Institutional Geography Research Articles

Manufacturing Culture: The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice – Meric S. Gertler

Manufacturing Culture: The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice – Meric S. Gertler

Review: Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles, Manufacturing Culture: The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice, Unequal City: London in the Global Arena, Egalitarian Capitalism: Jobs, Incomes and Growth in Affluent Countries, Life Events and the Housing Career: A Retrospective Analysis of Timed Effects, the Green City: Sustainable Homes, Sustainable Suburbs, Dropping

Review: Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles, Manufacturing Culture: The Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice, Unequal City: London in the Global Arena, Egalitarian Capitalism: Jobs, Incomes and Growth in Affluent Countries, Life Events and the Housing Career: A Retrospective Analysis of Timed Effects, the Green City: Sustainable Homes, Sustainable Suburbs, Dropping

Geography Rules Too! Economic Development and the Geography of Institutions

To explain cross-country income differences, research has recently focused on the so-called deep determinants of economic development, notably institutions and geography. This paper sheds a different light on these determinants. We use spatial econometrics to analyse the importance of the geography of institutions. We show that it is not only absolute geography, in terms of for instance climate, but also relative geography, the spatial linkages between countries, that matters for a country's gdp per capita. Apart from a country's own institutions, institutions in neighboring countries turn out to be relevant as well. This finding is robust to various alternative specifications.

Marginality and the New Geography of Domestic Violence Policy in Post-Communist Poland

The article explores the spatial distribution and institutional geography of domestic violence service provision in post-communist Poland. A new institutional geography providing services to victims of domestic violence is emerging in Poland as a result of NGO activism and new pro-woman policies implemented by the state. NGOs, often in partnership with local governments, are the most vital means of service provision in large and medium size cities, while in rural areas, public agencies predominate in the institutional geography of service provision. The assumption that NGOs will emerge to address the needs of victims of domestic violence is not realistic in rural areas. While urban Poland is developing an institutional geography to address domestic violence, state and NGO activists must focus on shrinking the rural margins of Poland's institutional geography.

Book Review: Manufacturing culture: the institutional geography of industrial practice

Book Review: Manufacturing culture: the institutional geography of industrial practice

Devolution, constitutional change and economic development: Explaining and understanding the new institutional geographies of the British state

Goodwin M., Jones M. and Jones R. (2005) Devolution, constitutional change and economic development: explaining and understanding the new institutional geographies of the British state, Regional Studies 39 , 421–436. This paper is concerned with the new institutional geographies of devolution and state restructuring, particularly in the UK. As part of perhaps the biggest change to the UK state since the Acts of Union, the Labour Party has established the Scottish Parliament, elected Assemblies for Wales, Northern Ireland, and London, and Regional Development Agencies within England's regions. The paper offers a conceptual framework through which to explore these new institutional geographies. It extends Jessop's strategic‐relational approach to the state by arguing that it is no longer enough simply to refer to a multivariate ‘hollowing out’ of the nation state in an era of economic and political restructuring. The paper suggests that devolution represents a geographically uneven ‘filling‐in’ of the state's institutional and scalar matrix, which is leading to an increasingly complex spatial division of the state. This appears to be creating uneven capacities to act and the implications of this are discussed.

De la descentralización a la regionalización: Nuevo escenario de la guerra y oportunidad para la paz

In many Latin-American countries, the combination among neoliberal politics of adjustment, economic opening and transformations to political regimes, modify both economic geography and spatial conformation of institutions, political systems, social and corporativ e actors. Colombia has also been affected by this redesign, that compromises the operation of its external and internal politics. The spatial effects of the economic opening combine with those of administrative, fiscal, and political process of decentralization, generating a tension on the geographical unit of the State. The consideration of these tendencies that have marked the paths of the economic, institutional, political, and social transformations since twenty years ago, indicate a probable way toward the regionalization of the country. Will this regionalization be convenient for a more stable internal dev elopment and a favorable setting for a peace agreement based on a territorial distribution of the power, or will it be the promptest way to abandon each territory to its luck in the world competence, and to break the territorial unit of the Colombian State? This is the question that is presented here.

Konstitutionelle Äquivalenz und Ordnungswahl

Zusammenfassung Dieses Papier versteht sich als Beitrag zur Ausweitung des Geltungsbereiches des ORDO-Konzepts, das wettbewerblichen Ordnungen verpflichtet ist, vom Markt auf die Politik. Wie läßt sich der politische Prozeß strukturieren, um der „individuellen Souveränität“ gerecht zu werden? „Konstitutionelle Äquivalenz“ besteht, wenn dieselben Individuen, die regelgebundene Entscheidungen treffen, auch zu Entscheidungen über die entsprechenden Regeln befähigt sind. Der Schlüssel zur Umsetzung der konstitutionellen Äquivalenz liegt in der Struktur der Regelsetzungskompetenzen einer Gesellschaft. Dem Paradigma vom „Staat als Monopolisten“ wird hier eine Form der dezentralisierenden Problemlösung gegenübergestellt, die die „Geographie der Institutionen“ an die „Geographie der Probleme“ koppelt und auf die neuentstehenden Entscheidungsträger das Paradigma von „ordnungspolitischen Akteuren als Wettbewerbern“ zutreffen läßt. Das Tauschparadigma läßt sich auf alle Ebenen des Tausches anwenden: Ebenso wie freiwillige Tauschakte auf Märkten erst dann möglich sind, wenn wohldefinierte Verfügungsrechte existieren, sind reagible ordnungspolitische Maßnahmen (unter konstitutioneller Äquivalenz) erst dann möglich, wenn auch hier die zugrundeliegenden Externalitäten durch wohldefinierte Verfugungsrechte internalisiert und betroffene Bürger problemadäquat mit dem gruppenexklusiven Recht zur Umsetzung ihres konstitutionellen Interesses im Zuge der Ordnungswahl ausgestattet werden. Hierfür wird eine abstrakte Vier-Ebenen-Struktur vorgeschlagen: 1. ein allgemeines Initiativrecht für Bürger auf der nationalen Verfassungsebene, 2. die institutionelle Meta-Ebene, auf der betroffenen Bürgern Problemlösungskompetenzen zugeordnet werden, 3. die konstitutionelle Ebene, auf der dazu befähigte Bürger den Ordnungsrahmen ihres Gesellschaftssystems mitgestalten und 4. die subkonstitutionelle Ebene, auf der innerhalb der geltenden Regeln die eigentlichen Strategien vorgenommen werden.

Constructing a Landscape for Postwar Science: Roger Revelle, the Scripps Institution and the University of California, San Diego

This paper explores Roger Revelle's activities in oceanography and institution-building during and after the Second World War. In particular, it explores his shift from a wartime acceptance of science serving mission-oriented objectives, to a defence ofthe distinction between basic and applied science. For Revelle, the Federal government, and especially the military, became theguarantor of basic research in oceanography. This understanding led him to privilege military sponsorship over contract research,and the physical over the biological sciences. He drew upon that understanding to construct a unique institutional geography for science in southern California.

Institutional Geography and Regime Governance - The Case of Local Rail Transport Policy

Urban regime theory has become a favoured tool of analysis for students of city politics. It provides a consistent evaluative framework with which to analyse the operation of local politics in contrasting cities. Recent applications have sought to extend the reach of regime analysis beyond the US, and to integrate the theory with other urban political and geographical analyses. This paper reflects both of these concerns by applying the insights into power structures and coalition formation in city politics provided by regime theory, and particularly Stoker and Mossberger's (1994) typology of regime characteristics. This is valuable in informing the (re)emerging debates over the preferred spatial and functional structure of urban local governance in the UK. By comparing the development of policy in a particular field, urban rail transportation, the characteristics of two different local institutional mixes, the 'city-regional' and the 'public choice', are demonstrated to exert profound influences on the composition, operation and aspirations of local regimes. The differences in decision-making strategies and policy outcomes that arise are suggested to have significant implications for the preferred spatial structure of local authorities, and the level of public accountability they achieve.

Institutional geographies of the New Age movement

This paper is concerned with the production and reproduction of different institutional geographies of the New Age movement. Instead of taking institutional geographies to be given and fixed co-ordinates in the social field, the paper seeks to understand how they are relational outcomes and effects that require constant upkeep. After characterising the New Age movement, in terms of its central cosmology and visions of transformation, the paper takes an actor-network theory (ANT) approach to the understanding of institutional geographies. Through analysing how New Age knowledges and practices travel through time and space, and utilising ANT’s concept of ‘centres of translation’, institutional geographies are taken to be active space-times that are both enrolled into New Age teachers and practitioners programs of action, and space-times that actively enrol teachers and practitioners. It is argued that the intertwining of different engineered actor-networks in and through these space-times maintains the New Age movement itself and thus examining institutional geographies can tell of the movement’s shape or topology. A controversy over the work of David Icke is explored to reveal how institutional geographies are sites for regulation of what counts as New Age knowledge. Finally, this paper seeks, partially at least, to assess in terms of the ANT approach taken, the visions of transformation propounded by the New Age movement.

Narrating the Natural History Unit: institutional orderings and spatial strategies

This paper develops a conceptualisation of institutional geographies through participation observation and interviews in the BBC’s Natural History Unit (NHU), and the approach of actor network theory. The methodological and theoretical tenets of actor network theory are examined for the insights they offer for understanding the achievements of this pre-eminent centre for the production of natural history films. The scope, scale and longevity of the NHU are analysed through the means by which localised institutional modes of ordering extend through space and over time. Drawing on empirical material, the paper outlines three different modes of ordering, which organise relations between actors in the film-making processes in different ways: prioritising different kinds of institutional arrangements, material resources and spatial strategies in the production of natural history films. Through these three modes of ordering, and through the topological insights of actor network theory, a series of overlapping and interlinked institutional geographies are revealed, through which the identity of the Unit as a centre of excellence for wildlife film-making is performed.

Of tidy gardens and clean houses: housing officers as agents of social control

This paper seeks to contribute to the theme of institutional geographies by exploring how the prevailing socio-spatial order is recreated and legitimated in the ways in which public rented housing is managed and delivered by housing associations and local authorities in the UK. The public rented sector has been increasingly catering for the most vulnerable sections of the population who are dependent on state benefits and cannot afford any other form of housing. As a result, housing staffs have found themselves having to take on a welfare role which entails controlling and policing social tenants who are seen to be causing disorder in society. This paper shows how a dominant housing management discourse reproduced by policies and staff at both front-line and management levels is that of an emerging ‘underclass’ promoted by right wing politicians and the media since the 1980s. According to dominant housing management discourse the members of this underclass are disrupting traditional patriarchal and capitalist institutions and values. Tenants’ houses and gardens not conforming to culturally and socially acceptable standards of cleanliness and tidiness symbolises tenants’ lack of conformity to the prevailing institutional order. Drawing on in-depth interviews with housing officers and managers, and observations of interviews between staff and tenants in six housing organisations, this paper analyses the ways in which housing organisations seek to control social tenants through the imposition of certain norms of cleanliness over their houses and gardens.

The Origins, Forms and Effects of Modularisation and Semesterisation in Ten UK‐Based Business Schools

This paper examines the introduction of modularisation and semesterisation at ten UK‐based business schools. Using this case study evidence, it is argued that the main reasons for the introduction of these schemes were the personal ambitions of senior managers, pressure from external regulatory agencies and a desire to emulate initiatives undertaken by competitor institutions. In addition, it is suggested that the form of these schemes varied between institutions as a consequence of the negotiations which accompanied the introduction of these new arrangements, and constraints imposed by the legacy of earlier degree structures, regulations from external agencies, institutional geography, limits on financial resources and the organization of internal management systems. The paper concludes by arguing that these constraints have meant that modularity has had limited effects on the experiences of staff and students, but that semesterisation has significantly increased costs without any accompanying benefits.

Managerialism vs collegiality in geography in institutions of higher education: Responses of Joe Powell

Managerialism vs collegiality in geography in institutions of higher education: Responses of Joe Powell

Teaching economic geography in UK higher education institutions

Abstract This paper examines how the changes in the last decade in economic geography have been reflected in the courses taught in the UK and assesses the impact of recent changes in teaching styles and methods on how the subject is taught. It summarises the findings from a survey of 50 UK Geography Departments. The paper covers three main topics: the significance of economic geography in UK degrees courses; the characteristics of introductory economic geography courses; and the issues involved in the teaching of economic geography.

Editorial Notes

APCG YEARBOOK • VOLUME 52 • 1990 233 EDITORIAL NOTES A decreasing share of papers submitted to thisjournal are derived from papers presented at the Association's annual meetings. We do not deplore this trend, because theYearbookcontinuesto serveasapublication opentoallgeographersand other scholars writing on themes of interest to the Association's membership. We do seek to strengthen the Yearbook's main role as the publication where the best papers of our lively annual meetings appear. Please, dear APCG members, think of us firstwhen you polish and submit the fine papers thatcontinue to be presented each year. Many excellentpapers werepresentedatthe Fairbanks meeting, yet this issue contains but two of them. We look forwardto receiving andpublishing more. A few of the annual meeting participants have taken advantage of our offer to publishrevised versions oftheirabstracts. We will continuepublishingall abstracts of papers presented at APCG meetings. Please take care to make your abstract succinct and substantive in the original submission to the meeting’s Program Committee and in any reworked version sent to the journal after the meeting. We are pleased to present in this issue the first installment of what will be a complete set of biographies of geography departments in the Pacific Northwest. Theremainderofthefifteen essays will appearinthe 1991 and 1992 issues. We join Professor Ed Price in hoping that the results will increase awareness of the record of growth and excellence of scholarly geography in this region's institutions of higher education. We also hope that this project stimulates a similar effort in departments throughout the APCG region. This is anappropriate time toexpress ourappreciation to the staffof theOregon StateUniversity Press for their continued efforts on behalfof this organization and thisjournal. Inparticular, thanks are due to Jo Alexander. Jo reads and edits all of thecopy foreach issue. She coordinates theOSU Press'seffortin selecting aprinter and, six weeks later, distributing the issues. In all of our interactions with her we find evidence of cheerfulness, enthusiasm for the task, great professional compe­ tence, and high standards for the use of language and for the graphic design of the journal. Itis ourfondhope thatherassociation with theAPCG continues for agreat many more issues. Robin Datel Dennis Dingemans ...

“Fit localities for an asylum”: the historical geography of the nineteenth-century “mad-business” in England as viewed through the pages of the Asylum Journal

The institutions of the mid-nineteenth century “mad-business” in England—the public ssylums, charitable lunatic hospitals and private madhouses—possessed intriguing associations with particular places, regions and environments, but historians have rarely considered the way that these associations prompted serious debates amongst such interested parties as the medical officers of mental establishments, the Government's Commissioners in Lunacy and even the educated public at large. These debates both reflected the existing institutional geography of the “mad-business” and helped to shape subsequent transformations in this geography. Furthermore, these debates were deeply embedded within a whole span of arguments to do with both the nature of “madness” and the operation of appropriate regimes of internment, care and therapy. Through a detailed reading of the first forty issues of the Asylum Journal , a mid-nineteenth century journal dominated principally by the so-called “mad doctors”, it is possible to encounter a sophisticated “medico-moral discourse” overarching more specific debates and arguments, including those which both reflected and helped to shape the institutional geography of the “mad-business” during these years.

The status of geography in Saudi universities with special reference to King Saud University

Although there are several departments and subdepartments of geography in Saudi universities and other institutions, these departments have so far failed to produce professionals who are capable of filling the posts offered by the employers in both the public and private sectors. This paper suggests that since the demand for geography graduates with general training is rather low at presents, it is time for geography departments to turn to professionalism in the field so that geography graduates can compete favourably for the available posts. This calls for a new look into the geography curriculum, particularly at university level with a view of improving the skills and aptitude of geographers to assume a more positive role in the process of development. The paper also calls for the regional specialisation of geography departments in Saudi Arabia as a step forward towards solving the existing job problem for geography graduates, as well aas underlining the involvement and commitment of geographers to issues of development at the local, regional and national scales.

Crise régionale et question du logement en Lorraine sidérurgique

Regional crisis and housing question. The object of this contribution is to call attention to the existing relation between the housing question in iron and steel producing Lorraine and the crises that this industry and region are at present undergoing. The former solidarities, the new institutional geography brought about by recent government reforms, and notably decentralization and the various nationalizations are put in perspective through an examination of the housing question.