CFP AAG New Orleans 2018

“Transnational Production Spaces: Integrating Global Production Networks and Urban Research“

Session Organizers: Elke Beyer, Anke Hagemann (TU Berlin), and Jana Kleibert (Uni Frankfurt)

Transnational production networks and commodity flows are formed and articulated by specific local constellations and material assemblages – architectures, urban spaces and infrastructures – at the diverse sites of production and distribution. From the gated enclaves of export processing zones or vast industrial districts in peri-urban regions to gigantic megastructures of trade and logistics centers or numerous small sweatshops in informally built-up areas – the international division of labour has been changing the face of many urban areas around the world, and uneven spatial development is not only manifest in the hierarchical structure of value chains, but also in the built environments of production locations.

Seeking a better understanding of the interdependencies between such quickly transforming urban spaces and the dynamics of global production relations, the potential for an integration of global commodity chains or production networks and urban research have been highlighted by geographers in recent years, most notably in the initial debate on “World City Networks and Global Commodity Chains” (2010) and in search of a comprehensive research agenda for transnational urban spaces (Krätke, Wildner and Lanz 2012, Parnreiter 2012). Likewise, the materiality of comoodity flows has been emphasized in cultural geography and anthropology. For urban research, GCC/GPN or “follow-the-thing” approaches offer an advanced perspective on architecture and the city: they facilitate a multi-local analysis of places which are usually not put in relation, they deepen our insights into the transnational character of urban spaces and they may guide our view to inconspicuous aspects of the built environment. Likewise, multi-local research along production networks responds in a ground-breaking way to the challenge of a conceptually new comparative urban research (Robinson 2011/McFarlane 2012/Ward 2010). For GCC/GPN scholarship, on the other hand, an integration with urban research offers rich new perspectives and insights, as material preconditions, urban development and planning often have considerable effect on location decisions and the spatial structure of production networks. However, to date, empirical urban research has hardly addressed the effects and interdependencies of globalized industrial production and transnational commodity flows on urban built structures. At the same time, the broad field of research into global commodity chains and production networks has paid little attention to spatial and physical transformations of the actual locations of production, or the material preconditions and articulations of commodity flows.

In this session we would like to bring together empirical research and theoretical positions at the intersection of GCC/GPN approaches and urban research. Moreover, we invite research papers that study global commodity flows from other perspectives, including cultural geography and anthropology, (e.g. ‘follow-the-thing’ approaches, socio-material assemblages, actor-networks).

We welcome papers addressing (but not limited to) the following themes and topics:

1) impact of global production networks on urban built environments:
- material articulations of specific commodity flows and their urban and architectural contexts (from raw materials, manufacturing and distribution to the points of sale, consumption and waste disposal/recycling, including service industries)
- new types of architectures and urban spaces emerging in relation to globalized production relations
- urban transformations as preconditions for and responses to the integration into global production networks
- the role of physical infrastructures and logistics spaces in global commodity flows

2) planning and agency in shaping global production locations:
- transnational, intermediate and local actors shaping places of production (e.g. investors, planning institutions, real-estate firms, …)
- locational choices and construction policies of transnational corporations
- the significance of built structures in the quality of working conditions
- attention to building safety and urban environment in global lead firms’ CSR guidelines
- planning processes of industrial areas or regions producing for global markets
- the role and leverage of urban planning in the development of industrial locations

3) conceptual considerations of the (urban) geographies and emerging spatialities of global commodity flows:
- relations, interdependencies and interactions between places connected through commodity flows
- the transnational constitution of industrial locations
- urban geographies of dis/articulation and dispossession
- the spatialities of virtual and digital GCC/GPNs

Please send your abstract (about 250 words) to the session organizers by October 15 or contact us for inquiries:

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References:

Brown, Ed, Ben Derudder, Christof Parnreiter, Wim Pelupessy, Peter J. Taylor, and Frank Witlox (2010). ‘World City Networks and Global Commodity Chains: Towards a World-Systems’ Integration’. Global Networks 10, no. 1 (2010): 12–34.

Krätke, Stefan, Kathrin Wildner, and Stephan Lanz (2012). Transnationalism and Urbanism. New York u.a.: Routledge, 2012.

Mcfarlane, Colin (2010). ‘The Comparative City: Knowledge, Learning, Urbanism’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 34, no. 4: 725–42.

Parnreiter, Christof (2012). ‘Conceptualizing Transnational Urban Spaces: Multicentered Agency, Placeless Organizational Logics, and the Built Enviroment’. In Transnationalism and Urbanism, edited by Stefan Krätke, Kathrin Wildner, and Stephan Lanz, 91–110. New York: Routledge.

Robinson, Jennifer (2011). ‘Cities in a World of Cities: The Comparative Gesture’. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 35, no. 1: 1–23.

Ward, Kevin (2010). ‘Towards a Relational Comparative Approach to the Study of Cities’. Progress in Human Geography 34, no. 4: 471–87.