Remaking regional economies: power, labor and firm strategies in the knowledge economy * Susan Christopherson and Jennifer Clark
本书批判主流区域发展理论，揭示跨国企业如何利用政治经济权力塑造区域竞争，并指出区域经济中权力不平等对分配和民主的忽视。
Remaking regional economies is the second contribution in Routledge's curiously fallow series of Studies in Economic Geography. Despite its relative brevity—eight chapters spread over just 147 pages of text—this book makes a highly significant contribution to the literatures on corporate strategy, labour markets and regional development, offering an oftentimes withering critique of prevailing orthodoxies as it progresses. In a nutshell, the book is about ‘how the political-economic power of transnational firms shapes regions and regional competition’ (p. x). To such firms, a region is much more than just a production site; it can also be seen as ‘a set of opportunities to reduce risks and increase profits’ (p. xi) through capturing and influencing the activities of other regional actors in their favour. Rather than conflating ‘the region’ with its lead firms, as in some accounts, here the remit is the full range of corporate and institutional actors that constitute the regional economy. The central focus on the unequal power relations between them calls into question new regionalist accounts which suggest that firm networks and regional institutions can work seamlessly together to promote mutually beneficial growth. It also serves to reveal a surprising lack of discussion of issues of distribution and democracy within many debates on regional development.