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Call for Papers Association of American Geographers (AAG) Annual Meeting (New York City, February 24-28, 2012) Manufacturing Transformed? From Design-driven Competitiveness to Financialisation Organizers: John R. Bryson (University of Birmingham, UK), Vida Vanchan (Buffalo State College), and Jennifer Clark (Georgia Institute of Technology) Much of the literature and debate over the last decade has been on understanding service-based economies, neglecting manufacturing and its effects on the economy. The current financial crisis has been associated with political debates that revolve around the ‘real’ economy and a call for rebalancing regional and national economies. Over the last decade or so, manufacturing has been transformed but academic understanding has not kept pace with these alterations. Many of these alterations revolve around the development of new forms of expertise-driven manufacturing, new geographies of production, jobless growth and new forms of financialisation applied to manufacturing. These on-going transformations suggest that it is timely to explore the development of a new geography of manufacturing. This session invites contributions that critically engage in understanding manufacturing and production. It seeks to bring together papers that explore the dynamics of manufacturing theoretically and empirically to advance debates and understanding of manufacturing from pre- to post-industrial worlds. The session also seeks to develop conversations between different but often unrelated debates in economic geography, for example manufacturing and financialisation, manufacturing and creative work, manufacturing and logistics or manufacturing and consumption. Papers may examine topics including, but are not restricted to: • theory and method as well as theoretically grounded empirical analysis production process, pre and post production (from raw materials to marketing, design, and consumption including embedded services and supporting services), factors of production, financialisation. • product and process innovation including innovation in the geographic organization of production and consumer-informed innovation (end-user or participatory innovation). • rethinking, redefining, and reconceptualizing the concept of manufacturing and/or production in the twenty-first century. • the on-going evolution of the spatial division of labor. • Global Value Chains, Commodity Chains, and Global Production Network as well as alternative ways of conceptualizing the production process. • the role manufacturers play in the making market/s. • manufacturing and logistics including supply chain management. • studies that explore different types of manufacturing firm – contract manufacturers, virtual manufacturers, original design manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers. • case studies (of all forms) of small, medium, and large manufacturing firms, and all subsector studies (process chemicals, automotive, aerospace, energy, agricultural equipment, consumer products, etc.). • the impacts of new technologies including 3D printing. • studies that explore manufacturing in particular regional or national settings. • strategies and policies that attempt and/or assist in bolstering the manufacturing sector. • the relationship between manufacturing and consumption. • manufacturing impact on society and economy ranging from wages, wage security, to social benefits and labor reproduction. Please note that papers submitted to this session will be considered for inclusion in a major new edited handbook that will provide a state-of-the-art analysis of the economic geography of manufacturing. Anyone interested in participating in the session should send an abstract conforming to the requirements of the AAG (see http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/call_for_papers/abstract_guidelines) by September 16, 2011 to John Bryson ([log in to unmask]),Vida Vanchan ([log in to unmask]), and Jennifer Clark ([log in to unmask]).