Co-produced Economies: Capital, Collaboration, Competition

Description

In common with most other advanced capitalist economies of the Global North, the UK has experienced a decline in the manufacturing industry and an increase in the service sector in recent decades. At the same time, there has been a substantial manufacturing growth in a number of countries in the Global South, especially China and India. Why have these changes occurred? What have been their economic and ecological consequences? How can we best understand the way the contemporary economy functions? This book explores the answers to these questions, proposing that the contemporary capitalist economy is best understood as a complex socio-spatial system of co-production involving relations between people, things and non-human entities. It is argued that these people typically have conflicting and competitive interests yet can come together to resolve their differences or find ways of regulating their conflicting interests. National states continue to have a critical role in establishing these systems of regulation. At the same time, many companies draw on the knowledge of their customers while others enrol animals, insects and plants as co-producers. As a result, the improbable processes of commodity production and capital accumulation continue more or less routinely; with problems and occasional crises overcome in a variety of ways. Co-produced Economies will be of interest to students of economic geography, political economy and economic development, and more generally to social scientists interested in issues of the causes and consequences of economic change. It will also be of relevance to policy makers seeking to develop economic policies in the increasingly volatile global economy and in the context of growing environmental concerns. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Table of Contents Preface Acknowledgement List of abbreviations 1. Setting the scene: conceptualising capitalist economies as co-produced 1.1 Introduction 1.2 Theory and method 1.3 Characterising capitalist economies and economic geographies 2. Making co-production possible: from state regulation to informal institutions, conventions and habits 2.1 Introduction 2.2 Strategic selectivity in state policies and actions 2.3 Why do capitalist states take the organisational and spatial forms that they do? 2.4 National states and national monies 2.5 National states and institutional systems of regulation 2.6 Beyond the national: the triple process of reorganising the state 2.7 Beyond the mainstream: regulating economic forms in the interstices and on the margins of the capitalist mainstream 3. Enabling co-production: managing relations between capital and labour 3.1 Introduction 3.2 Representing the collective interests of capital and labour 3.3 Spaces of work: recruiting, managing and organising labour3 3.4 “Soft capitalism”: new ways of co-producing, new forms of labour regulatio 3.5 Beyond flexibility: cyberspace, the internet and new forms of co-production and labour contro 3.6 Projects, virtual firms: new ways of working, new spaces of production 3.7 Looking forward to a glimpse of the future? 4. Competition among co-producing firms: varying forms of competitive strategy 4.1 Introduction 4.2 Strategies and forms of competition 4.3 Innovation, knowledge creation and flows of knowledge within companies 4.4 The Internet, markets and competitive relationships among 4.5 Competition via market creation and marketing innovation 4.6 Competing via switching sector: from co-producing surplus value to seeking rents 4.7 The complexity of choosing competitive strategy and its systemic implications 5. Collaboration among firms: collaborating and co-producing with some in order to compete with others 5.1 Introduction 5.2 Co-producing through networks and relational contracts 5.3 Networks, collaborative knowledge creation and innovation: relationships among forms of proximity 5.4 Changing relationships between manufacturers, wholesalers and retailers 5.5 Longer term collaboration: co-production, strategic alliances and joint ventures 5.6 Merger and acquisition: competition or collaboration and a new route to co-production? 6. People collaborating and competing for waged work in the co-producing economy 6.1 Introduction 6.2 Divisions of labour, changing forms of employment and the tensions of collaborating through trades unions 6.3 Challenges to labour organisation: changes in the labour process and socio-spatial divisions of labour 6.4 Workers competing with one another: multiple identities and competition for jobs 6.5 Multiple disadvantages, divisions among workers and competition in the labour market 6.6 People collaborating via forming co-operatives 6.7 Spontaneous informal collaboration by ‘unorganised’ workers 7. Engaging consumers in the co-production of commodities 7.1 Introduction 7.2 Advertising, brands and meanings: consumers as passive recipients of information? 7.3 Consumers as active participants: advertising strategies and the co-production of meanings 7.4 Spectacle, the experience economy and ‘imaginative hedonism’: co-producing ephemeral commodities 7.5 New forms of relationship between consumers, retailers and manufacturers in product design and sale 7.6 Further feedback: consumer pressures on manufacturers and retailers 7.7 Creating new meanings and re-valorising commodities: new forms of exchange beyond the mainstream, or defining a new mainstream? 8. Capital and nature: from relations of domination to active co-production 8.1 Introduction 8.2 Nurturing nature via agricultural practices 8.3 Re-engineering nature – from husbandry to genetic engineering 8.4 Collaborating and co-producing with non-human life forms 8.5 Coda: capitalism and the transition from first to second nature 9. Co-producing sustainable economies or the end of capitalism as we knew it? Bibliography Index