CALL FOR PAPERS

The 2016 Association of American Geographers Annual Meeting, San Francisco, 29 March to 2 April 2016

Remaking the Global Economy

Organisers:

Karen Lai and Godfrey Yeung (National University of Singapore)

Sponsored by:

Economic Geography Specialty Group

Global Production Networks Centre at the National University of Singapore (GPN@NUS)

We invite papers that addresses the theme of ‘Remaking the Global Economy’. In conjunction with paper sessions, there will be a special panel discussion on this topic. Confirmed panellists so far include: Alex Hughes (Newcastle University), Andrew Jones (City University London), Andrés Rodríguez-Pose (London School of Economics), Eric Sheppard (UCLA), and Michael Storper (London School of Economics).

Whether from the perspectives of production networks, finance, labour or state institutions, economic geographers have made substantive contributions to understanding globalization as an uneven, differentiated and dynamic process. In particular, a strong and growing body of literature has emerged over the last decade in economic geography and cognate disciplines that uses a global production networks (GPN) framework to investigate and explain economic globalization and regional development. Building on earlier Global Commodity Chain (GCC) and Global Value Chain (GVC) approaches in economic sociology and development studies, GPN research has made steady progress in theoretical as well as empirical terms and produced sophisticated analyses of socio-economic development at scales ranging from the global to the local. However, the same dynamic character of global economic change also compels us to look outward and forward to explore new frontiers of global economic shifts and developmental outcomes. This series of themed sessions and panel(s) will explore dynamic shifts in global production networks (broadly defined) along five key domains: firms, finance, consumption, state and labour.

We encourage empirically or theoretically informed paper submissions that reflect on these five domains. Research questions and issues could include (but are not limited to):

To what extent have there been global shifts in corporate strategies and evolution of production networks of firms over the past decade? Are these shifts sector specific?
To what extent are shifting geographies of demand (e.g. growing middle class in Asia and Latin America) shaping global dynamics of production, trade and services?
How are financial and business services reshaping the production networks of firms and processes of capitalist market formation?
What are the impacts of new financial actors and networks such as sovereign wealth funds and venture capital on the reformulation of corporate strategies and remaking of production networks?
How do we conceptualize changing power relations amongst nation-states, firms and non-firm actors, and what are the implications for national and global governance?
What are the roles and impacts of small and medium enterprises in global production networks and how do they vary across different industries and regions?
To what extent are changing labour standards reshaping production networks governance and what are their developmental impacts?
How are protocols and institutional frameworks such as product certification, environmental standards and international governance structures reshaping corporate strategies, economic relationships and outcomes?
How are non-state and non-firm actors reshaping the spatiality and territorialisation of global economic processes?

Please send expressions of interests/queries and abstracts (of not more than 250 words) to Karen Lai ([log in to unmask]) or Godfrey Yeung ([log in to unmask]) by 30 September 2015. The AAG website (http://www.aag.org/cs/annualmeeting/about_the_meeting) provides more information about the annual meeting.