Jamie Peck Research Articles

Labour Market in Peril: Interference of Influential Individuals in the Integration of Congolese Workers into the Labour Market

The encroachment of certain influential individuals who employ cronyism, patronage, and networking into the recruitment and hiring processes of employees in the Democratic Republic of the Congo is a widely discussed issue in media and public discourse. However, it remains an underexplored subject within scholarly research. This paper seeks to address this gap by providing a comprehensive overview of this phenomenon over time. Drawing upon Jamie Peck’s concepts of labour incorporation and labour allocation, while also examining the prevalence of illegality and informality, this study argues that these ‘influential individuals’ or ‘well-connected actors’ have assumed the roles and responsibilities traditionally held by labour market actors and institutions. Consequently, this has exacerbated long-standing malpractices within the Congolese labour market. The interference of these ‘influential individuals’ disrupts the normal functioning of the Congolese labour market, even as proponents of these practices offer justifications for their actions. Employing qualitative interviews and documentary research, this study traces the historical origins of such interference, dating back to the colonial era.

Towards a pragmatist economic geography

Following Jamie Peck’s remit for this initial set of Exchanges section contributions to present forward-positive approaches to economic geography, I offer American philosophical pragmatism, and more specifically, the neo-pragmatism of the American philosopher, Richard Rorty (1931–2007). Rather than providing a complete architectonic philosophy, pragmatism presents a set of ideas about ideas. Within the context of economic geography, I explore within this short paper three neo-pragmatist ideas: a reconceptualization of knowledge and truth; experimentation and creativity; and pluralism and conversation.

Thinking conjuncturally, looking elsewhere

Thinking conjuncturally, looking elsewhere

Theory and explanation in geography revisited: Mid-range causal theories and explanatory conjuncturalism

This commentary takes on Jamie Peck’s conjunctural methodologies and reflects on the epistemological matter of theory and explanation in geography. Mapping onto several key elements of conjunctural analysis, I reframe its methodological examination in relation to mid-level concepts and theories (i.e. mid-range theory), the articulation of causality and causal co-determination (i.e. causal mechanisms), and situational analysis, historicisation, and thick theorisation as context-rich explanation (i.e. context-specificity). By way of a sympathetic critique, I focus on two potential ‘blind spots’ that might require further rethinking and perhaps remedies: the underdevelopment of practical adequacy and the role of normative theorising in conjunctural methodologies.

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

City Production Strategies in the Neoliberalization Context - Salvador as Example

Abstract The aim of the current article is to think over economic development and urban infrastructure propositions by Salvador 360 Strategic Plan from 2017, which was elaborated by the municipal government. The plan allows analyzing the neoliberal city production approach which, despite its modernizing profile, is just an update of old models that have great potential to worsen structural socio-spatial segregation issues. Neoliberalism, urban spoliation, land value and gentrification are key concepts in this article. Neil Brenner, Nick Theodore, Jamie Peck, David Harvey, Lúcio Kowarick, Carlos Vainer and Inaiá de Carvalho are its main theoretical references. The methodology addresses documental analysis, as well as the analysis of secondary data from official sources (DIEESE and IBGE) and digital platforms analysis (AirBnB website). Based on the results, Salvador 360 Strategic Plan deepens eviction processes experienced by the poor population in the city’s central zones and increases the appropriation of private urban added value and service provision concentration, within a political setback context. This process can aggravate urban environment precariousness and quality of life in the city.

City Production Strategies in the Neoliberalization Context - Salvador as Example

Abstract The aim of the current article is to think over economic development and urban infrastructure propositions by Salvador 360 Strategic Plan from 2017, which was elaborated by the municipal government. The plan allows analyzing the neoliberal city production approach which, despite its modernizing profile, is just an update of old models that have great potential to worsen structural socio-spatial segregation issues. Neoliberalism, urban spoliation, land value and gentrification are key concepts in this article. Neil Brenner, Nick Theodore, Jamie Peck, David Harvey, Lúcio Kowarick, Carlos Vainer and Inaiá de Carvalho are its main theoretical references. The methodology addresses documental analysis, as well as the analysis of secondary data from official sources (DIEESE and IBGE) and digital platforms analysis (AirBnB website). Based on the results, Salvador 360 Strategic Plan deepens eviction processes experienced by the poor population in the city’s central zones and increases the appropriation of private urban added value and service provision concentration, within a political setback context. This process can aggravate urban environment precariousness and quality of life in the city.

Jamie Peck, 2005: Struggling with the Creative Class

Since the 1990s, the popularity of cultural and creative industries has been set off worldwide, and the creative economy has become a new and important growth of the regional economy. Around the theme of cultural and creative industries, its derivative research fields, such as public policies, governance, cultural, industrial parks, art industrial, etc., are also highly sought after by people. However, at this stage, it seems that the public only sees the positive aspects of cultural and creative industries but seldom focuses on their negative aspects. This paper mainly reviews Peck’s critical analysis of Florida bestsellers The Rise of the Creative Class: And how it is Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life, and makes an in-depth analysis around the creative class and in connection with the advanced viewpoints of index scholars in the field of cultural and creative industries.

Is Comparative Gentrification Possible? Sceptical Voices from Hong Kong

AbstractThis essay responds to a series of critical observations made in an intervention in this journal (vol. 41.3) concerning our earlier article on gentrification in Hong Kong (vol. 38.4). In the current rejoinder we bring this particular exchange to focus on the broader question of whether comparative gentrification research is even possible; a question that exemplifies the dualism in the literature between global urban theory and the emphasis inherent within comparative or regional urbanism. Our attempt to present an interpretation of urban transformation in Hong Kong that bridges this dualism was challenged by our critics on grounds that are similar to those identified by Jamie Peck in his 2015 analysis of a comparative urbanism that seeks to undercut global urban theory. We use this intervention to examine several of these arguments critically, and conclude by continuing to promote a comparative approach to the study of gentrification, dominated neither by planetary theory nor by regional specificity.

Detroit’s Municipal Bankruptcy: Racialised Geographies of Austerity

ABSTRACTUrban geographer Jamie Peck theorises austerity urbanism as a dominant state practice of financially ‘restructuring’ the fiscal agendas of local governments in order to reduce government budget deficits in times of economic recessions. This project seeks to investigate the role of race in the context of austerity urbanism in Detroit following the subprime mortgage crisis in 2008. What is clear is that subprime lending in Detroit was explicitly a raced event. Analysis of austerity politics in Detroit demonstrates that the city is clearly spatially divided along racialised lines. Black city pensioners, former public sector employees, and ‘deliquent taxpayers’ were blamed for Detroit’s municipal bankruptcy in narratives centering on their bloated and generous benefits during the city’s financial decline. The policy outcomes of austerity programmes during the city’s financial crisis impacted racialised, poor communities, specifically the outcomes of privatising the city’s water services that led to state-sanctioned water shut-offs. This paper explores the ways in which race figures in the causes (race-based credit redlining/subprime super-inclusion lending practices) in the way the crisis was narrated to wrongly apportion blame to the racialised poor and city pensioners, and in the effects of the crisis, where water shut-offs wrought punishment on the racialised poor.

Fasten your Seat Belts Studying Policy Reform in an Interconnected World - Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2015)

Fasten your Seat Belts Studying Policy Reform in an Interconnected World - Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism (Minneapolis, University of Minnesota Press, 2015)

After neoliberalisation? Monetary indiscipline, crisis and the state

Across the advanced capitalist states, the post‐crisis conjuncture has been characterised by both marked continuity and profound change. While regressive distributional trends in place before the 2008 crisis have intensified, a number of highly unorthodox policy interventions have also emerged. In particular, a new regime of “loose” monetary policy has crystallised, exemplified by record low interest rates and sustained programmes of quantitative easing. Existing approaches within economic geography are, we contend, ill‐equipped to deal with these transformations. Engaging with the “variegated neoliberalisation approach” – associated with Jamie Peck and his collaborators – the article argues that existing conceptualisations of neoliberalisation understate the key significance that central state institutions play in securing advanced capitalist development. They therefore miss the key role that monetary indiscipline has played in sustaining capitalist development since 2008. This argument is substantiated empirically through a case study of state intervention in the UK housing market in the post‐crisis conjuncture. Focusing on the Help to Buy Scheme and the buy‐to‐let market, the article argues that the UK's loose monetary policy regime has produced novel patterns of spatial divergence across the UK regions while simultaneously consolidating the UK's dysfunctional financialised model of capitalism.

Book Review: Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism

Book Review: Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore, <i>Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism</i>

Melinda Cooper, Family Values. Between Neoliberalism and the New Social Conservatism

In Family Values, sociologist Melinda Cooper presents the reader with a cultural history of neoliberalism. Her research follows the line of work done by sociologist Pierre Dardot and philosopher Christian Laval, geographer Jamie Peck, and philosopher Wendy Brown. Her work allows us to revisit the construction of what she perceives as a specifically neoliberal “rationale.” Based on the idea that a clear boundary would exist between identity politics and class struggle, recent historiographies ...

Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore (2015), Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, $30.00, pp. 336, pbk.

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Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. By Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Pp. 328. $105.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).

Fast Policy: Experimental Statecraft at the Thresholds of Neoliberalism. By Jamie Peck and Nik Theodore. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015. Pp. 328. $105.00 (cloth); $30.00 (paper).

Detroit after bankruptcy: A case of degrowth machine politics

It is widely accepted that neoliberalism is intensified in times of crisis, and Jamie Peck has argued that ‘austerity urbanism’ has been implemented at the urban scale since the 2008 financial crisis. This article questions whether this narrative of neoliberal expansion is applicable in cities where crisis is so severe that economic growth seems highly unlikely. I focus on Detroit, whose recent declaration of bankruptcy signals the recognition among local officials and elites that the city’s decline cannot be reversed with out-of-the-box neoliberal policies. Instead, the city’s bankruptcy precipitated a breakdown of an interscalar growth coalition, and local actors have embraced a plan for Detroit’s future which diverges from ‘austerity urbanism’ favoured by extra-local investors in significant ways. Importantly, local actors have embraced a plan that seeks to improve the quality of life for the city’s residents in the context of irreversible degrowth. I refer to this as degrowth machine politics and I examine the extent to which its emergence may foster contingency and progressive urban politics.

The Theoretical Imperative of Comparative Urbanism: A Commentary on ‘Cities beyond Compare?’ by Jamie Peck

I am writing this commentary in Amsterdam. It could have been Miami, or Mumbai, and it most probably would have turned out the same. Having spent considerable time in these three places has, I thin...

Getting to the CORE of the Chicago Teachers’ Union Transformation

This article draws on a comparative study of urban change and rank-and-file teacher rebellion in New York City and Chicago, to explore the contemporary dynamics of what Jamie Peck (2013) calls “austerity urbanism” and its relationship to a rebirth of a social justice, grassroots teacher unionism in US urban centres. Tracing the trajectories of one group of rank-and-file teacher dissidents in Chicago, it argues that municipal unions are uniquely situated to lead the fight against austerity urbanism and the crisis tendencies of contemporary capitalism. To do this, however, trade unions will need to be reinvented and a different form of working class politic forged, grounded both in and outside of the trade union movement. Only then may we see organized labour in North America contribute to a movement for radical and systemic change, which is key to building a more socially just urbanism and society more broadly. The case of the Chicago teachers is highly instructive for activists, both inside and outside of the North American labour movement.

Slow Art in the Creative City

Global cities have been studied predominantly in terms of speed and movement, acceleration and circulation. This article examines the relationship between globalization and cities in terms that run counter to such emphases, focusing instead on slowness as a condition in contemporary urban life. Drawing on Jamie Peck’s critique of the creativity syndrome in urban policy, we analyze a series of street photography projects in the city of Amsterdam in order to examine the role of “slow art” in neoliberal urbanization and city profiling. In its capacity to interrupt movement and redirect visual attention, slow art resists both the acceleration of everyday life and the rapid transformation of social space in the global city. Yet, exploited by urban creativity policies, slow art can simultaneously contribute to the gentrification and commodification of cities. We argue that slowness and creativity are deeply implicated in contemporary reshapings of urban social space and that their interrelations merit closer study.