Bausteine zu einer Geographie des Kapitalismus

Elements of a geography of capitalism. Despite the variety of new approaches economic geography developed rather one-sided in the past decade. The regional and the firm lenses hardly enabled to recognize how economic processes and political power relations interact on different scales. These empirical deficits also express a restricted theoretical base. The approaches of the new “regional orthodoxy” claim to explain conditions of an improved competitiveness of firms and of regions. However, many socially relevant and spatially differentiated problems are ignored. In contrast, this paper argues for an integrative understanding of the capitalist economy in its historical dynamics and with its reciprocal effects for actors on various scales. In the course of neoliberal deregulation policies and globalization processes, a finance-dominated accumulation regime emerged in the USA which shapes the economy on a global scale. Institutional investors gained decisive control over investments. The political power relations and hierarchies between states remain important. Therefore, the paper suggests a shift of economic geographical research. In the perspective of an integrative geography of capitalism the paper outlines a research agenda of a geography of accumulation, a geography of production as well as a geography of power