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5 - Globalization or Spatialization? The Worldwide Spatial Restructuring of the Labor Process

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

By
Michael Wallace  and
David Brady
Edited by
Terrence McDonough ,
Michael Reich  and
David M. Kotz
Michael Wallace
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, University of Connecticut
David Brady
Affiliation:
Department of Sociology, Duke University
Terrence McDonough
Affiliation:
National University of Ireland, Galway
Michael Reich
Affiliation:
University of California, Berkeley
David M. Kotz
Affiliation:
University of Massachusetts, Amherst
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Summary

Introduction

Since the 1990s, scholarly accounts of globalization and its consequences have become prevalent throughout the social sciences (see Brady et al. 2007 for a review). While some view globalization as a centuries-long process of world system integration (Sklair 2002), others focus on recent changes in the last several decades. Although conceptualizations of globalization vary widely, they share a common insight that many phenomena previously centered in the local, sub-national, or national levels are increasingly interconnected on a global scale. Globalization implies increasing interpenetration and interdependency among societies, cultures, and peoples of the world often accompanied with a concern that the autonomy and sovereignty of the local setting is being diminished.

The changes created by globalization resemble the transformations discussed by those who advance social structures of accumulation (SSA) theory. Various scholars in this tradition place primary emphasis on the emergence of finance capital, neoliberalism, or other manifestations of globalization as the primary face of the new SSA. While having made numerous advances in SSA theory (Kotz, McDonough, and Reich 1994), we contend that SSA scholarship has strayed from Gordon, Edwards, and Reich's ([GER] 1982) central premise that the transformation of the labor process is a defining feature of each SSA (Wallace and Brady 2001). With the aim of restoring the centrality of the labor process, we extend the SSA approach in three ways.

Type
Chapter
Information
Contemporary Capitalism and its Crises
Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the 21st Century
 , pp. 121 - 144
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2010

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