|
|
|
| A REVIEW ON THEORETICAL REVOLUTION ON ECONOMY GLOBALIZATION IN WESTERN ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY |
| XU Hai-ying1,2, GUO Li-li1, ZHANG Chun-mei1 |
1. Urban and Environment School, Huaiyin Normal University, Huai'an 223300, China;
2. Department of Geography, Konkuk University, Seoul 141-701, Korea |
|
|
|
|
Abstract It is significant for contemporary geographers to grasp the theoretical evolution in order to make further improvement on globalizing economy. This study contributes to multi-disciplinary characteristics on economy globalization theories, focusing on extension and development of sociology and management in geography. Some perspectives, such as resource-based theory, embeddedness theory and actor network theory, were introduced into geography, resulting in hot debates on ‘space’ and ‘globalization and localization’. Some notions, such as ‘spaces of place’, ‘spaces of network’, ‘scaling network’, ‘glocalization’, and ‘territorial embeddedness’, imply an increasingly deep consideration on globalization. Also, the study emphasizes that various perspectives, sourcing from geography, sociology, economics and management, overlap and integrate with each other, resulting in some analysis framework on economy globalization geography:global value chain (GVC), global commodity chain (GCC) and global production network (GPN). These frameworks show a new direction of economic geography, changing from traditional region science to relational geography. Three analysis frameworks are all related and different with each other. They all use ‘chain/network’ to analyze economy globalization and all focus on power relationships among economic actors. However, GCC/GVC focuses on inter-, intra-firm relationships based on commodities or services, while GPN pays more attention to network relationships among multiple actors. It is the most significance that the GPN analysis framework has gained closed attentions from other disciplines, which enhances the role of contemporary economic geography. ‘Value’, ‘embeddedness’ and ‘power’ are three key elements in GPN framework. The recent work on GPN provided an important insight into the relationship between MNCs and host regions. A GPN perspective takes this analysis a stage further by focusing the exploration of the ‘strategic coupling’ between firms and regions. And the analysis explores how the different actors within the firm and within the region interact in the processes of value creation and capture.
|
|
Received: 25 March 2010
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
2011, Vol. 26 
