Regional Studies

ISSN: (Print) (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/cres20

A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly

regional problem

Jamie Peck, Marion Werner & Martin Jones

To cite this article: Jamie Peck, Marion Werner & Martin Jones (2022): A dialogue
on uneven development: a distinctly regional problem, Regional Studies, DOI:
10.1080/00343404.2022.2116417

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2116417

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa

UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis
Group

Published online: 26 Sep 2022.

Submit your article to this journal

Article views: 2353

View related articles

View Crossmark data

Citing articles: 1 View citing articles

Full Terms & Conditions of access and use can be found at

https://www.tandfonline.com/action/journalInformation?journalCode=cres20
REGIONAL STUDIES
https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2022.2116417

URBAN AND REGIONAL HORIZONS

A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly regional

problem
Jamie Pecka , Marion Wernerb and Martin Jonesc

ABSTRACT
Uneven development is back and high on academic, policy and political agendas. Resurgent sociospatial inequality and
national discourses are a timely illustration of this enduring feature of the capitalist space economy. Building on an in-
conversation Regional Studies Association (RSA) webinar, leading researchers discuss what the current conjuncture of
capitalism and its historical geographical specificities mean for uneven spatial development. They reflect on how they
encountered the issue of uneven development, how treatments have changed over time from a ‘heyday’ in the early
1980s to the present day, and set out an agenda for where uneven development research needs to go next.
KEYWORDS
uneven development; combined development; conjunctural analysis

JEL B5, N90, O1

HISTORY Received 13 June 2022; in revised form 29 July 2022

1. INTRODUCTION specifically at employment and inequality and discussed

new labour geographies. These geographies of inequality
Regional uneven development is an enduring feature of capi- can be seen between regions, but they also exist within
talist economies. Indeed, some geographers have argued that regions (Blundell et al., 2020). Illustrating this in the
uneven development is genetically encoded within the social UK, the ‘Build Back Fairer’ report noted that the Manche-
relations of a capitalist economy and as such the issue is not ster city-region has experienced widening inequalities par-
whether the ‘regional problem’ exists but rather the particu- ticularly for young people, alongside worsening health
lar form that it takes in given circumstances. Moreover, the inequalities, with damaging longer term economic and
institutionalisation of regional uneven development as ‘the social effects from a combination of local and national fac-
regional problem’ has been an equally enduring feature of tors (Marmot et al., 2021). Alongside this, again drawing
the political economy of capitalism over much of the world. on UK developments, the government has reacted by
(Hudson, 2004, p. 3) evoking ‘levelling up’ political narratives. Audaciously
claimed to ‘break the link between geography and destiny’
MJ: Uneven development – broadly defined as the to ‘end the geographical inequality’ and ‘where by staying
relationships between places that (re)produce inequalities local you can go far’ (HM Government, 2022, pp. xii,
in wealth, power and resources – and the complex of viii, xi), contra the insistence of Hudson (2004), the
responses to this are running high on policy and political geography of uneven development does not matter; there
agendas. For instance, there is an emerging body of inter- is opportunity for all, everywhere (King & Ives, 2019).
national evidence that the COVID-19 pandemic has wor- The evidence on the challenges of levelling up ‘left behind
sened existing inequalities in employment, wealth, health, places’ could not though be further from this experience
housing, education and the wider access to lifetime oppor- (Martin et al., 2021).
tunities. Research by the United Nations demonstrates the These social dislocations and political controversies
global extent of this and reveals the exacerbation of exist- require academic communities to urgently reflect and
ing divides in civil society, especially around the interfaces engage in a dialogue on the nature of contemporary socio-
between race, gender, discrimination and disadvantage, spatial relations and the role uneven development research
and it maps the reactions to this (United Nations, 2021). plays in this. As Martin (2021, p. 143) puts it, ‘progress-
In a European context, Herod et al. (2022) have looked ive–melioristic’ turns in regional studies, based around a

CONTACT Martin Jones [email protected]

a
Department of Geography, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada
b
Department of Geography, SUNY Buffalo, Buffalo, NY, USA
c
Executive Office, Staffordshire University, Stoke-on-Trent, UK

© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted
use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
2 Jamie Peck et al.

‘transformative vocation’ committed to the ‘pursuit of Development’, chaired by Martin Jones (MJ), each pre-
equitable and just regional outcomes’, increasingly matter. sents their thoughts on prominent topics on/in uneven
A fundamental characteristic of human geography and development and how they have approached them. The
indeed central to the history and chronology of regional dialogue is concerned with: how they encountered the
studies, uneven development is located and evidenced at theme of uneven development in their own work; how
global, national, regional, urban and suburban spatial treatments of uneven development have changed in econ-
scales, such that it is combined and compounded for omic geography and regional studies since its ‘heyday’ in
some people and places more than others. Patterns and the early 1980s; how uneven development is being con-
processes of uneven development indeed mark the times sidered presently; and setting out agendas for where
and spaces of capitalist development and have provided research needs to go next to understand enduring and
the rich basis for theoretical developments. Indeed, the emerging patterns and processes of uneven development.
Regional Studies community has engaged with ‘regional To stress the processual nature of their thinking and the-
problems’ and ‘problem regions’ for many years, most orizing on uneven development, both were encouraged to
notably with the interventions of Massey (1979), Hudson reflect on their own biographical and theoretical trajec-
(2007, 2016) and others. tories. The two panellists provide clearly situated, posi-
The formulation and debate on ‘uneven spatial devel- tioned and stimulating contributions, which should
opment’ (Brenner, 2019, p. 257) was very much a product provoke readers of Regional Studies to think again about
of the late 1970s and early 1980s, derived initially from uneven development differently and multiply, opening
Marx’s foundational accounts of capital circulation in up new lines of investigation, enquiry, experimentation,
Capital and supplemented with the work of key thinkers and debate within and beyond academia.
on the left such as Lenin, Luxemburg, Bukharin and
Trotsky, and expanded by the likes of Mandel (Harvey, 2. ENCOUNTERING UNEVEN
1982). Key interventions by geographers heightened our DEVELOPMENT
attention to spatial divisions of labour, industrial restruc-
turing, crisis and crises formulation, patterns of urbaniz- 2.1. Uneven development as a ‘fact of life’
ation and regionalization, and gentrification (Anderson JP: If I think back to when I started my graduate studies,
et al., 1983a; Dear & Scott, 1981; Duncan et al., 1988; which was in Manchester in the mid-1980s, the sense was
Storper & Walker, 1989), with, as Brenner (2019) adds, that uneven development was right there, all about, and
sociospatial theorists developing new ways of conceptua- everywhere; it was not just an atmosphere, or some dusty
lizing the production and continual reorganization of geo- concept, but a fact of life. You did not have to spend
graphical differences under modern capitalism (Soja, time in the library to understand that uneven spatial devel-
1985). A particular high point was Smith’s (1984, 2010) opment was something to be taken into account. This,
attempt to capture the ‘see-saw’ movement of uneven after all, was Margaret Thatcher’s second term, London-
development and resultant geographies of scale and rescal- centric project that it was, which was already starting to
ing, adding to the spatial lexicons of place and locality feel like an -ism. It was the time of the miners’ strike,
deployed by Massey (1984, 1995). Interests in uneven the battles for (and then over) municipal socialism, and
development have waned since then. Macroeconomic geo- the rise of the ‘new urban left’. It was a time when Britain’s
graphies and comparative studies of locality have been so-called North–South divide was not just something
superseded with ‘the nodal, the near and the networked’, reserved for seminar rooms but stitched into everyday
and with empirical and theoretical interests focused on life. It was a ‘structure of feeling’, to recall Williams’
generating understandings of clustering, networks and (1977) term, before it was a question of theory or method.
instances of creativity (Peck, 2016, p. 307). Backdrops of Uneven development was a visceral, experiential con-
poststructuralism and complexity theory have provided a dition. It was ‘in your face’. It was constitutive of the
stage for challenging ‘panoramic visions of society’ in time, the place, the culture.
favour of ‘the detailed exploration of social assemblages’ This was also a time and a place where the ‘restructur-
(Tonkonoff, 2017, p. xii). Mirroring these analytical shifts, ing approach’ (Lovering, 1989), pioneered by Massey
Boschma and Martin’s (2010) 559-page The Handbook of (1984), Andrew Sayer (Morgan & Sayer, 1988), and
Evolutionary Economic Geography does not have an index others, began to occupy the ‘critical mainstream’ in
entry or any chapter titles/section headings for ‘uneven regional studies and economic geography (or industrial
development’. Instead, theories of spatial economic evol- geography, as it was conventionally known at the time in
ution have been absorbed into contingency, path depen- the UK). It was as if this approach had been made for
dence and notions of self-organization. this moment of political–economic dislocation, and in
In this article, leading researchers in their respective many respects it had. ‘Restructuring’ signalled a real-
fields, Jamie Peck (JP) and Marion Werner (MW), reflect time mode of analysis, focused on spatially variegated
on what the current conjuncture of capitalism and its his- forms of economic transformation typically engaged
torical geographical specificities mean for uneven develop- through the regional or local scale, through place. This
ment and the geography of regions therein. Drawing on a was an approach more than it was a theory per se. It was
panel convened by the Regional Studies Association an approach that had been built and operationalized at a
(RSA) entitled ‘Whatever Happened to Uneven time when both the form and intensity of change itself

REGIONAL STUDIES
 A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly regional problem 3

appeared to be shifting – as entire industries and their of change; it felt like a transformative moment in which
associated regional economies were lurching into long- the stakes were high. But in relation to what, exactly? I
term decline, as (regionalized) unemployment had become remember reading articles and books about new industrial
a mass phenomenon again, and as the terms of employ- spaces and new models of growth, but at the time these
ment and social contracts were being renegotiated by cor- seemed like ‘Hollywood’ treatments, with little or no rel-
porations and the state. In this respect, ‘restructuring’ evance to circumstances in the deindustrializing North
signalled more than change, or even accelerated change; of England. There was a tendency to dismiss or reject
it signalled a realignment of structural relations, such as them, as if they had nothing meaningful to say about
those articulating market conditions, workplace norms, what restructuring was really about, which in these parts
local politics, gender relations and geographical configur- seemed to be a much more nefarious enterprise. Optimis-
ations. These were understood to be intricately related, tic readings of ‘post-Fordism’ (such as Scott, 1988) felt like
even if they did not move together in a mechanical fashion. they were a million miles away, and in a sense they were a
Restructuring signalled an approach, and an approach long way away. There was an implicit mental map of sorts,
to methodology and conceptualization, that took uneven one that positioned restructuring regions on the receiving
development seriously, albeit more as a condition of exist- end of capitalist schemes and Thatcherite reprogramming.
ence for what were often deeply contextualized and place- This was a situated and clearly quite particular perspective
specific enquiries. Massey’s ‘spatial division of labour’ on ‘uneven development’. Practically speaking, it was only
(Massey, 1979, 1984) approach had set out the conceptual comparative in a rather constrained, intranational sense,
map, but most of us, I think it is fair to say, were working and it certainly was not cosmopolitan. Uneven develop-
in just one or other corner of this wider framework. It felt ment may have been understood as a fact of life, but the
like it was more than OK to be working ‘locally’, because actual facts of its many lives were a different matter. I
not only was this the scale at which economic geographies may be exaggerating a little, but this is how I ‘remember’
of the time were being practiced, it was the locus for a new encountering the question of uneven development in the
generation of local economic strategies, pioneered in left- 1980s, as a phenomenon understood (no more than par-
leaning cities like Sheffield and through the work of the tially) from not only the Global North but from England’s
Greater London Council (where Massey herself was an ‘national’ North.
important presence). There was plenty happening at the
local scale, and research at that scale reflected an at- 2.2. Reviving uneven development as a core
least-tacit understanding of places as the sites of intersect- concept
ing social forces and differently articulated social relations. MW: Jamie’s account articulates so clearly the sense of
The local scale/site was where things were seen to be com- what uneven development meant in the heartland where
ing together – or coming apart. But, of course, there was it eventually gained academic and policy currency, the
no such thing as a ‘typical’ locality (or a typical experience North of England. I came to uneven development from
of restructuring). And because localities were all differently a very different place and in a different time, the late
positioned (and unique in at least this respect), the corol- 1990s. Around the time of the Seattle protests against
lary was that uneven development was always ‘there’, the WTO [World Trade Organization], I moved to Cen-
somewhere, as a structuring condition of existence. tral America to work on labour rights issues with workers
It was often at the local level that economic geogra- sewing clothes for leading US brands. Based in Guatemala
phers like me ‘cut in’ to research questions, even as these City, it was a tumultuous period of change and some opti-
were understood to be deeply connected to all manner of mism. The Peace Accords had been signed a couple of
‘wider processes’, such as the transformation of the state years beforehand in 1996, finally ending the country’s bru-
or the vicissitudes of international competition. Speaking tal 36-year civil war. But violence and intimation against
for myself at least, I do not think that the ‘maps’ of unions and progressive movements were not a thing of
those wider worlds were particularly closely drawn or the past. My evenings and weekends were spent in the
even studied; the local typically came first, the local was homes of garment workers, mostly indigenous and mestiza
encountered first, and uneven development, the new inter- women, who sewed clothes for export. Upstart migrants
national division of labour (NIDL), the world system and settled from the countryside in the swelling peripheries
all of that tended to come a rather distant second. There of the city; these workers shared stories with me about
was a sense, in other words, that our favoured concepts their struggles for dignity and to make ends meet while
and empirical investigations were living ‘inside’ a world working gruelling hours for low pay. Workers were orga-
of uneven development, even if the structure, constitution nizing committees and trying to form unions. But super-
and dynamics of that world itself were often secondary visors and managers wielded the legacy and people’s
concerns. experiences of state and para-statal violence to intimidate
The other thing to say about these (close) encounters workers, many of whom bravely continued to organize.
with uneven development is that, in addition to being Factory owners definitely had the upper hand with respect
somewhat visceral and experiential, they were also in to workers, although US brands ultimately set prices. Per-
their own way parochial. Being in the North of England missive labour and investment regulations facilitated the
in the 1980s certainly felt like being at the sharp end of frequent closure and reopening of these factories to
some far-reaching (and perhaps even historic) processes evade union organizing efforts, or to dodge other

REGIONAL STUDIES
4 Jamie Peck et al.

obligations like taxes or severance pay. A regular churn of dynamically reproduced in contested ways, not ‘slotted
both workers and factories could be observed. When in’ to global value hierarchies determined functionally
unionizing efforts were blocked, workers negotiated with by the needs of capital. What emerged was a regional
their feet in a system that trucked in their disposability, story, centred upon the North of the Dominican Repub-
as Wright’s (2006) work would later powerfully illustrate. lic, that wove smallholder relations through new patterns
Factories moved in and out of neighbourhoods and shifted of accumulation, to form a particular culture and position
to smaller cities and towns to bust organizing drives and to of relative privilege with respect to other parts of the
seek lower cost labour. As global trade rule changes elimi- country and the Caribbean with strong plantation lega-
nated export quotas in Asia in the early 2000s, many gar- cies. Anthropologists in and of the Caribbean had long
ment factories eventually moved out of the region identified this pattern of uneven development called the
altogether. In short, I observed uneven development in plantation/peasant complex. So, my wager was to theo-
real time before I had a language to think and write rize uneven development from the Caribbean – empiri-
about it. cally, historically and epistemologically – in an effort to
In a sense, then, my enquiry started from a particular enrich wider frameworks and also unsettle their Anglo-
place – peri-urban Guatemala City – but connections to American centrism.
the macrostructural – NIDL, the world-system and all
that – were front and centre. Global Displacements
began as an effort to understand these tectonic, macro- 2.3. Uneven development as an outlook on the
structural shifts through the lens of Caribbean garment world
workers’ experiences (Werner, 2016). By this time, I JP: While of course it would be silly to expect otherwise,
had started to do more work in the Dominican Republic, what strikes me here is that (all) encounters with uneven
where there were a small number of unions in the trade development are themselves particular and indeed con-
zones trying to organize to save these jobs or to support junctural. In this respect, it may be as much a sensibility
workers left jobless in the wake of disinvestment. My as a ‘theory’ per se, more an outlook on the world than
fieldwork there, together with world-systems theory, some ready-made theory of the world. The ‘restructuring’
agrarian studies, and postcolonial and feminist theories, rubric of the 1980s, in retrospect, felt like an initial
led to an argument for ‘reviving’ uneven development as attempt to open up modes of enquiry and lines of investi-
a core concept. It is not that the concept was dead exactly, gation. Those of us who were working locally were often
but it was marginalized in two, related ways. Develop- doing so in a somewhat provincial way, and working
ment scholars with Marxist sympathies critiqued it for mostly on the ‘inside’ and with received (albeit critical)
entrenching a rigid core–periphery model. This binary understandings of the positionality of these places in
approach, as Sheppard (2012) put it, was a fixed frame- wider worlds – rather than problematizing and engaging
work for a quasi-equilibrium analysis of unequal these more-than-local relations more explicitly. In this
exchange. But if the models associated with uneven respect, Marion’s Global Displacements marked an impor-
development underdetermined core–periphery dynamics, tant turn, because one of the things that it did was to
much of development studies had overcorrected on the trace the effects of sociospatial difference and uneven
heels of real-world ‘take-off’ in East Asia. Scholars were development ‘all the way out’, from the intimate and
following commodity chains and capital investments to close-focus spaces of daily life to ‘structuring conditions’
new places and new workforces, in what we called an understood in a more dynamic and contradictory way
‘inclusionary bias’ (Bair & Werner, 2011). These studies (Werner, 2016). The approach is more reflexively con-
generally ignored the places excluded and peripheralized junctural than so much of the ‘first generation’ work on
as part and parcel of capital’s moves, like the garment restructuring. Back then, we thought we knew, more or
workers of Central America and the Caribbean at the less, where we were in the world, like we knew where
centre of my work. This proximate process of exclusion our places were on the regionalized map that was the
in the region was clearly part of a longue durée of periph- cover image for the first edition of Massey’s Spatial Div-
eralization. Contra orthodox Marxist presumptions, isions of Labour (1984). Of course, the map was never
however, this process was not static at all. Instead, intended to be fixed or pregiven, but the theoretical con-
these were relational geographies of uneven development sciousness felt more constrained than it is now. Even if
with roots reaching back well before the advent of Ford- uneven development still tends to signal an outlook, or
ism, articulating colonial legacies with remade, contin- analytical sensibility, more than it does express commit-
gent agrarian cum racialized and gendered relations. ment to a particular theory or method, there seems to be
These historical trajectories produced a particular region’s a more acute understanding of the fact that ‘global capital-
position with workers’ livelihood strategies made in and ism’, the interstate system, the web of productive networks
through it. Feminist geographers were important for and supply chains, and the inclusions and exclusions that
my thinking here, particularly Massey (1995) and Hart these entail, are themselves also in motion. And even if
(2002). Their work helped me to understand that just we still often choose to begin with the local, the regional
as hierarchies of labour are not fixed but rather made or the proximate, our enquiries need to spiral out of
through conjunctural articulations of racial, ethnic and these sites, into worlds and restructuring conditions
gendered forms of social difference, so too are places beyond.

REGIONAL STUDIES
 A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly regional problem 5

3. UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT THEN, repeating that the Third World was largely an untheorized
UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT NOW exterior to the dynamics of northern urban and regional
uneven development at the centre of this debate; uneven
3.1. From ‘pitched battles’ to ‘damaging development was seen as a process of differentiation
silences’ internal to capitalism, not in some sort of relation with
MW: Our first encounters with uneven development just an external periphery or an ‘outside’. One contribution
discussed in many ways reflect the two parallel debates that helped me to see connections between Marxist devel-
on uneven development circulating in the 1980s. Marxist opment debates (i.e., WST and articulations) and these
development scholars were split over the legacies of depen- uneven development debates in geography and regional
dency theory and the structural constraints thrown into studies is a recent chapter by Hart (2018a). Hart explains
sharp relief by post-Second World War decolonization that Massey’s arguments about the influence of historical
in Asia and Africa, along with the collapse of democratic, trajectories and political settlements in relation to rounds
national development efforts in Latin America. On the of investment and subsequent industrial restructuring
one hand, world-systems theory (WST) posited uneven resonated with her own work on agrarian change in rural
development as a rigid hierarchy. If WST had a spatial Java, which could not be understood through nation-
dimension, it was one of scope – which countries were state-centred development models. Hart, like Massey,
included in different positions in the global hierarchy. advanced an understanding of place that was constituted
Sympathetic critics argued that uneven development through relations. Both would turn to Gramsci’s formu-
entailed ‘encompassing comparisons’, to draw on McMi- lation of the conjuncture, in dialogue with Hall (and his
chael (1990) in particular here, which presumed the thinking around articulations), to focus on the politics
‘whole’ (i.e., the world-system) to determine its parts that shaped uneven development.
(i.e., societies in core and periphery positions). On the In the 1990s, pitched battles raged between scholars
other hand, Marxist anthropologists and anticolonial who celebrated high-road development through ‘flexible
scholars were embroiled in the ‘modes of production’ con- specialization’ and those who decried regional abandon-
troversy, where they debated how to understand the coex- ment in the wake of Fordist crisis. The ‘win–win’ ethos
istence of, and connections between, capitalist and non- of New Regionalism, with its focus on select cases of
capitalist development at the level of society. The premise endogenous, regional success, took over academic and pol-
of multiple modes of production was a non-starter for icy discourses and sidelined uneven development perspec-
world-systems theorists, however. Stuart Hall would even- tives. It took me a while to realize that New Regionalism
tually make a definitive intervention that effectively carved suffered from an ‘inclusionary bias’ that was similar to that
a path between the two positions through his reworking of of global value chain and production network studies.
the concept of ‘articulation’ (Hall, 1980). But the question Hadjimichalis and Hudson’s (2014) paper in Regional
of what sort of totality is global capitalism, and what to Studies on the damaging silences in New Regionalism
make of capitalist outsides and capitalist ‘others’, would really clarified this. Their paper elegantly expressed the
continue to animate Marxist feminist and postcolonial political costs of rendering uneven development an inert,
Marxist scholars of uneven development in these fields. staid, marginal concept.
Geographers in the Anglo-American academy were
not particularly engaged in these debates on decoloniza- 3.2. From ‘in your face’ to ‘behind your back’
tion and the limits of Third World national development JP: There was a sense that conceptions of uneven develop-
projects in its wake. Instead, uneven development reached ment in the 1980s, at least from the particular position
its apex with the so-called localities debates in the UK. described above, were pretty much baked in to received
The embers were good and cold on that debate by the (critical) understandings of capitalist restructuring; they
time I entered the discipline, but I came to understand were part of the package. But also, in the Anglo-American
its importance as I developed my research. The localities literature at least, there seemed to be two rather different
debates raged between structuralist, Marxist approaches tracks, or takes on this question, as Marion has also
(most closely associated with David Harvey and Neil noted. There were, on the one hand, the more abstract for-
Smith) and post-structuralist, but still Marxist, formu- mulations of Harvey (1982) and Smith (1984), which
lations, most clearly associated with Massey’s Spatial Div- identified tendencies for uneven geographical develop-
isions of Labour. Rather than a ‘mosaic’ of spatial ment in the fundamental dynamics of capitalism. Capital-
difference, geographers mobilized Marx, Lefebvre and, ism was seen to be transforming space ‘in its own image’,
in Massey’s case, Althusser, to posit relations between tendencies for uneven development being linked, inte-
places of accumulation and sites of devaluation. But they grally, to the driving forces of profit-driven accumulation,
understood these relations quite differently. For Harvey the dull compulsion of competitive relations, and the mov-
and Smith, these relations were an expression of the ten- ing matrices of exploitation, inequality and crisis. Here,
dency of capital to resolve its crises through internal spatial uneven development was understood to be systemic, onto-
differentiation. For Massey, in contrast, they constituted logical and in a sense metatheoretical. On the other hand,
layered, historical, contingent and contested trajectories there was the approach of Massey (1984), the (mainly
(Jones & Woods, 2013; Peck et al., 2018). It bears British) critical realists and followers of the restructuring

REGIONAL STUDIES
6 Jamie Peck et al.

approach, where the action was located much closer to the remained stranded in the 1980s, and became increasingly
particularities of situated places, which were inescapably inert. Harvey and Smith had uncovered recurrent ten-
mediated and contextualized, being read through midlevel dencies for uneven development in the laws of motion
epistemological frameworks like the spatial division of and crisis tendencies of capitalism, while Massey and
labour. Sayer engaged conjunctural and contingent formations
If, for the sake of argument, these can be seen as top- more concretely, as spaces of politics and as the synthesis
down versus bottom-up takes on uneven development, of multiple determinations. These alternate takes on
they were not necessarily incompatible, nor were they uneven development echo the differences commonly
mutually exclusive. However, by the early 1990s it was attributed to the early Marx of Capital 1 compared with
almost as if they had become just that, after a series of ran- the late Marx of the Grundrisse, which of course would
corous debates (around the localities research programme be more productively staged as an ‘and/also’ dialogue,
and the politics of urban theory) led to a sort of polariz- rather than an ‘either/or’ choice. Similarly, the paths not
ation and a picking of ‘sides’, the space of dialogue and taken between more abstract, capital-logic accounts of
debate subsequently being vacated from both sides. Active uneven development and more grounded, conjuncturalist
theorization of uneven development seemed to fall off treatments of same would ideally not have entailed the
quite dramatically, and the issues themselves receded denial or dismissal of one at the expense of the other,
from foreground to background. It was not that research- but instead would have involved finding (new) ways to zig-
ers in regional studies and economic geography ceased to zag between. Interestingly, Smith would later reflect, in his
‘believe’ in uneven development, but it would assume a 2003 book on Roosevelt’s Geographer, Isaiah Bowman,
more taken-for-granted status as the focus shifted to the that while his Uneven Development had been:
dynamics of growth (and growth regions), to the econ-
omics of agglomeration, clustering, and institutional per- a book of heavy abstractions and theory, economic logics,
formance, and to the networked capacities of global and grand geographical processes, with little human touch
corporations. inspiring even the geographies it sought to explain, American
In economic geography and regional studies, so much Empire was very much the other side of the same coin. It is light
of the most influential work that was produced during on logics and abstractions [and] heavy on historical detail
the ‘long 1990s’, from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the glo- and human drama.
bal financial crisis (GFC) of 2008, was concerned with the (Smith, 2003, pp. xxi–xxii, emphasis added)
various ‘upsides’ of uneven development, the front-of-
stage action of which centred on growth dynamics, suc- Something similar, perhaps could be said about the
cessful regions, corporate networks, endogenous insti- relation between Harvey’s (1982) Limits to Capital and
tutions, and so forth (Peck, 2016). Uneven development Massey’s (1984) Spatial Divisions of Labour; they were
itself had hardly disappeared – after all, so much of this not counter-projects, but alternate sides of (and
work was predicated on a received (if often taken for approaches to) the same problematic.1 After the bruising
granted) understanding, while uneven development is of debates of the late 1980s, the coin was effectively frozen
course a condition of existence for localized economic suc- in mid-air for more than a decade. Today, it seems to be
cess, so-called, no less than for ‘rustbelt regions’ or ‘places spinning again.
left behind’. But at the same time, when the locus of con-
cern shifted to the upside of restructuring, it felt like 3.3. Dialoguing requires both/and not either/or
uneven development had receded to the analytical and MW: Yes, the long 1990s was a nadir for thinking on
indeed political background, as localized growth, pro- uneven development. Even if geographers generally
ductive institutions and global integration became the heaped scorn upon Fukuyama’s (1992) ‘end of history’, it
overarching stories. If uneven development had been ‘in was a pervasive sentiment, a structure of feeling that
your face’ in the 1980s, it seemed to be ‘behind your gained currency by sidelining and delegitimizing the visc-
back’ in the decade that followed. Hadjimichalis and Hud- eral social responses to regional disinvestment and aban-
son (2014) have called out the (academic) politics of this donment. In Anglo-American geography, the bruising
shift. In Hadjimichalis’s pointed critique of ‘third way’ localities debates created a professional atmosphere of
theorizing in economic geography and new-regionalist malaise around uneven development. But the political
policy advocacy, the proximate outcome is a ‘depoliticiza- context of left defeat and defeatism surely had much to
tion’ of uneven development (Hadjimichalis, 2017). do with it as well. Progressive political positions – not
Whatever the underlying reasons (and there were only in Anglo-American contexts, but also in Latin Amer-
many, including a desire to establish safe distance from ica and the wider Global South undergoing the first round
the divisive localities debates of the late 1980s), the of debt-imposed structural adjustment – were margina-
paths that were clearly not taken were those that might lized: ‘there is no alternative’ added insult to the injury
have been carved out somewhere ‘between’ the Harvey/ of ‘the end of history.’
Smith and the Massey/Sayer positions on uneven develop- Seen in hindsight, a lot of energy around the localities
ment. There was almost a retreat from this conceptual ter- debates appeared to be rechannelled into another bruising
ritory altogether, including on the part of the original dust-up in geography, between scales and networks
protagonists. The foundational arguments, as a result, (MacKinnon, 2011). Going back and reading these

REGIONAL STUDIES
 A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly regional problem 7

debates, it strikes me that the social construction of scale, While noting these differences, it may also be the case
following Smith, was a way to operationalize uneven that there are some underlying similarities in these two,
development and to bridge its political dimension with historically distinct surges in theoretical innovation. Both
the geography of capital accumulation. But this approach moments – the deindustrialization/new international div-
was refracted through emergent frameworks on capitalo- ision of labour (NIDL) moment of the 1970s and 1980s,
centrism and actor–networks at the time. It became a and the post-financial crisis moment since 2008 – were
foil against which scholars asserted networks and relations times when the political–economic zeitgeist was unsettled,
as alternatives to an apparently rigid, structural approach if not disorientated. One of the reasons for the turn
to scale. My sense now is that the realpolitik that had dri- towards the active theorization of uneven development
ven uneven development debates in the 1980s was off the at the beginning of the 1980s was the pervasive sense
table in the Anglo-American context, and this largely that the very gestalt of the capitalist world was shifting,
internal, academic debate took its place. If we take a ‘late like the ground moving under your feet. More than this,
Marx’ approach seriously as Jamie suggests, then the though, there was a sense that once-hegemonic ways of
point is not to abandon structural determination as overly organizing and understanding the world were reaching
rigid, but rather to understand structures through the lens their limits, or rupturing. Four decades and more later,
of the ‘complex concrete’, as a conceptual procedure build- the world is very different. But in the extended aftermath
ing from the abstract. This is what Hall meant famously of the GFC, there are also echoes as well, even if there can-
with his notion of ‘Marxism without guarantees’: one not be repetitions – echoes reflected in an almost existen-
must interrogate Marx’s cardinal premises, the materialist tial sense of rupture, dislocation and inchoate
and the historical, and how they combine (Hall, 1980; see recomposition. The self-destructive contradictions of
also Hall, 2003; Hart, 2018b). So, again, we are in the ter- financialized and neoliberalized growth in its Anglo-
rain of both/and not either/or. Indeed, this sort of ‘open American form were exposed in its very power centres.
dialectical’ approach is not anathema to network frame- China has not only continued its global ascent but has
works at all, but rather takes more seriously how those begun to define and play by its own rules, rather than
connections are stabilized through their contingent exclu- assimilating into the liberal world order; and once-hege-
sions as part of structural relations of uneven development monic ways of organizing and understanding the world
that are always in the making. have been manifestly reaching their limits, or breaking
down, from the carbon-based economy to orthodox globa-
lization theory and American imperialism.
4. THEORIZING UNEVEN DEVELOPMENT The reactivation of uneven development theorizing
TODAY during what has been another long decade since the
GFC is not really reducible to a single story. Its origins
4.1. Catching up rather than leading the way are diverse, its heterodoxy still quite inchoate. For myself,
JP: What is particularly striking about the wave of post- I do not think I ever really gave up on theorizing uneven
financial crisis theorizing of uneven development, it development (or perhaps it was the mud in which I
seems to me, is that it is so much more diverse and (as a remained stuck), even during the lean years of the long
result?) less prone to polarization, even as it runs the 1990s. In some respects, the projects that I have been
gamut from radical approaches to ethnography through involved in that have sought to theorize capitalist variega-
postcolonial Marxism to transhistorical international tion and variegated neoliberalism have both been con-
relations theory. Considering the contributions of Alexan- cerned to animate these questions (Brenner et al., 2010;
der Anievas, Lesley Gill, Gillian Hart, Sharryn Kasmir, Peck & Theodore, 2007, 2012). And they both underscore
Don Kalb, Fouad Makki, Kerem Nişancıoğlu, Justin the point that uneven development cannot be left to lan-
Rosenberg, etc. these are hardly of a piece, even as in guish, as a ‘downstream’ source of empirical complications,
their different ways they all (re)engage questions of uneven because in fact this problematic reaches deeply into
development. It would be difficult to identify a central ten- ‘upstream’ questions of conceptualization, positionality,
dency in this body of work, marked as it is by so much pro- theory-building and ontology.2
ductive diversity. In recent years, it has felt like economic Among the issues that follow from these, three have
geography and regional studies have been catching up with been preoccupying me lately. One concerns the potential
this vibrant literature, rather than serving as its principal of conjunctural modes of theorizing and conjunctural
staging ground. I do not think there is anything wrong methods, which in principle are well-suited to the problem
with that, or much to be regretted. It has meant that ques- of animating uneven development, on the ‘inside’ of our
tions of spatiality and geographical constitution are being research designs, case studies and modes of enquiry. Elu-
taken up in (and across) fields where these questions are sive and weakly codified, conjunctural analysis nevertheless
not necessarily ‘baked in’, like anthropology and inter- has the potential to bridge some of the binary divides
national relations. The result is a much richer, more multi- between the macro and the local, the structural and the
layered and post-disciplinary field of enquiry within which everyday, the historical and the quotidian. A second set
issues like social difference, race and gender, (post)colonial of issues concern the too-often silent ‘C’ that is ‘combi-
relations, and more are all receiving greater attention than nation’ in the complete formulation that is uneven and
was the case in uneven development 1.0. combined development. To problematize, explore and

REGIONAL STUDIES
8 Jamie Peck et al.

theorize ‘combination’ is to move beyond established We are forced to ask what territorial form uneven develop-
approaches to one-sided abstraction, ideal-typical theoriz- ment takes, and how core and periphery relations are
ing, and the side-by-side comparison of discrete entities (re)produced, not only synchronically but also through
like regional economies, since the questions that are raised time and the social relations that shape historical trajec-
are those of multiplicity rather than singularity, coexis- tories. Conjunctural approaches to uneven development
tence rather than separation, simultaneity rather than are not new of course, but I mention them because of
sequentiality, and relationality rather than atomism (Leit- how effectively they are currently being mobilized to
ner et al., 2020). And third, there is that matter of the understand the trend of increasing commodity exports –
gestalt. In psychology, a gestalt formally refers to an ‘orga- what is called reprimarización in Latin America – post-
nized whole’ that is understood or perceived to be more GFC. Scholars such as Andrea Marston, Thea Riofrancos,
than the sum of its parts. In political economy, one way Nancy Postero and Felipe Irarrázaval point to the signifi-
to think of globalizing capitalism is as a ‘disorganized cance of indigenous movements, worker organizing,
whole’, the emergent properties of which exist in dialecti- regional elites, and the formation (or not) of cross-class
cal relation to moving parts like geopolitical blocs and and cross-interest coalitions as central to determining
regional economies – the result being neither more nor the parameters of extractivist-based regional development
less than the simple sum of those constituent parts, but and its social and environmental outcomes. If we are to get
something coproduced, qualitatively different and no less a handle on the shifting geographies of uneven develop-
‘real’. My sense is that there is a lot of work to do to ment today, a conjunctural approach is necessary to
build a conceptual vocabulary for thinking about part– avoid ‘encompassing’ comparisons, where we slot places
whole relations in economic geography and regional studies, into their core or periphery positions. This approach also
where prevailing theory-cultures are almost reflexively wards off resource determinism, which is not only an
sceptical of ‘the macro’ jumbo concepts, and systemic for- analytical cul-de-sac but a political one too.
mulations, as if ‘disaggregation’ or localization is always
the move to make. It can be, and good work was certainly 4.2. Taking risks: animating uneven and
done in bringing orthodox conceits like globalization to combined development in regional research
ground, but this can also engender methodological local- JP: We are broadly on the same page in seeing a series of
ism and recourse to internalist explanation, which can be productive pathways, in principle at least, illuminated by
limiting and problematic in their own ways too. Massey, McMichael, Hart, Arrighi, Harvey, and so on,
MW: The long decade since the GFC has seen a revival of and snaking through the ‘new’ literatures on uneven and
scholarship on uneven development in geography and combined development. More of a challenge, though,
beyond. We have a set of conceptual tools to interrogate are the next steps, concerning how we do this, in terms
fundamental changes in global hegemony observable of methodological practices and research programmes.
through the divergent recovery paths of China and the Relative to its sister disciplines in the social sciences and
United States following the GFC. My research continues in heterodox economic studies, economic geography and
to look at this through the lens of production networks, regional studies can hold their own when it comes to
arrangements that change – extend or reshore, integrate methodological creativity and inventiveness, but if I can
or outsource – as reflections of and mechanisms to repro- generalize, they tend to fall short when it comes to cultures
duce uneven development. In the ‘top layer’ or anti-mar- of transparency and reflexivity. De facto, economic
ket, to draw on Arrighi (1994), Chinese capital vies geography and regional studies are going to be carving
directly with US and European monopoly capital over out distinctive positions in contemporary debates around
platforms and patents. But these contests have important uneven development, one of their comparative advantages
cascade effects for Global South countries, effects that being a proclivity for being among the ‘first on the scene’ in
are not simply derivative of them. Production networks dynamic and contested sites of restructuring. The collec-
are a principal mechanism through which these capitalist tive memory associated with earlier skirmishes around
dynamics work themselves out. Many Latin American the theorization of uneven development should also be
and Southeast Asian countries, for example, experienced an asset of sorts. This said, there are some really demand-
declines in the manufacturing portion of their exports, ing questions concerning how to ‘animate’ uneven devel-
accompanied by increases in their commodity exports opment in our research designs and practices, how to
over the long decade following 2008. This trend can be disturb what so often becomes a kind of ‘background’ sta-
traced through up/downgrading, organizational trans- tus, and how to connect (and interrogate) the relations
formations and geographical shifts in global production between the local, here and now, both with other locals
networks. And we can marshal these empirical findings and with the more-than-local, out there and elsewhere.
into reconstructing our analytical understanding of uneven Responding to these demanding questions requires
(and combined) development in the current period. that we find (better) ways to engage ‘bigger’ issues and
Conjunctural understandings of uneven development concepts – like the transformations associated with plat-
hold much promise here. Taking our cue from Smith form capitalism or with a China globalizing in apparently
and Massey, we know that scales and regions are not new ways – without defaulting to the assumption that
pre-determined. The scalar remit of uneven development localized cases and modes of enquiry are somehow always
is part of the analytical challenge; so too is ‘the region’. appropriate or superior. Of course, these issues can be

REGIONAL STUDIES
 A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly regional problem 9

engaged locally, and productively so, but our methodologi- I am not signalling where the research agenda may be
cal registers need to be less constrained. Platform capital- moving exactly, but rather pointing to opportunities for it
ism, for instance, while hardly remaking the world in its to develop in dialogue with debates on socio-natures.
own image, has certainly been shaking up and redefining Interest in plantations, land grabs, etc. has exploded
extant regimes of production, consumption, distribution over the last decade, for example, but the relationship
and employment, involving far-reaching interactions to uneven development remains to be fully explored.
with (and implications for) financialization, neoliberaliza- We might build out that relationship through the type
tion, markets, monopolization, offshoring and reshoring, of analysis offered in Clyde Woods’s now classic book
and more (Peck, 2017; Peck & Phillips, 2020). In terms Development Arrested (1998). Clyde Woods’s powerful
of uneven development, this seems to be more than mov- synthesis of plantation studies with uneven development
ing things around within an existing grid of spatial differ- offers an analysis of the Mississippi Delta through the
ence, within received geographical and scalar parameters; combined perspective of coloniality, political ecology
the parameters themselves are changing. And the trans- and economy, and deeply rooted forms of African-Amer-
formations associated with ‘global China’ are likewise ican resistance and resilience that are irreducible to capi-
prompting new and sometimes confounding questions tal, what he calls ‘the Blues epistemology’. He keeps a
about what we thought were once (relatively) settled ques- conjunctural approach front and centre. The reader can
tions. Having once been convinced, quite emphatically, never just presume the Delta’s peripheral position but is
that reform-era China was on some kind of (sui generis) forced to engage with the myriad forces that have conti-
path towards neoliberalized capitalism, Harvey now agrees nually reproduced that position and the fissures and
with his old friend, the late Giovanni Arrighi, that it may cracks in that violent project. With Woods and many
be ‘too early to tell’ whether China is even capitalist, others, uneven development emerges at the contested
let alone neoliberal (Red Emma’s, 2008; Harvey, 2021). nexus of capitalist exploitation and appropriation, or
These are among the ways in which the gestalt of capital- expropriation if we follow Fraser (2016). And here we
ism (and perhaps the gestalt of more-than-capitalism) is have a non-reductionist approach to thinking about the
shifting, practically in real time, in the process reconfigur- geographies of uneven development through the dimen-
ing the moving map of uneven geographical development. sion of ‘race’ which ‘distinguishes free subjects of exploi-
‘Local’ enquiries will surely help us understand what is tation from dependent subjects of expropriation’ (p. 172).
going on, but much of the action is in the interregional
domain – indeed, in the domain of the truly global. Navi- 5.2. Capacious concepts
gating these worlds is going to require methodological JP: Like Marion, it is not entirely clear to me where
innovation, and probably some risk-taking. research agendas around uneven development might be
moving next, not least because they are hardly moving in
unison. It might help me if some of them moved in the
5. NEW HORIZONS WITH UNEVEN directions that I have been talking about here, but it is
DEVELOPMENT more important that that they move in several directions
at the same time, explore different registers, and so on.
5.1. Dialoguing through relational and Harootunian (2009, p. 58) has described uneven develop-
conjunctural approaches ment as an ‘active and unwritten law of capitalism from
MW: Given the flexibility of the concept, it may be hard which no region can claim exemption’. What I like
to identify a clear research agenda or single trajectory for about this formulation is that it evokes the idea of part–
uneven development. Nonetheless, let me offer some key whole relationality in which regions retain a distinctive
themes. Recall Coronil’s (1997) rightly famous obser- presence while at the same time being constitutively
vation that the international division of labour exists in a coproduced through more-than-local relations, more and
unitary, dialectical relation with the international division different to the sum of those interacting parts, shaping
of nature. My own thinking on this question of nature has an emergent totality (if I dare use the word) conditioned
been influenced by Moore’s (2015) work on world-ecol- by actually extra-local phenomena like fiscal discipline,
ogy, which offers a remarkable synthesis of world-systems multilateral systems, competitive pressures, environmental
theory with political ecology and socialist feminist work on constraints and uneven development itself, of course.
unpaid labour (e.g., Mies, 1986). Uneven development as What is perplexing about uneven development is that
viewed through the prism of world-ecology is a particularly not only is its ‘law’ unwritten, it is by definition unwritable.
powerful framework since it internalizes questions of eco- As Sewell (2008) has argued, uneven development is
logical surplus, relations between exploitation, appropria- rather like the business cycle in the sense that it is appar-
tion and extraction, and the continuous sociospatial ently always with us, grinding away in its inherently unpre-
project of reworking nature’s metabolism through formal dictable, non-linear fashion. Yet even though uneven
and real subsumption. This work must remain relational development, like the business cycle, won’t just cease to
in my opinion, attending to connections and differences be one day, or resolve itself into some happy ending of pla-
across places and attuned to how political conjunctures, netary equilibrium, what is also certain is that the concrete
social hierarchies, and ecological dimensions shape uneven expressions and interactive consequences of uneven devel-
development geographies (Werner, 2022). opment will keep changing, in never-repeating patterns.

REGIONAL STUDIES
10 Jamie Peck et al.

So any attempt to write a law of uneven development is and political stakes that (at a minimum) rival those of
bound to fail. the end of the first liberal period.
The scepticism of grand theories in economic geography We started off our dialogue describing the different
and regional studies is in this respect very well founded. places from which we began to think about uneven devel-
And the exploratory methods that these fields have made opment, and that might be a good place to end. Those
their own – working as they often do in ‘restructuring grappling with the visceral, wrenching restructuring of
time’ – also have important roles to play in the interdisci- post-industrial regions in the Global North, and those
plinary conversation around uneven development. But pro- thinking through subordinate incorporation of the Global
blematics of uneven development present challenges to South, too often talk past one another. But the concept of
received practice in these fields as well. The disaggregation uneven development – including its legacy in Marxist poli-
reflex that I mentioned before often translates into ready tics, its centring of questions of place-based development
critiques of overly capacious concepts – such as those associ- in relation to the larger capitalist whole, and its steadfast
ated with financialization and neoliberalization – that seem refusal of teleology – can continue to serve as a bridge
to encompass bucketloads of contradictory elements and for thinking across these diverse and differently diverging
widely variable circumstances: if neoliberalism can be said contexts of late capitalism.
to be present inside World Bank structural adjustment pro- MJ: The past, present and futures of uneven development
grammes, for example, does it really make sense to give the remain of considerable importance within and beyond the
same name to projects of state-facilitated marketization in Regional Studies community. Keeping these intellectual
rural China? Rather than ‘overstretch’ the concept of neoli- and policy concerns alive is key because it is clear that
beralism, so the ready arguments tend to go, better to do the creation of uneven development remains a ‘cumulative
away with the concept (too baggy and capacious), or to con- process’ (Anderson et al., 1983b, p. 3) and there remains
cede a role for a more limited concept (OK, maybe it fits the work to be done to understand how a ‘neoliberalism in cri-
World Bank, but it has no place in China). I have never sis will not bring an end to uneven development but its
been persuaded by these arguments and would (still) opposite, an intensification’ (Smith, 2010, p. 266). Uneven
make the case for more capacious – rather than ‘tight fit’ development is indeed back in the spotlight and there is an
– concepts, those that take account of sociospatial difference opportunity for the Regional Studies community to see if
and uneven development up front and, conceptually speak- we have answers.
ing, on the inside. This is what, I would say, emergent con-
cepts like variegated neoliberalism try to do. Rejecting
reductionist, essentialized, or tight-fit models of neoliberal-
ism, they problematize the cross-contextual, interactive, and DISCLOSURE STATEMENT
different-to-the-sum-of-the-parts character of this trans-
formative process, which is not reducible to a one-dimen- No potential conflict of interest was reported by the
sional story of markets running amok, or generalized authors.
Thatcherism, or cultures of competitive individualism, or
structural adjustment and practices like privatization, or
party–state marketcraft, but all of these things (together) NOTES
and considerably more. Now, this is not the same thing as
saying that neoliberalization is somehow a blanket process 1. For Massey’s (1995) revelatory take on this issue, see
or that it is trending toward unity or completion. In fact, the reflective chapter at the end of the second edition.
it is the opposite of that. Maybe this could be what it 2. Harvey once reflected, more than two decades after
means to bring uneven development into the ‘interiors’ of writing The Limits to Capital, that ‘a decent theoretical
our concepts? understanding of uneven geographical development still
remains to be written. … To do this requires, in my
judgement, that the issues of spatio-temporality … are
6. CODA integrated into the argument at the very start rather
than at the end of the analysis’ (Harvey, 2004,
6.1. … and don’t forget the concept’s political p. 545), as he had found it necessary to do in Limits.
history Once again, there is a pertinent contrast with Massey’s
MW: In whichever direction research on uneven develop- project, which in a sense did actually lead with uneven
ment proceeds, scholars should remain cognisant of the development.
concept’s political history as well as its scholarly arc from
its 1980s heyday to long 1990s stasis to its post-GFC reju-
venation. While we can safely discount any ‘law of uneven
development’, 40 years of geographical enquiry has pro- ORCID
duced a set of conceptual tools and analytical categories
to unpack the ‘moving map’ of uneven development. Jamie Peck http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1425-9705
And such an exercise is necessary if we are to get our Marion Werner http://orcid.org/0000-0002-5000-3053
heads around the contemporary period of massive flux Martin Jones http://orcid.org/0000-0002-4627-2293

REGIONAL STUDIES
 A dialogue on uneven development: a distinctly regional problem 11

REFERENCES Harvey, D. (2021). Whither China? Anti-Capitalist Chronicles,

September 23. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZIfYdZ
Anderson, J., Duncan, S., & Hudson, R. (Eds.). (1983a). Redundant qunM&list=PLPJpiw1WYdTPmOmC2i3hR4_aR7omqhaCj
spaces in cities and regions?: Studies in industrial decline and social Herod, A., Gialis, A., Psifis, S., Gourzis, K., & Mavroudeas, A.
change. Academic Press. (2022). The impact of the COVID-19 pandemic upon employ-
Anderson, J., Duncan, S., & Hudson, R. (1983b). Uneven develop- ment and inequality in the Mediterranean EU: An early look
ment, redundant spaces? An introduction. In J. Anderson, S. from a labour geography perspective. European Urban and
Duncan, & R. Hudson (Eds.), Redundant spaces in cities and Regional Studies, 29(1), 3–20. https://doi.org/10.1177/
regions? Studies in industrial decline and social change (pp. 1–15). 09697764211037126
Academic Press. HM Government. (2022). Levelling up the United Kingdom (CP
Arrighi, G. (1994). The long twentieth century: Money, power and the 604). HMSO.
origins of our times. Verso. Hudson, R. (2004). Addressing the regional problem: changing perspec-
Bair, J., & Werner, M. (2011). Commodity chains and the uneven tives on geography and on regions (National Institute for Regional
geographies of global capitalism: A disarticulations perspective. and Spatial Analysis Working Paper Series No. 24). National
Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space, 43(5), 988– University of Ireland.
997. https://doi.org/10.1068/a43505 Hudson, R. (2007). Regions and regional uneven development for-
Blundell, R., Costa Dias, M., Joyce, R., & Xu, X. (2020). COVID- ever? Some reflective comments upon theory and practice.
19 and inequalities. Fiscal Studies, 41(2), 291–319. https://doi. Regional Studies, 41(9), 1149–1160. https://doi.org/10.1080/
org/10.1111/1475-5890.12232 00343400701291617
Boschma, R., & Martin, R. (2010). The handbook of evolutionary Hudson, R. (2016). Approaches to economic geography: Towards a geo-
economic geography. Edward Elgar. graphical political economy. Routledge.
Brenner, N. (2019). New urban spaces: Urban theory and the scale ques- Jones, M., & Woods, M. (2013). New localities. Regional Studies, 47
tion. Oxford University Press. (1), 29–42. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404.2012.709612
Brenner, N., Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2010). Variegated neoliber- King, N., & Ives, E. (2019). A rising tide: Levelling up left behind
alization: Geographies, modalities, pathways. Global Networks, Britain. Centre for Policy Studies.
10(2), 182–222. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-0374.2009. Leitner, H., Peck, J., & Sheppard, E. (Eds.). (2020). Urban studies
00277.x inside/out: Theory, method, practice. Sage.
Coronil, F. (1997). The magical state: Nature, money, and modernity in Lovering, J. (1989). The restructuring approach. In R. Peet &
Venezuela. University of Chicago Press. N. Thrift (Eds.), New models in geography: The political economy
Dear, M., & Scott, A. (Eds.). (1981). Urbanization and urban plan- perspective. Volume 1 (pp. 198–223). Unwin Hyman.
ning in capitalist society. Methuen. MacKinnon, D. (2011). Reconstructing scale: Towards a new scalar
Duncan, S., Goodwin, M., & Halford, S. (1988). Policy variations politics. Progress in Human Geography, 35(1), 21–36. https://doi.
in local states: Uneven development and local social org/10.1177/0309132510367841
relations. International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Marmot, M., Allen, J., Boyce, T., Goldblatt, P., & Morrison,
12(1), 107–128. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2427.1988. J. (2021). Build back fairer in greater Manchester: Health equity
tb00076.x and dignified lives. Institute of Health Equity, UCL.
Fraser, N. (2016). Expropriation and exploitation in racialized capit- Martin, R. (2021). Rebuilding the economy from the COVID crisis:
alism: A reply to Michael Dawson. Critical Historical Studies, 3 Time to rethink regional studies? Regional Studies, Regional
(1), 163–178. https://doi.org/10.1086/685814 Science, 8(1), 143–161. https://doi.org/10.1080/21681376.
Fukuyama, F. (1992). The end of history and the last man. Free Press. 2021.1919191
Hadjimichalis, C. (2017). Crisis spaces: Structures, struggles and soli- Martin, R., Gardiner, B., Pike, A., Sunley, P., & Tyler, P. (2021).
darity in Southern Europe. Routledge. Levelling up left behind places: The scale and nature of the economic
Hadjimichalis, C., & Hudson, R. (2014). Contemporary crisis across and policy challenge. Routledge.
Europe and the crisis of regional development theories. Regional Massey, D. (1979). In what sense a regional problem? Regional
Studies, 48(1), 208–218. https://doi.org/10.1080/00343404. Studies, 13(2), 233–243. https://doi.org/10.1080/
2013.834044 09595237900185191
Hall, S. (1980). Race, articulation and societies structured in domi- Massey, D. (1984). Spatial divisions of labour: Social relations and
nance. In UNESCO (Ed.), Sociological theories: Race and coloni- spatial structures. Macmillan.
alism (pp. 305–345). UNESCO. Massey, D. (1995). Spatial divisions of labour: Social relations and
Hall, S. (2003). Marx’s notes on method: A ‘reading’ of the ‘1857 spatial structures (2nd ed.). Macmillan.
introduction’. Cultural Studies, 17(2), 113–149. https://doi.org/ McMichael, P. (1990). Incorporating comparison within a world-
10.1080/0950238032000114868 historical perspective: An alternative comparative method.
Harootunian, H. (2009). Uneven moments: Reflections on Japan’s mod- American Sociological Review, 55(3), 385–397. https://doi.org/
ern history. Columbia University Press. 10.2307/2095763
Hart, G. (2002). Disabling globalization: Places of power in post-apart- Mies, M. (1986). Patriarchy and accumulation on a world scale: Women
heid South Africa. University of California Press. in the international division of labor. Zed.
Hart, G. (2018a). Becoming a geographer: Massey moments in a Moore, J. W. (2015). Capitalism in the web of life: Ecology and the
spatial education. In M. Werner, J. Peck, R. Lave, & B. accumulation of capital. Verso.
Christophers (Eds.), Doreen Massey: Critical dialogues (pp. 75– Morgan, K., & Sayer, A. (1988). Microcircuits of capital: ‘Sunrise’
89). Agenda. industry and uneven development. Polity.
Hart, G. (2018b). Relational comparison revisited: Marxist postco- Peck, J. (2016). Macroeconomic geographies. Area Development and
lonial geographies in practice. Progress in Human Geography, Policy, 1(3), 305–322. https://doi.org/10.1080/23792949.2016.
42(3), 371–394. https://doi.org/10.1177/0309132516681388 1237263
Harvey, D. (1982). The limits to capital. Blackwell. Peck, J. (2017). Offshore: Exploring the worlds of global outsourcing.
Harvey, D. (2004). Retrospect on The Limits to Capital. Antipode, Oxford University Press.
36(3), 544–549. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-8330.2004. Peck, J., & Phillips, R. (2020). The platform conjuncture. Sociologica,
00431.x 14(3), 73–99. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/11613

REGIONAL STUDIES
12 Jamie Peck et al.

Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2007). Variegated capitalism. Progress in Smith, N. (2003). America’s empire: Roosevelt’s geography and the pre-
Human Geography, 31(6), 731–772. https://doi.org/10.1177/ lude to globalisation. University of California Press.
0309132507083505 Smith, N. (2010). Uneven development: Nature, capital and the pro-
Peck, J., & Theodore, N. (2012). Reanimating neoliberalism: Process- duction of space (3rd ed.). Verso.
geographies of neoliberalization. Social Anthropology, 20(2), 177– Soja, E. A. (1985). The spatiality of social life: Towards a transfor-
185. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8676.2012.00194.x mative retheorization. In D. Gregory & J. Urry (Eds.), Social
Peck, J., Werner, M., Lave, R., & Christophers, B. (2018). Out of relations and spatial structures (pp. 90–127). Macmillan.
place: Doreen Massey, radical geographer. In M. Werner, J. Storper, M., & Walker, R. (1989). The capitalist imperative:
Peck, R. Lave, & B. Christophers (Eds.), Doreen Massey: Territory, technology and industrial growth. Blackwell.
Critical dialogues (pp. 1–38). Agenda. Tonkonoff, S. (2017). From Tarde to Deleuze & Foucault: The infini-
Red Emma’s. (2008). Giovanni Arrighi, David Harvey, and Joel tesimal revolution. Routledge.
Andreas on Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing, March 5. https:// United Nations. (2021). United nations comprehensive response to COVID-
archive.org/details/2640Arrighi 19: Saving lives, protecting societies, recovering better. United Nations,
Scott, A. J. (1988). New industrial spaces: Flexible production organiz- Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs.
ation and regional development in North America and Western Werner, M. (2016). Global displacements: The making of uneven devel-
Europe. Pion. opment in the Caribbean. Wiley Blackwell.
Sewell, W. H. (2008). The temporalities of capitalism. Socio- Werner, M. (2022). Geographies of production III: Global pro-
Economic Review, 6(3), 517–537. https://doi.org/10.1093/ser/ duction in/through nature. Progress in Human Geography, 46
mwn007 (1), 234–244. https://doi.org/10.1177/03091325211022810
Sheppard, E. (2012). Trade, globalization and uneven development: Williams, R. (1977). Marxism and literature. Oxford University
Entanglements of geographical political economy. Progress in Press.
Human Geography, 36(1), 44–71. https://doi.org/10.1177/ Woods, C. (1998). Development arrested: The blues and plantation
0309132511407953 power in the Mississippi delta. Verso.
Smith, N. (1984). Uneven development: Nature, capital and the pro- Wright, M. (2006). Disposable women and other myths of global capit-
duction of space. Blackwell. alism. Routledge.

REGIONAL STUDIES