st, 2025. However, please note that there is a price change for registration on January 31, 2025. We also welcome queries or requests for further information.

Re-emergence of Industrial Strategy in International Context

This is a dual CfP for a special session at Global Conference on Economic Geography and an upcoming special issue of Contemporary Social Science.

Special session organisers / special issue editors:

David Bailey, University of Birmingham (UK)

Lisa De Propris, University of Birmingham (UK)

Grete Gansauer, University of Wyoming (USA)

Philip Tomlinson, University of Bath (UK)

****GCEG abstract submissions due by 25 January to: forms.office.com/r/rnbbkRdw0G

The last few years have seen the re-emergence of Industrial strategy in western economies, as governments have sought to respond to the questions over the resilience of global supply chains (‘securonomics’), to decouple from China’s dependence for manufacturing, and crucially to secure control over the technologies underpinning the digital and green transitions (Bailey et al., 2023; De Propris, 2024). This re-emergence reflects broader transitions away from traditional neoliberal tenets of governments’ relationship with the economy, toward a ‘new state capitalism’ ideology in which governments actively intervene in markets to shape economic outcomes (Alami et al., 2022). In the UK, the recently elected Labour government has just published a Green Paper, a consultative document outlining its plans for a new Industrial Strategy. This follows an earlier attempt in 2017, by the then Conservative government as it sought to respond to the wide regional inequalities revealed in the Brexit vote (Rodriguez-Pose, 2018). In the USA, the Biden administration passed the American Rescue Plan Act (2021), Bipartisan Infrastructure Law (2021), Inflation Reduction Act (2022) and CHIPS & Science Act (2022) authorizing over $2.8 trillion to support the US healthcare, renewables, and clean-tech sectors, alongside favouring domestic procurement (Gansauer, 2024). The EU responded with a $250 billion Green Deal Industrial Plan and the €43 billion+ EU Chips Act, and have also announced plans to by-pass state-aid rules to fast-track investment and skills upgrading in green sectors.

The contemporary tenet of an industrial strategy has moved beyond entailing specific industrial policies to improve the competitiveness of particular firms and sectors or addressing a narrow ‘market failure’ perspective. It is moving toward integrated, mission-oriented approaches (Mazzucato, 2021), making a shift from industrial policy toward industrial strategies which incorporate several policies. In part, this shift has been informed by recent developments in the academic and policy making debate and discussion that recognise the value of an ‘integrated’ or ‘holistic’ Industrial Strategy concerned with wider market and systemic failure issues that necessitate a role for an industrial policy (information, co-ordination, missing linkages) (Rodrik, 2009) as well as a broadening its remit to consider digital and sustainability transitions, and social inclusion dimensions. An industrial strategy is increasingly viewed as the architecture through which the state enables business and people to acquire and develop new capabilities; to develop, access and adopt new technologies and to benefit from collective public goods to enhance growth and socio-economic development within geographical places. Increasingly, this takes shape through industrial strategies which incorporate place-based approaches to exploit (and build upon) local and regional specialisms and/or to reduce spatial disparities and promote territorial socio-economic cohesion (Bailey, Cowling and Tomlinson, 2015).

This rethinking also questions how the purpose of a sectoral and regional level Industrial Strategy needs to pivot to support business to address the radical changes in manufacturing processes known as ‘Industry 4.0’. Linked to this are questions regarding the challenges and opportunities arising for enhancing city and regional resilience and the design of place-based strategies for manufacturing cities and regions. It is also time to review more generally the achievements of policies that have been adopted by governments in recent years to secure their industrial and spatial objectives as in the case of Freeports in the United Kingdom and the considerable package of government support to regional innovation and development provided by governments around the world.

A critical issue is the politics of Industrial Strategy, and ‘political buy-in’. There is already substantial evidence that the adoption of digital and green technologies will create winners and losers, thereby widening current spatial disparities. As digital and green transitions will require transformative capital and infrastructural investment that will span the lifetime of several political cycles, so Industrial Strategies should be long term projects and policy initiatives that may take time to prosper and will cut across electoral cycles. However, the recent defeat of the governing Democratic Party in the 2024 US elections raises questions as to the viability of Industrial Strategy in an increasingly volatile and conflictual political climate. Building cross-party and societal consensus on Industrial Strategy becomes the most critical challenge.

The Special Issue welcomes papers dealing with these issues and/or those seeking to build upon recent research on Industrial Strategy from various dimensions. In so doing, this Special Issue seeks to offer a broad set of perspectives on the many facets of industrial strategy, including theoretical perspectives, reflections on industrial strategy experience (from across the globe), analysis and debate over contemporary Industrial Strategy issues across economies, the politics of Industrial Strategy and ‘state of the art’ reflections on new forms of industrial strategy, including current debates over ‘mission led’ approaches (Mazzucato, 2021) .

We are interested in papers that address the following (non-exhaustive) topics:

· New theoretical approaches to Industrial Strategy

· The impact of Industrial Strategies undertaken by major economies (such as the US, EU, UK, China, California) for the competitiveness and resilience of firms, industries, value chains, and regions

· International comparisons of major industrial strategies, and potentially relationships between them: the geopolitics of industrial strategy

· Industrial Strategies to accommodate digital and AI transitions

· Green Industrial Strategy (including the impact on traditional sectors)

· Tensions, contradictions and compatibilities between place-based and mission-driven approaches to policy to address technological and societal challenges, but equally regional inequalities.

· The Politics of Industrial Strategy (and building societal consensus for Industrial Strategy)

· The Governance of Industrial Strategy at different geographical scales (local, regional, national, and supra-national) and its implementation

· Inclusive Industrial Strategy and just transition

· Industrial Strategy, clusters and regional innovation ecosystems.

· Industrial strategy, science-technology-innovation policies, skill policies and trade policies: complementary or competing policies?

· Industrial Strategy, Regulation and the Utilities

· Industrial Strategy and Competition Policy

· Industrial policy impacts “in place” and impacts of (supra-) national policies at the local and regional scale.

· Industrial strategy as social strategy: reducing social and spatial inequalities through industrial strategy

· International political economy of industrial strategy within neoliberal and new state capitalism ideology

We invite submissions from researchers in the fields of economics, development studies, regional studies, economic geography, political science, sociology, political science, industrial and regional policy, and related fields. Conceptual, theoretical and empirical submissions – qualitative and quantitative are welcome, as well as case studies from different regions/cities and contexts.

Timescale

This special session is meant to precede a Special Issue in Contemporary Social Science.

Please submit abstracts (250 words) for the GCEG special session to the following form:

forms.office.com/r/rnbbkRdw0G.

The organisers/editors also welcome papers for consideration in the special issue from academics and researchers with an interest in Industrial Strategy, with papers to be submitted by the end of June 2024. We can be flexible on paper length, and can consider papers between 3,000 and 10,000 words in length. Submissions will be subject to the normal peer review process at Contemporary Social Science. Information for authors can be found at: https://www.tandfonline.com/action/authorSubmission?show=instructions&journalCode=rsoc21

References

Alami, I., Babic, M., Dixon, A. D., & Liu, I. T. (2022). Special issue introduction: what is the new state capitalism?. Contemporary politics, 28(3), 245-263.

Bailey, D, P Tomlinson and K Cowling (2015) New Perspectives on Industrial Policy for a Modern Britain. Oxford: OUP.

Bailey, D., Pitelis, C. N., & Tomlinson, P. R. (2023). ‘Place-Based Industrial and Regional Strategy – Levelling the Playing Field’. Regional Studies, 57(6), 977-983. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2023.2168260

De Propris, L. (2024). Globalisation must work for as many regions as possible. Regional Studies, 58(7), 1505–1508. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2024.2330618

Financial Times (21/5/24) ‘Labour sets out ‘securonomics’ vision to avoid inflationary shocks’, Financial Times, https://www.ft.com/content/15d6a761-4efe-4ac8-ba51-4ee2a6095304

Gansauer, G (2024) ‘For growth or equity: A taxonomy of ‘Bidenomics’ place-based policies and implications for US regional inequality’, Regional Studies, available at: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00343404.2024.2399802

Henderson, D., Morgan, K., & Delbridge, R. (2023). Putting missions in their place: micro-missions and the role of universities in delivering challenge-led innovation. Regional Studies, 58(1), 208–219. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2023.2176840

Mazzucato, M (2021) Mission Economy: a moonshoot guide to changing capitalism, Allen Lane – Penguin, London.

Rodrik, D (2009) One Economics, Many Recipes: Globalization, Institutions, and Economic Growth, Princeton University Press, Princeton.

Clusters, enclaves, zones and corridors: geographies of extensive economic realms 1

Chair(s):
Nicholas Phelps, University of Melbourne

Julie Miao, University of Melbourne

Description:

In an era of urban extension and extended urban realms (Brenner, 2014; Lang and Knox, 2009), how can we characterise and understand individual economic formations such as industry clusters, industry enclaves and special economic zones and relationships between them within urban economic corridors of national and international scope?

The geographical boundaries of industry clusters and the spatial stretching of externalities and the ability of policy to affect these remain subjects worthy of investigation in a world considerably more internationally integrated and subject to greater physical and virtual mobility than when the ideas of industry agglomeration and externalties were formulated (Phelps, 2004). Clusters may be connected in global (and national) pipelines (Bathelt et al., 2004) in ways that help constitute distinct urban economic corridors.

What of isolated and specialized industry enclaves such as mining towns and camps (Phelps, Atienza and Arias, 2015)? Their isolation and specialization does not preclude their systematic integration into national and international urban systems and global financial and production networks (Arbeloda, 2020)?

Special economic zones (SEZs) continue to proliferate globally. They are exceptions to national regulatory norms, but they may constitutute a large part of the urban economy in some nations (Phelps, Miao and Zhang, 2023) and may also be woven together within global production networks (Li et al, 2023). SEZs are diverse and therefore potentially have diverse bright and dark side economic development impacts.

Each of these formations can be found within extensive megalopolitan urban economic corridors. However, with a few notable exceptions (Cowan, 2014; Gottmann, 1961; Healey, 2014; Whebel, 1969; Witte et al., 2014), the morphology and functioning of such corridors remains greatly underelaborated in economic geography. What contributions do the likes of industry clusters enclaves and zones make to the overall morphology and functioning of corridors? To what extent does national and international policy making such as China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) leverage or stimulate these economic formations and processes centred on them? To what extent and in what ways are urban economic corridors fashioned by way of corporate initiative and imaginaries (Cowan, 2014)?

The session seeks papers: outlining theoretical treatments of the processes constituting, governance and spatial configurations of, these different economic geographical formations; empirical analysis of firm dynamics; quantitative and qualitative empirical investigations of the business, labour market, innovation, administrative and imaginative dynamics of clusters, enclaves, zones and corridors.

Clusters, enclaves, zones and corridors: geographies of extensive economic realms 2

Chair(s):
Nicholas Phelps, University of Melbourne

Julie Miao, University of Melbourne

Description:

Causes and consequences of the geography of discontent

Chair(s):
Andrés Rodríguez-Pose, London School of Economics

Description:

The geography of discontent is quickly becoming one of the defining challenges of our time. This special session seeks to explore the dual dimensions of this phenomenon: its root causes and its far-reaching consequences. On the one hand, the session will examine the drivers of discontent, including persistent development traps, economic stagnation, demographic decline, and the social dislocation caused by globalisation and technological change. These processes have left many places struggling to adapt, creating an ever widening gap between dynamic urban centres and marginalised rural or industrial areas.

On the other hand, the session will address the consequences of discontent for economic development, social cohesion, and political stability. Discontent not only fuels anti-system movements, populist voting, and identity-based divisions but also undermines trust in institutions and jeopardises the long-term prospects for inclusive growth. By drawing on global case studies and multidisciplinary insights, this session will offer a comprehensive analysis of how discontent arises and evolves and its impacts on societies. It will also explore policy strategies for addressing inequality, fostering resilience, and revitalising communities to mitigate the systemic risks posed by these trends.

Panel Session: Debating and Co-shaping the Future of Economic Geography: Exploring Scale and Temporal Orientations

Chair(s):
Huiwen Gong, University of Stavanger

Robert Hassink, Kiel University

Description:

In an era marked by multiple crises, intensifying geopolitical tensions, a resurgence of populism, and widening spatial inequalities, economic geography is at a pivotal crossroads (Yeung, 2023). How should the field respond to these challenges, and what research agendas can equip economic geographers to understand and address today’s most pressing global, national, and local economic issues? This panel gathers leading scholars to examine two critical questions:
First, what are the appropriate scales and focal points of research for economic geography? Should the field concentrate on macro-level forces—the “sociospatial, the systematic, and the structural”—or give precedence to the “nodal, the near, and the networked,” exploring localized connections and actors (Peck, 2016) to better theorize the complexity of contemporary economies? Or might a hybrid approach be more effective?
Second, what temporal orientations best serve economic geography today? Should we look forward, aiming to emancipate, politicize, and empower actors to discuss the dynamics shaping their regions (Gong, 2024)? Or, should we take a historical lens, rethinking the ways we historicize economic geography (Henning, 2019; Martin and Sunley, 2022) to deepen our understanding of the current world?
Join us as we debate these pressing questions and explore how economic geography can develop a research agenda attuned to the complexities of an increasingly turbulent world.
Reference:
Gong, H. (2024). Futures should matter (more): Toward a forward-looking perspective in economic geography. Progress in Human Geography, 03091325231224434.
Henning, M. (2019). Time should tell (more): evolutionary economic geography and the challenge of history. Regional Studies, 53(4), 602-613.
Martin, R., & Sunley, P. (2022). Making history matter more in evolutionary economic geography. ZFW–Advances in Economic Geography, 66(2), 65-80.

Flood Infrastructure and Economic Disparities

Chair(s):
Hao Huang, Illinois Institute of Technology

Description:

Flooding disproportionately affects marginalized populations due to a historic lack of investment in flood infrastructure, and there are economic disparities in water equity within urban areas. New techniques and methodologies need to be developed to examine these disparities in water equity. Also, new economic policies and innovative flood management approaches are needed to prepare for future climate change and ensure equitable water management and economic equity. This session will improve public understanding and engagement in flood issues through citizen science, assess flood infrastructure differences and economic disparities between marginalized and non-marginalized communities, and identify viable policy options using both economic and political analyses. Given this overview, this session will examine the contemporary trends in flood infrastructure and challenges facing the economic disparities in water equity.
• Flood infrastructure and urban resilience
• Flood infrastructure and socio-economic inequality
• Flood infrastructure and urban planning
• Flood infrastructure, socioeconomic segregation, and racism
• Flood infrastructure and climate change
• Flood infrastructure and spatial analyses
• Flood infrastructure, community, and urban economies

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) to hhuang48@iit.edu by 15th January 2025. Accepted abstracts will need to be submitted through the conference website by 15th January 2025.

Labor in the Clean Energy Transition

Chair(s):
Virginia Parks, University of California at Irvine

Description:

This session considers the impacts of the clean energy transition on workers in both “old” and “new” energy producing regions. Decarbonization efforts pose significant economic hardship for fossil fuel workers and bears a striking resemblance to past energy transitions that adversely impacted workers and local economies, such as the coal mine closures in Britain well documented by economic geographers. In short, today’s fossil fuel workers are tomorrow’s displaced workers. Simultaneously, the clean energy transition will create new jobs in new sectors in both “new” energy producing regions as well as “old” fossil fuel energy producing regions. Achieving a “just transition” that yields equitable outcomes for workers and local communities across these old and new regions has been a key goal of many labor unions and environmental organizations. How these equitable outcomes might be achieved through policy and/or organizing is a motivating theme for this session.

We invite papers that focus on a range of different geographies, empirical effects, and policy issues related to labor and the clean energy transition, such as just transition policies and local economic development planning. We are particularly interested in papers that empirically document labor market effects related to decarbonization efforts, or case studies that provide a lens onto potential effects, including historical analyses. Possible topics include, but are not limited to, displacement impacts, skills matching, hiring systems, economic development planning, tax incentives, and negotiated agreements.

Please submit your abstract (max 250 words) to vparks@uci.edu by January 29, 2025. Once abstracts are accepted to the session (notice will be given by January 30, 2025), paper authors must submit their abstracts through the conference registration page (gceg.org/index.php/register) by the GCEG deadline of February 1st, 2025. However, please note that there is a price change for registration after January 31, 2025. Currently we are looking for one or two additional papers.

Shaping the path ahead: skills, training, and sustainable just transitions in turbulent times

Chair(s):
Marcello Graziano, Ruralis

Description:

The post-COVID-19 period has ushered in a wave of economic transformations driven by socioecological imperatives and geopolitical shifts. The reconfiguration of global value chains through friendshoring, coupled with the rapid deployment of innovative energy and transportation technologies, has created a growing demand for diverse skill sets across all regions. These changes are further occurring at a time of demographic stagnationin deveoping and developed nations alike, thus requiring shifts in the training and immigraiton policies adopted over the last decades.

This session seeks to explore the interplay between the demand for new and existing skills in sectors undergoing transformation due to social, political, and technological drivers aimed at accelerating sustainable transitions. We invite contributions that examine the alignment of skill demands with training systems and the supply of skilled labor, focusing on post-secondary education, vocational training, and higher education.

The session also welcomes studies on policy analysis of training mechanisms, assessments of skills gaps, and challenges associated with specific regional economic paradigms, such as the Blue Economy. By bridging these themes, the session aims to foster a deeper understanding of how skills development can drive sustainable regional growth in an evolving global economic landscape.

The Economic Geography of Trump Trade Wars 2.0

Chair(s):
Gustavo Oliveira, Clark University

Description:

As Trump returns to office in 2025, there is widespread speculation that the US will resume protectionist trade policies and practices, such as tariffs and other non-tariff trade restrictions, as witnessed during the first Trump administration. With a few years of data and analysis since 2017, what political and economic effects can be identified from the first round of “Trump trade wars”? What transformations and continuities can we start to identify in the present moment? And what can we project for the near future as result of the expected Trump Trade Wars 2.0 begin to unfold?

We invite authors to submit abstracts of up to 250 words to Gustavo Oliveira at guoliveira@clarku.edu by February 1, 2025, which is also the extended deadline for authors to submit their abstracts through the GCEG conference registration page (https://gceg.org/index.php/register/). I also welcome queries or requests for further information.