Political economy II: the politics and geography of capitalism

Having spent much of the last two years researching European works councils and the prospects for labour internationalism in transnational firms, this report reflects my obsession with the horrors of the contemporary global political-economic order. I’ve deliberately tried to raise some big questions to try to prod readers into giving me answers. The report starts by looking at the project to create a neoliberal global economy. I then go on to consider what this means for particular places and people (what Doreen Massey would refer to as ‘power-geometry’). To conclude, I focus on the theoretical tools we might use to unpack contemporary political-economic develop-ments. There can be no doubt that the political and economic geography of the world is being recast. Workers in multinational firms, for example, are threatened with redundancy due to the need for greater economic returns while their political armoury is insufficient to meet the challenges faced. The spatiality of capitalism is a very real political weapon, and this report looks at how geographers are making sense of this world and highlights avenues for further research. I Politicizing globalization During 1997 and 1998 it looked as though capitalism could plunge into global crisis a