Survey 15. A Regulation Approach to the Geography of Flexible Production Systems

Abstract

In recent years the Regulation School has shown its merits in the analysis of the regional and urban geography of economic restructuring under contemporary capitalism. This restructuring has left many industrial regions in the midst of a profound socioeconomic crisis. At the same time, new territorial production complexes accomplish or promise economic prosperity in certain regions or subregions. In this way, new spatial networks of economic and social agency are shaped, and movements toward spatial concentration or deconcentration of economic activities, accompanied by particular forms of industrial relations, are promoted. The intention in this paper is to focus on the determinants of the socioeconomic and spatial processes at work in the construction and dissolution of regimes of accumulation and their corresponding modes of regulation as they characterize historical epochs in long-term economic development. More precisely, the intention is to explore the sociospatial dynamics of technological change and innovation during the transition from Fordist to flexible (or post-Fordist) accumulation and regulation. In the first part of the paper, the ‘regulation approach’ (the approach used by the French Regulation School) is proposed as a theoretical–methodological scheme for the analysis of concrete changes in spatial organization during a given historical epoch. In the second part, this approach is illustrated in terms of the current global (rc)organization of capitalist production in social space. In the third part new directions are proposed in which the regulation approach might be further explored.