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PERCEPTIONS, PREJUDICES AND PARTITIONS:
CONCEPTUAL AND METHODOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS OF CORPORATE ISOLATION AND EXCLUSION
Session at the Global Conference on Economic Geography (July 24-28, 2018, University of Cologne)
Session Convenors: Martina Fuchs (Cologne) and Sebastian Henn (Jena)
Economic disparities that tend to characterize our ‘unequal world’ (the motto of this year’s GCEG) are continuously being produced and reproduced by individual agents embedded in diverse social networks. Even though the globalized economy relies on intense exchanges across cultural boundaries, empirical evidence suggests that most economic agents, influenced by their cultural socializations, political indoctrinations and medial representations, intentionally or unintentionally delimit themselves, their networks resp. the firms they work with from (alleged) others (e. g. foreign investors) and act accordingly. As a result, economic nationalisms have evolved at different scales that affect national and regional economic development in a yet unprecedented way (e.g. by scaring away foreign investors). To go even further, current political developments in various countries foreshadow that xenophobia and related populist policies must be considered an increasing threat to firms, value chains and entire nation states.
Though economic geography and related disciplines have referred to individual and corporate practices of self-differentiation with different concepts, such as ‘othering’, the underlying conceptual debate has remained quite vague up to now. This session therefore aims to contribute to a more nuanced understanding of the link between perceptions and related actions by reflecting upon trends of corporate isolation and exclusion as well as of discussing methodological challenges related to assessing such perceptions, prejudices and partitions.
We invite papers from economic geography and related disciplines like ethnology, political sciences, sociology that are related (but are not limited) to
- theoretical-conceptual problems related to othering etc. in international economic relations and/or between firms and their surrounding regions,
- methodological implications of researching perceptions and related actions of economic agents,
- patterns of perceptions, ‘intercultural’ learning, policy recommendations and implications for research about MNCs or M&As and
- implications for research about local contexts, e.g. institutional contexts and actor networks
Please submit an abstract by 15 March 2018 through the conference website https://www.gceg2018.com/nc/call-for-sessions-and-papers/submit-an-abstract.html
We look forward to your contributions!
Martina Fuchs and Sebastian Henn
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