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Regional Development and Policy: The Geography of Employment

In the past 20 years there have been many changes in the study of the geography of employment. What began as a derivative part of a larger issue, the efficient spatial allocation of industry, has emerged as an important issue worthy of study in its own right. To understand how important this shift of focus has been, just compare the recently published book edited by Scott and Storper (1986), entitled Produc­ tion, work, and territory, with the text by O'Sullivan (1981) Geographical econ­ omics. The former book makes, as its point of departure, a fundamental (albeit impHcit) critique of economics as applied to understanding the restructuring of the economic landscape. The latter book applies the dominant conception of economics (the 'science' of efficiently allocating scarce resources among compet­ ing ends). In the former book, space is the object and subject; in the latter book, space is the stage on which larger events and processes are displayed. The local labour market has become for many geographical researchers the best analytical lens through which the structure of the contemporary spatial system should be conceived: the conception of the spatial division of labour is the most immediate manifestation of this research programme (see for example Clark, 1981; and Massey, 1984). Associated with the study of the geographical dimensions of employment are the patterns and processes of spatial inequaUty. And here, as in the study of employment, the focus of research has shifted away from the macroeconomic concerns of regional and urban transformation where spatial inequality is the derivative consequence of otherwise more universal phenomena — to the origins of inequality found in the structure and performance of the local job market. This focus is more microeconomic, and uses spatial differentiaton as an endogenous element in explaining inequaUty (see for example Clark and Whiteman, 1983 on the segmentation of urban labour markets, and the editorial by Thrift, 1983 on the 'new' contextualism).