John Pickles

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill | UNC · Department of Geography

The paper analyzes the institutions and regulations that govern the transnational movement of dead bodies in contemporary Europe. With the extension of free movement across the European Union and the subsequent expansion of transnational employment, tourism, and retirement, the repatriation of corpses from one member state to another lies in an amb...

The global value chain (GVC) has emerged as an important tool for describing the interactions among actors in a complex chain of production-consumption relations that extend across space. Scholars of GVCs have carefully elaborated what ‘global’ and ‘chain’ mean in these analyses, but how they understand ‘value’ and how it is produced, captured, and...

This chapter focuses on recent changes in the structure and practices of geographies of global economic governance that have become more influential in response to the financial crisis of 2008. At their core is a ‘smart specialization strategy’ aimed at revitalizing core economies and flexibilizing regional development pathways through targeted res...

Recent literature has problematized the limits of deeply held assumptions about linear, unidirectional upgrading trajectories in global value chains (GVCs). As firm and chain trajectories and sources of upgrading have changed in recent years, GVC analysis has adjusted to focus on new emerging actors and new distributions of power within value chain...

In the spirit of Ibert et al.’s ‘Geographies of Dissociation: Value Creation, “Dark” Places, and “Missing” Links’, we briefly suggest several ways in which ‘Geographies of Dissociation’ itself elides certain crucial issues in the cultural economies of value. The first relates to the need to develop more fully and concretely the relational spatialit...

As part of the RegPol² Project “Socio-economic and Political Responses to Regional Polarization in Central and Eastern Europe” the authors were invited to hold a wide-ranging conversation about critical economic geography and regional development. The context for the conversation was an ongoing research programme involving scholars based in Leipzig...

This chapter focuses on the ways in which assumptions about who “migrants” and “expats” are and how long an individual or a community needs to remain “migrant” are shaped by a series of important institutions and technical practices. The chapter focuses on the International Centre for Migration Policy Development (ICMPD), created in 1993 to coordin...

The geographer John Pickles defines place as the locus of natural and social life worlds, which provides an operative context of common understandings, institutions, and practices along with the natural environment that sustains the life of communities. He characterizes the defense of these “commons” as the arena in which place-based activism takes...

Central to the institutional turn in regional economic analysis is the concept of relational assets. If neoclassical approaches to regional economic development focused their attention on factors of production, resource endowments, and comparative advantage, the turn to the concept of relational assets focused on the ways in which interfirm behavio...

In economic geography and economic sociology, embeddedness refers to the ways in which relational, institutional, and cultural contexts shape economic life. In contrast to the undersocialized and utilitarian assumptions of neoclassical economics, rational choice theory, and new institutional economics, theories of embeddedness focus on the ways in...

China’s emergence as a key exporter to the world has relied on low-wage and unskilled or semiskilled labor and industrial clustering. The apparel industry exemplifies this export-oriented development model. Production and employment have become heavily concentrated in the coastal regions of east and southeast China.

This chapter seeks to focus on China pollution-intensive industries and document some of the ways in which different levels of government and different kinds of firms are attempting to deal with new challenges emerged in the 2000s and the dilemma they pose.

In recent years, fast fashion and rapid replenishment strategies, once the specialization of a few lead firms like Zara, have become a crucial element in all apparel global value chains (GVCs).

In the era of globalization, knowledge transfer through global value chains (GVCs) has been considered as a major engine of industrial upgrading for firms in developing economies. Increasing attention has been paid to how global economy has been coordinated and integrated; the actions and motivations of global lead firms are treated as the key caus...

Based on recent insights in economic geography and economic sociology on industrial relocation/delocalization, upgrading, governance, global value chains and global production networks, this book strives to understand the articulation between changing industrial policies and corporate strategies in China’s apparel industry. Specifically, the centra...

In recent years, a great deal of research in economic sociology, political economy, international studies, and economic geography has focused on the globalization, governance, and rapidly changing geographies of global commodity chains (GCCs).

The promising development of China’s export-oriented apparel firms has been largely attributed to (1) the flexible business environment including cheap peasant workers who migrate from western and central region to coastal China, and China’s other low-cost factor inputs, land electricity, and raw materials; (2) loose inspection on import materials...

In economic geography, much has been written about the robust growth of certain industrial districts, clusters, or regional innovation systems (Piore and Sabel 1984; Saxenian 1994; Storper 1997).

This book offers the first detailed account of the complex geographical dynamics currently restructuring China’s export-oriented industries. The topics covered are relevant to post-socialist geography, development studies, economics, economic sociology and international studies. It offers academics, international researchers, postgraduate and advan...

In recent years, the flexibilities industrial clusters may offer to firms within them have been questioned as inter-firm linkages have, in some cases, locked-in path-dependent practices and increased economic rigidities. In this sense, the canonical path dependence model has tended to overlook such trajectories of cluster evolution and has not paid...

Articulations of Capital offers an accessible, grounded, yet theoretically-sophisticated account of the geographies of global production networks, value chains, and regional development in post-socialist Eastern and Central Europe. Proposes a new theorization of global value chains as part of a conjunctural economic geography. Develops a set of con...

This chapter starts with the question of labour in order to pose some fundamental questions about the economic trajectories of post-socialist economic integration into global production networks in Europe. It charts the changing trajectories of the apparel industry in ECE, before turning to consider the extent to which growth in export processing w...

This introductory chapter maps out the core arguments of Articulations of Capital before presenting a brief overview of the structure and organization of the global apparel industry. An outline of the book is provided. Articulations of Capital is motivated by five primary questions. The first question relates to the political economy and geographie...

This chapter introduces the structures of the apparel industry in Bulgaria and Slovakia prior to and following the collapse of state socialism and the restructuring of the command economy. It analyzes the long-run trajectories and significance of apparel production, employment and trade in Bulgaria and Slovakia, focusing on the regional structure o...

Global commodity chain, global value chain (GVC) and global production network (GPN) researchers share the common concern of understanding the organizational dynamics of industrial systems in contemporary capitalism. This chapter suggests that GPN and GVC research would benefit from the development of a more elaborated theory of the dynamics of cap...

This chapter presents some closing thoughts on the concepts discussed in the various chapters of the book. It shows how the book has contributed to the further development of work on GPNs and GVCs, trade liberalization and industrial and regional upgrading, and on the geographies of post-socialist transformation. In particular, the chapter addresse...

In recent years, Northern supermarket chains have internationalized rapidly and Southern supermarket chains have expanded their footprint in emerging markets. As they have done so, questions have arisen about the impact of such supermarkets and the extent of consumer demand for social standards (labour standards and fair trade). While standards hav...

Throughout the 20th century, the global clothing industry experienced major geographical shifts, new forms of governance, changing producer and buyer relations and unevenly distributed outcomes for countries, firms and workers. This paper contextualises these global dynamics in regard to the ways in which trade policy and rules create strong region...

The intervention of European Union border authorities in countries of Africa, Asia and Eastern Europe has shown how the European state “border” has been displaced from its national moorings and externalized across the territories of neighboring states. Our research examines the outsourcing of the southern European Union border, focusing on the case...

In 2007/2008 the Labour Contract Law was introduced and enacted in China. Responses to the law have varied enormously. For many, it represented a major change in the conditions under which workers and employers can enter into contracts and, as a result, it has been seen as an important step in empowering workers to shape their conditions of work. F...

In the past decade mega-events have entered a new phase of global reach, as post-socialist countries in Eurasia, from Poland to Russia, have or will become host to some of the largest events on earth: the Olympic Games in Sochi (2014), the Football World Cup in Russia (2018), the Football European Championship in Poland and Ukraine (2012), Expo in...

This paper cautions against fetishising geographical proximity in analyses of fast fashion apparel production networks. Using a detailed case study of one former state-owned domestically oriented Chinese apparel producer, we show how initial advantages as a large low-cost exporter have—with increased costs and competition from southeast Asia—led to...

Despite technological upgrading of borders at the edges of Europe, Fortress Europe continues to fail as an effective means of controlling irregular migration. As a consequence, European states are restructuring their border regimes by externalizing migration management to non-EU countries beyond the border and creating new programs and policies to...

In 1975 Vaclav Havel wrote an open letter to Gustav Husak, then president of Czechoslovakia, to illustrate how, in controlling information and public life, the communist state had produced a particular kind of history in which History was replaced by pseudo-history, by a calendar of rhythmically recurring anniversaries, congresses, celebrations, an...

Recent years have been testing times for the Eastern European clothing sector. Following two decades of deepening integration into European production networks, the sector has been struggling with the removal of trade quotas, increasing competitive pressures and the global economic crisis. This article takes a long-term view of the trajectories of...

In recent years border externalization has emerged as a central policy framework for European Union (EU) border and migration management. New multi-lateral and bi-lateral agreements on border management have been forged between the EU, its member states, and its North African neighbours and neighbours-of-neighbours. In the process, what is meant by...

The opposition between “the public” and “the private” is often seen as exhausting the range of possibilities for managing social life. Increasingly the notion of the commons and the practice of commoning is providing a renovated lexicon based on already existing practices and possibilities to organize resources and perform collective management out...

“New Keywords: Migration and Borders” is a collaborative writing project aimed at developing a nexus of terms and concepts that fill-out the contemporary problematic of migration. It moves beyond traditional and critical migration studies by building on cultural studies and post-colonial analyses, and by drawing on a diverse set of longstanding aut...

The rise of China’s export-oriented apparel industry since the 1990s has been driven largely by global sourcing practices intent on capturing the cost advantages of a development model predicated, in part, on unskilled or semi-skilled migratory labour flows, linking western and central labour pools to coastal production sites. Until recently, the d...

Much of the global economy is now organized in global value chains that span continents and connect producers and buyers across countries. This complex and dynamic structure of economic activity has rapidly spurred the productive capacity of developing and emerging economies. Economic globalization has created a great deal of wealth for some people...

This chapter traces the genealogy of concepts employed in research on the postcommunist region to uncover the ideological commitments they import into analysis. It first considers some of the ways in which social justice has been understood in postsocialist studies, how this has been shaped by the ethos of Europe, and how social science contributes...

The apparel industry is one of the most globalized. Export production contributes substantially to national export earnings and employs tens of millions worldwide, particularly women in low-income countries. However, the globalization of production has also led to poor working conditions and regional wage depression. Over time, the national structu...

After a decade or more during which private codes to monitor supply chain and workplace standards have proliferated, recent years have seen the re-emergence of state-based initiatives to create more oversight and accountability across global value chains. In January 2012, the California Transparency in Supply Chains Act (Senate Bill 657) (CTSCA) wa...

The Capturing the Gains research network assesses the relationship between economic and social upgrading in global production networks in four sectors; apparel, agro-foods, mobile phones, and tourism. This paper details the findings of the apparel sector research team, with a focus on public governance, specifically trade policy. The research netwo...

This paper highlights the ways in which the emerging models of migration management are producing new geographies of the European Union’s borders that complicate notions of a tightly bounded and easily delineated ‘Schengen space’ or ‘Fortress Europe’. Under policy frameworks such as the European Neighbourhood Policy and the EU’s Global Approach to...

IntroductionThe Cultural Turn and the Diversity of Geo-economiesOverdetermination and the Cultures of EconomiesContext and Conjuncture5Conclusion References

Introducing this Special Feature of the International Labour Review on "Decent work in global production networks" (GPNs), this article reviews the research challenges posed by GPNs, which are changing the structure of trade, production and employment in today´s globalized economy. The authors define the concepts of social and economic upgrading/do...

Resumen Los autores presentan esta sección monográfica de la Revista Internacional del Trabajo titulada «Trabajo decente en las redes productivas mundiales». Su objetivo es estudiar los retos que plantean estas redes que están transformando la estructura del comercio, la producción y el empleo en la economía globalizada actual. Los firmantes define...

Résumé Cet article liminaire au dossier intitulé«Le travail décent et les réseaux de production mondiaux» (RPM), publié dans ce numéro de la Revue internationale du Travail , passe en revue les défis lancés à la recherche par ces réseaux, qui modifient la structure des échanges, de la production et de l'emploi dans l'économie mondialisée. Les auteu...

  This paper focuses on the recent emergence of regional production networks and border industrial zones, the labor migrations they are generating, and their consequences for “surplus populations” in the Greater Mekong Subregion (mainland Southeast Asia). In this region the textile and garment industry is employing increasing numbers of workers in...

In 2007/2008, the new Labour Contract Law was enacted in China. This law has substantially changed the conditions under which workers and employers can enter into contracts and has had important effects on the ability of workers to shape their conditions of work. This paper outlines the conditions and terms of the 1995 Labour Law and how the new la...

On 9 November 2010, in Chapel Hill, geographers John Pickles and Sebastian Cobarrubias and anthropologist Maribel Casas met with Sandro Mezzadra to discuss complementarities in research interests around the emerging institutions, practices, and geographies of the European Neighbourhood Policy; transit migration and migration routes management; coun...

Editors' overviewContextual interpretation: the sociology of propaganda mapsTextual interpretation of the propaganda mapHermeneuticsConclusion: writing and theoryReferencesFurther readingSee also

PICKLES J. and SMITH A. Delocalization and persistence in the European clothing industry: the reconfiguration of trade and production networks, Regional Studies. This paper examines processes of delocalization and the phenomenon of the 'spectre of China' in the European clothing industry following the removal of quota-constrained trade in 2005. It...

Much of the global economy is now dominated by global production networks that span countries and continents and connect producers and buyers in global supply chains. This complex and dynamic structure of economic activity has rapidly brought the productive capacity of developing countries on-line, shifting production from the advanced industrializ...

Since 1989 scholars and policy-makers have articulated different notions of post-socialist reform. Each presupposes or privileges distinct notions of space. This paper focuses on the ‘spirit of post-socialism’ and outlines these different understandings of post-socialist reform and their corresponding embedded assumptions about space and geography....

The EU's borders, and those of its member states, are shifting zones of power arranged by novel institutional strategies and the subsequent proliferation of legal texts, maps, technologies and actors, reconstructing where and what the border is. This paper focuses on the phenomenon of "border externalization" in the European Union, in particular th...

The global garment industry is currently being reshaped in dramatic ways through processes of trade liberalization, delocalization and interfirm and interregional competition. There has been much speculation about the increasing importance of factor (especially labour) costs in fuelling further rounds of de-localization of garment production toward...

Contains: Congiu, Massimo: Trade unions and the labour market in four new European Union member states. 2008. - S. 158-168. Contains: Devaux, Sandrine: Building a social cause in post-communist countries. 2008. - S. 208-228. Contains: Dolgopyatova, Tatiana G.: Corporate control models in Russian companies and business integration. 2008. - S. 92-1...

State and Society in Post-Socialist Economies deals with the reform economies of post-socialist Europe and with the ways in which the various projects of communism that emerged across the region in the twentieth century have been and still are being dismantled and replaced by alternative visions, institutions and practices of capitalist market econ...

What happens when a world turns, when the very fabric of institutions, practices and the norms that sustains them shifts from one register to another? What are we to make of the tearing of a fabric that once bound lives and regions to a stabilized, hegemonic, economic regime? And precisely how is such a regime deterritorialized and recomposed, givi...

After a period in the 1990s of rapid integration into the production and trade networks of the European Union (EU) (and to a lesser extent of the United States), clothing manufacturers in East and Central Europe have had to adjust quickly to the changing costs of production with EU accession, the rise of Chinese exports, and the 1 January 2005 fina...

Focuses on the relationship between rural development and the current restructuring of the geography of industrial production. The role of the bantustans in South Africa is rapidly being tranformed and potentially could alter relations between workers in the bantustans and in metropolitan areas. In this sense the peripheral rural bantustans are bro...

This special issue of Antipode focuses on rural and regional restructuring of apartheid. Ignorance about rural South Africa, and a growing realisation of the complexity of the land problem inherited from grand apartheid, has rapidly heightened interest in rural development. The land and agrarian questions are central to the dismantling of apartheid...

This paper begins with Jacques Derrida's ‘Europe’ on an-Other heading and Claudio Minca's (2003 Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 21 160–8) suggestion that critical human geographers need to become more attentive to their own geographical predispositions and positionalities. The paper focuses on some lessons from postcolonial writing an...

Abstract The removal of the Land Acts, the abandonment of Population Registration legislation, and the move to reincorporate the homelands into South Africa mean that the political status of the homelands is about to be changed once again. Central to the struggle over this change of political status will be the actual conditions on the ground in th...

Misunderstanding of phenomenology and positivism as perspectives upon the philosophy and practice of science has important implications for the future of geographic research and research funding in America. Positivistic perspectives on the philosophy of science appear to be seen as fundable, whereas the scientific status and the possibilities for f...

The European clothing industry faces a number of important challenges which have been at the forefront of policy thinking across the European Union and beyond. This paper provides a set of reflections on the European Commission’s recent Communication on the future of the industry in Europe in the light of pressures of liberalization, globalization...

This contribution focuses on the limits of European Union programmes and accession practices on environmental policies and performance in Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, we document some of the ways in which state socialist and post-socialist environmental conditions, practices and policies are shaping, and in turn being shaped by, the p...

This book provides an essential insight into the practices and ideas of maps and map-making. It draws on a wide range of social theorists, and theorists of maps and cartography, to show how maps and map-making have shaped the spaces in which we live.

Since the late 1980s the European apparel sector has witnessed a dramatic transformation. Driven by increasing costs in Western Europe, major Western apparel retailers and buyers have expanded their contracting of production into lower cost regions of `postcommunist' Eastern Europe and the Mediterranean Basin. One consequence of these changes is a...

Macro-regional changes have occurred at the same time as a full-scale emerging liberalisation of global clothing trade under the World Trade Organisation's Agreement on Textiles and Clothing (ATC), signed in 1994. The primary objective of the ATC was ,,... to secure the eventual integration of the textiles and clothing sector into the GATT (General...

In an exploratory essay, two geographers assess long-term prospects for Ukraine's integration into European economic and political structures, most notably the European Union. The analysis is based on an examination of such commonly cited yardsticks as economic reform, political liberalization, and efforts to combat corruption ("internal obstacles"...