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February 21st – Geography and political economy Mark Goodwin, Geography, Exeter Michael Geddes, Warwick Business School Chair: Alan Lester, Sussex |
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Mark Goodwin and Michael Geddes share a research focus on the geographies of local governance, contextualised within more global political and economic relationships. Mark has been interested since his undergraduate days at Sussex in exploring the shifting territories and scales of state structures, linking them to broader changes in social, political and economic organisation. He is especially concerned with restructuring of the UK state through local government reform and devolution. Mike’s research focus has shifted from a critique of neoliberalised local governance arrangements in the UK and in most of Europe, to an interest in the role of the local in the radical politics of some Latin American countries, where the crisis of neoliberalism that we are experiencing today happened a decade or so ago.
Between them, Mark and Mike will address the following key questions:
Why have we continued to witness an almost constant reworking of state space in the UK – the coalition’s immediate abolition of Regional Development Agencies and Regional Assemblies being one recent example?
What can we in the UK learn from experience of local politics in other parts of the world?
How does the emergence of new scales and territories of governance provide opportunities for the emergence of new political forces?
How are issues of local governance in and beyond Europe related to the current economic crisis?
Mark and Mike will also reflect upon some of the ways in which a Geography training at Sussex has shaped their subsequent work. They will discuss relations between Geography and interdisciplinarity; Geography and public policy; geography and political economy; the empirical and theoretical, and Eurocentrism and a more global awareness.