Philip F. Kelly

The geographies and politics of globalization

Recent debates on globalization have tended to be polarized between those wishing to ‘unthink’ the broad set of economic, political and cultural processes it encompasses and those who enthusiastically embrace them. This article maps out the recent geographical literature on the politics of globalization as an idea, and suggests some of the directions in which less polarized and more sophisticated interpretations of globalization are heading. The focus of the article is on globalization as a political discourse, which is addressed through ideas on the production of scale. The problematic association of globalization with neoliberalism is also explored. Five ‘counterdiscourses’ of globalization are then identified which attempt to rethink the political orthodoxy of neoliberal globalization. The article concludes by arguing for a ‘relational’ view of scale and suggesting some of the promises, and pitfalls, of rethinking the global scale.

Globalization, power and the politics of scale in the Philippines

Abstract Based on a case study from the Philippines, this paper argues that globalization forms a material set of processes, but also a political discourse employed to legitimize certain power relations. I argue, firstly, that scales, and particularly the global scale, can be viewed as social constructions reflecting political interests rather than neutral categories of geographical space. I suggest that a particular discourse of globalization is deployed to legitimize an economic and political agenda in which development is based on international investment flows and production for export. Using the Philippines as an example, I trace the translation of globalization discourse into development policies based on place marketing, investment incentives and infrastructure provision. Drawing on fieldwork in the industrializing fringe of Metropolitan Manila, I recount local reactions to a proposed development project. Successful opposition to the project in question— a 330MW power station—provides some instructive lessons concerning the politicization of scale and appropriate strategies of resistance.

The politics of urban- rural relations: land use conversion in the Philippines

By examining the process of land use conversion in Manilas extended metropolitan region, this paper suggests that rural-urban relations must be seen as intensely political. The conversion of rice land into industrial, residential and recreational uses represents a political process in two senses: first, policy choices are made relating to the use of land that reflect a particular set of developmental priorities; and second, the facilitation of conversion involves the use of political power relations to circumvent certain regulations. These points are made at three different, but interconnected, levels: at the national level of policy formulation; at the local level of policy implementation and regulation; and at the personal level of everyday power relations in rural areas. The paper draws upon fieldwork in the rapidly urbanizing province of Cavite to the south of Metropolitan Manila.

Spaces of labour control: comparative perspectives from Southeast Asia

This paper seeks to identify the spatialized dimensions of labour control in sites of rapid and recent industrialization in Southeast Asia. Using a comparative analysis of locations in Penang (Malaysia), Batam (Indonesia) and Cavite/Laguna (the Philippines), it is argued that the construction and control of space has been used to enhance control over the working body, and, in particular, to contain labour organization, unionization and collective bargaining. Three broader arguments are made. First, that labour geographies need to be cognizant of the spatialized politics of labour beyond a narrow focus on the trade union movement. Second, that space is a potent tool in labour control and must be explicitly considered alongside the identity–based control strategies and institutional structures that have usually informed studies of labour regimes in newly industrializing contexts. Finally, a comparative perspective on local labour markets, and control regimes in particular, shows that the ways in which space is constructed and controlled differs between contexts, implying that universal judgements on the relevance or importance of particular arenas or spaces for labour politics should be reserved.

Languages of labour: representational strategies in Singapore's labour control regime

Abstract This paper argues that discursive strategies are an important component of local labour control regimes. Institutional approaches to the relationships between capital, labour and the state need to be supplemented with an awareness of the power of representational devices to shape the range of viable options open to participants in the labour system. We use a case study of Singapore’s labour market in the late 1990s to illustrate the argument, looking in particular at the labour market discourses mobilised to justify responses to the Asian economic crisis. Firstly, we consider how a discourse of exogenous forcing was used to portray the necessity of short-term salary and benefit cuts for preserving regional competitiveness. Secondly, we analyse how the retrenchment of workers during the crisis was discursively constructed as providing opportunities for the retraining and upskilling of ‘model workers’ in the medium to long term. The discursive tropes deployed in this instance ranged from modernity and developmentalism, to national security. A variety of textual evidence from government speeches and the Singapore press is used to illustrate our argument.

Migration, agrarian transition, and rural change in Southeast Asia

Intensifying migration flows add new material dimensions to agrarian change in Southeast Asia, with novel forms of livelihood for out-migrants from rural areas, remittance flows for those left behind, and new sources of agricultural labor in places of in-migration. But migration also brings other processes of change that push the analytical boundaries of traditional agrarian political economy. Gender identities are brought into question as men and women move and the masculinities and femininities of migrants and those left behind are reworked. The household is stretched across space and seen more clearly as a contested domain. The spatiality of the village is reworked through long-distance linkages, so that scales of analysis are not quite what they used to be. Issues of ethnic identity are foregrounded as different groups come into contact in the same place. The role of the state (and private recruiters) in regulating migration and in defining and controlling access to citizenship rights requires that new forms of regulation and institutionalism be addressed. In each of these ways, migration provides challenges to understanding rural change. In contextualizing the articles that appear in these two issues of Critical Asian Studies (December 2011 and March 2012), this introduction spells out both the empirical processes of migration and rural change in Southeast Asia and the analytical approaches that are relevant to studying them.

Metaphors of Meltdown: Political Representations of Economic Space in the Asian Financial Crisis

Economic geographers have increasingly acknowledged the importance of discursive constructions and metaphorical representations of economic space. The representational has been recognized as more than just colourful rhetoric, being also a construction of reality that contains implicit understandings of how economic processes work and the corollaries of such processes in terms of government policy. Furthermore, the connections between understanding processes, making policy, and retaining legitimacy mean that such metaphors are highly political. The author explores some of the metaphors that have been employed by political leaders in understanding the Asian financial crisis of 1997–99. Two sets of contrasting metaphors are highlighted in the rhetoric of leaders in Malaysia and Singapore, respectively: in Malaysia, metaphors of colonial domination and militaristic aggression dominate; in Singapore, ‘natural’ metaphors of typhoon damage and tectonic shifts tend to prevail. These representational strategies can be linked to discourses of political power and the construction of economic policy in each context.

The Political Economy of Local Labor Control in the Philippines

Abstract Labor market processes in sites of peripheral capitalism are all too frequently represented as the straightforward exploitation of abundant, cheap, and place-bound labor by space-controlling international capital. Extensive literatures exist that deal with national regimes of labor regulation and the subjugated subjectivities of workers in locations of rapid industrialization in the developing world. The complex regulating institutions operating at a local scale in such sites have not, however, received the same sensitive attention as labor markets in the industrialized world, on which research has advanced considerably in recent years. In this paper I seek to address that discrepancy by focusing on the institutions and actors involved in creating a local labor control regime in a site of rapid industrialization in the Philippines. These include the national state, corporate investors, individual workers, industrial estate management companies, recruitment agencies, village and community leaders, municipal officials, provincial governments, and labor organizations. In exploring the relationship between these various players I develop two arguments. First, the relationship embodied in the labor process of newly industrializing spaces cannot be conceived simply as an antagonism between “global” capital and “local” labor. Instead, the wide range of local players described here act to mediate that relationship and to embed specific global capitals in a local political economy of power relations. Second, these localized relationships often exist outside of formal regulatory institutions, and indeed may directly contravene them. In this way the mechanisms employed in the local labor control regime are frequently more informal, more fluid, and more geographically variable than an analysis of formal regulatory institutions would reveal.

Migration, Transnationalism, and the Spaces of Class Identity

To make sense of the diversity in contemporary understandings of class, this article proposes a four-part typology, with class understood as “position,” “process,” “performance,” and “politics.” Each highlights a distinct dimension of class, but all are closely related to each other. The article uses research on Filipino migration to Canada to show that the downward class mobility experienced by many immigrants can only be adequately understood when all of these dimensions of class are integrated into an analysis and when the process of immigration is understood in a transnational frame. The article uses qualitative data collected from Filipino immigrants in Canada to show how subjective understandings of class provide meaningful ways of reconciling a process of downward mobility.

Urbanization and the Politics of Land in the Manila Region

Land ownership has long been a source and outcome of political power in the Philippines. This article shows how in the 1990s land and politics continued to be closely entwined, but the disposal of agricultural land for urban uses, rather than its ownership, was sought by the powerful. By examining the process of land use conversion in Manilas extended metropolitan region, two dimensions of the politics of land are examined: policy choices relating to the uses of land that reflect a particular set of developmental priorities and the facilitation of conversion through the use of political power relations to circumvent regulations. These points are made at three interconnected scales: the national scale of policy formulation, the local scale of policy implementation and regulation, and the personal scale of everyday power relations in rural areas. The article draws on fieldwork in the rapidly urbanizing province of Cavite, south of Manila.