Towards A More Productive Engagement: Industrial Relations And Economic Geography Meet

Abstract

In this commentary I argue that the study of industrial relations must take matters spatial seriously and that scholars must engage with space at a substantive theoretical level. I outline three ways in which industrial relations practices are shaped by spatial considerations, namely through the pertinent actors' need to come to terms with the uneven spatial development of capitalism, through their own spatial embeddedness, and through their direct conflicts with one another over how the spatial relations of capitalism should be organised. In turn, the resolution of such spatial considerations in industrial relations practices recursively shapes the making of the geography of capitalism.