Christine Tamasy - Böcker

Over the last few decades, circuits of capital have been stretched through processes of economic globalization, leading to complex and hybrid outcomes that result in different modes of production and consumption. Understanding these new economic configurations and their geographic patterns requires incorporating new theoretical arguments based on, for example, chain and network concepts. This edited volume brings together theoretically-informed analysis from Asia, Europe and North America to illustrate the way in which new economic configurations have been developed and to understand individual, local and regional responses to a variety of global challenges, threats and opportunities. The different examples presented illustrate that economic structures and flows have changed dramatically over the past decades with profound impacts for the economic and regional actors involved.

Over the last few decades, circuits of capital have been stretched through processes of economic globalization, leading to complex and hybrid outcomes that result in different modes of production and consumption. Understanding these new economic configurations and their geographic patterns requires incorporating new theoretical arguments based on, for example, chain and network concepts. This edited volume brings together theoretically-informed analysis from Asia, Europe and North America to illustrate the way in which new economic configurations have been developed and to understand individual, local and regional responses to a variety of global challenges, threats and opportunities. The different examples presented illustrate that economic structures and flows have changed dramatically over the past decades with profound impacts for the economic and regional actors involved.

There has been a great deal of restructuring of rural places and communities under globalisation, highlighting the interaction of local and global actors to produce new hybrid socio-economic relations. Recent research highlights the heterogeneity of globalisation in which rural places are different to each other, but also different to how they were in the past. Bringing together an interdisciplinary team of academics, and comparative case studies from Europe (West and East) and Asia, this book explores and discusses opportunities and challenges associated with globalising rural places, and identifies possibilities for policy and practical intervention by rural development actors. Special attention is paid to multi-scalar processes through which rural places are reshaped through globalisation. Taking a geographical approach, the book produces new critical work on the interdependence between globalisation and rural spaces. It is organised into five sections: Part I focuses on ’Global-Rural Linkages’ showing the multifaceted interrelation between actors at different geographical scale and demonstrating that globalisation is not only external to rural spaces. Part II on ’Rural Entrepreneurship and Labour Markets’ explores the potential of business start-ups in rural spaces which are not only necessity driven. Part III ’Rural Innovation and Learning’ shows that rural places are also places for innovation and learning. Part IV on ’Rural Policies and Governance’ argues that regional policies for rural places should promote side activities to maintain social capital and that regional policy should take a more integrative perspective between urban and rural spaces in order to explore complementary development paths. The concluding chapter ’New Approaches to Rural Spaces’ discusses new approaches to globalising rural places in relation to the preceding chapters published in this book.