Ed Brown

Beyond world cities: Central America in a global space of flows

Central America is a region without a world city. Traditionally, the region’s national projects have been based upon openness to the world economy: how do the region’s contemporary transnational projects connect to the world economy under the new conditions of openness that is contemporary globalization? Focusing upon advanced producer services, three connections into the world city network are identified: global service firms operating directly in Central American cities, local service firms operating indirectly through extra-regional world cities and global service firms operating through Latin American regional offices. Miami is confirmed as the primary world city through which Central America connects into the world economy

Critical perspectives on corruption: an overview

Purpose – This introductory paper aims to serve a dual purpose. First, it seeks to trace some of the key elements of this emerging agenda in critical corruption studies and the major directions in which the field has moved since 2006, exploring some of the connections between dominant discourses of corruption and anti‐corruption and the upheavals which have occurred in the global economy during this period along the way. Second, this discussion also aims to serve as a contextual introduction to this special issue by embracing some of the common themes elaborated in the other papers collected here.Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a brief personal reflection on developments in the field of critical corruption studies.Findings – The paper reveals some of the limitations of the mainstream approach towards corruption.Originality/value – The paper summarises recent developments in the field and provides a context‐setting narrative within which the other papers that comprise this special issue ca...

The critical business of corruption

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to set out an agenda for promoting collaboration between researchers in critical geography and critical management studies.Design/methodology/approach – The paper is divided into two main sections. In the first, a detailed discussion of the nature of critical perspectives in the two traditions is advanced which focuses upon the nature of the two disciplines, the contested meaning of “critical” approaches and our relationship with the wider political world. The opportunities for collaboration are explored in more specific detail through consideration of the ongoing attempts to develop a new perspective on the current international pre‐occupation with corruption and anti‐corruption initiatives, which is both critical and multi‐disciplinary.Findings – In trawling through the political economy of the development of an idea, corruption, the paper demonstrates, not just the part that a critical geographical narrative has to play in informing policy, but also the vital link...

GREEN GROWTH OR ECOLOGICAL COMMODIFICATION: DEBATING THE GREEN ECONOMY IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Abstract This article examines recent institutional thinking on the green economy and the implications of official understandings and structuration of a green economy for the global South. Assertions about the transformative potential of a green economy by many international actors conceals a complexity of problems, including the degree to which the green economy is still based on old fossil economies and technical fixes, and the processes through which the green economy ideation remains subject to Northern economic and technical dominance. The article places the intellectual roots of the green economy within a broader historical context and suggests some ways the strategic economic and ideological interests of the global North remain key drivers of green‐economy thinking. The analysis is substantiated through two illustrative Latin American examples: the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor and green economy initiatives in Brazil. These suggest that, if the green economy is to address global challenges effectively, it must be conceptualized as more than a bolt‐on to existing globalizing capitalism and encompass more critical understandings of the complex socio‐economic processes through which poverty is produced and reproduced and through which the global environment is being transformed, a critique which also applies to mainstream discourses of sustainable development.

Articulating opposition in Latin America: the consolidation of neoliberalism and the search for radical alternatives

Abstract This paper explores the complex series of problems facing the Latin American ‘left’ in the articulation of a coherent alternative to the increasingly dominant neoliberal ideology in the region. It grounds the evolving debates around this theme within the context of a series of important contemporary global and regional processes. The most important of these include the apparent phenomenon of ‘globalization’ and the increasingly limited room for manoeuvre open to national policy-makers, the rise and consolidation of transnational neoliberalism, the social and economic legacy of the debt crisis in the region, the recent trend toward (re)democratization, the collapse of state socialism, the apparent global crisis of Marxist thought and the rise in influence of postmodernism upon the politics of the left.

Still their backyard? The US and post-Mitch development strategies in Nicaragua

Abstract During the Reagan and Bush presidencies the goals and impacts of US interventions in Nicaragua (and the Central American isthmus more generally) were painfully obvious to most critical observers. The 1990s, in contrast, have seen the Clinton administration adopt a much lower profile, although the US has remained a key influence on political events within the region. This paper explores the twists and turns of the continuing US involvement in Nicaragua over the course of the past decade and its relationship to the processes of neoliberal restructuring which have occurred under the Chamorro and Aleman governments. Finally, it considers the extent to which the tragic impacts of Hurricane Mitch in October 1998 might (through their demonstration of the social and ecological costs of current neoliberal development strategies) provide an opportunity for a shift in the priorities underlying the formulation of US policy towards Nicaragua.

Of legitimate and illegitimate corruption

Purpose – The concept of corruption is frequently represented as relating to social practices that violate established rules and norms. This paper, however, seeks to demonstrate that corrupt practices are often only possible because they in fact draw on existing institutional mechanisms and cultural dispositions that grant them a certain social approval and legitimacy. The paper aims to explore these issues through a detailed exploration of corruption in Nicaragua, which outlines how competing elite groups have been able to use different discourses to appropriate resources from the state in quite different ways, reflecting the use of contrasting mechanisms for justifying and legitimizing corruption.Design/methodology/approach – The paper focuses on two key periods of recent Nicaraguan political history: that which occurred during the administration of ex‐President Arnoldo Aleman and the events that unfurled in the aftermath of a chain of bank bankruptcies that occurred in Nicaragua during 2001. These even...

Shadow Europe: Alternative European Financial Geographies

This paper sets out to trace some major points of convergence between an emerging literature on the political geographies of corruption-super-1 and current attempts to develop a renewed research agenda in the geographies of global finance-in this case in a specifically European context. In particular, we offer some preliminary observations on the need to elaborate an alternative geography of Europes financial architecture that could incorporate the role of flows of illegal and informal finance as major driving forces behind the way in which that architecture currently constitutes itself. This is an inherently complex task due to the intrinsically hidden nature of these flows and the difficulties involved in their accurate measurement; nevertheless, they are too important to be ignored, as is too frequently the case at present. In the paper we offer some necessarily preliminary, and deliberately provocative, reflections on how to take forward such a re-conceptualisation. Ultimately, our analysis revolves around the identification of an uneasy tension between the demand for deregulated financial markets and the increasing integration of those markets, and the international momentum towards finding ways of dealing with the (apparently) ever-increasing problems of corruption, money laundering, and the financing of terrorism through new forms of financial regulation and control. Copyright 2007 Blackwell Publishing.

DC nanogrids: A low cost PV based solution for livelihood enhancement for rural Bangladesh

A concept paper, along with cost estimations, is presented proposing the development of very small sized solar PV grids, which we have termed nano-grids. These grids allow the incorporation of developmental activities such as irrigation, along with household usage of electricity. It is argued that the developmental activity should be chosen in such a way that it matches with the seasonal variation in insolation and load demand to keep the energy cost to a minimum.

Nicaragua: Sandinistas, social transformation and the continuing search for a popular economic programme

Abstract This paper is concerned with the articulation of ‘popular’ alternatives to the dominant Neoliberal ideological consensus which has established itself in Latin America over recent years. It focuses in particular upon the legacy of the Nicaraguan Revolution, situating the FSLNs (Frente Sandinista de Liberacion Nacional) current attempts to articulate a coherent economic strategy for the 1996 electoral campaign within the context of their experiences in government during the 1980s. These issues are placed within the dual context of the global hegemony of Neoliberalism and the crisis facing Leftist alternatives; a crisis which has stemmed both from the lack of political space for the articulation of alternative economic policies and the failings of traditional socialist programmes and ideas. Specifically, the paper focuses upon the evolution of Sandinista economic policy during the 1980s highlighting the various contradictions that emerged. It then goes on to consider internal debates which have surfaced in the wake of the electoral defeat as the FSLN has sought to reassess its own identity and its relationships with the wider Nicaraguan popular movement.