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ESSEC Business School Conference

GLOBALIZATION AND THE RETURN OF GEOGRAPHY

February 21 and 22, 2013, Asia Pacific Campus in Singapore

ESSEC Asia Pacific and ESSEC Center for Capitalism, Globalization, and Governance

The phenomenon of globalization is not new. Yet, the dynamic nature of globalization means that old questions have to be continually reformulated and that new issues regularly come to confront us. We have realized, sometimes painfully during the last few years, that globalization is not the "end of history." We also increasingly understand that globalization is not the end of geography. Everywhere around the world, geography is back with a vengeance. As we stand in the midst of the ongoing financial and economic crisis, the consequences of which still remain unclear, it appears that the opportunities and challenges of globalization need to be reframed through a focus on geography. While high growth in the newly industrializing economies is taking millions of people out of poverty, unbridled industrialization for many years have been linked to other crises such as resource depletion and global warming. Debates between "early" and "late" polluters remain intense. In an interdependent world, even remote islands – that do not fall in either group – cannot stand in splendid isolation. The multidimensional nature and reach of globalization interest a variety of stakeholders – citizens, academics, journalists, policy makers, city mayors, migrants, job-seekers, and business executives – all over the world.

 

The purpose of this conference is to bring together scholars interested in exploring the interface between globalization and geography. We are seeking to understand the phenomenon of globalization through many lenses. We hope to attract scholars from different academic disciplines – business and management, sociology, economics, economic geography, anthropology or political science – and create the conditions for fruitful debates and discussions on the topic. We welcome both empirical and theoretical papers.

 

Professor Saskia Sassen, Robert S. Lynd Professor of Sociology and Co-Chair of the Committee on Global Thought at Columbia University will deliver the opening keynote address.

Dr. Pratap Bhanu Mehta, President and Chief Executive of the Centre for Policy Research at New Delhi, will deliver the closing remarks.

 

Themes and Questions

 

Relevant research topics might include, but are certainly not limited to, the following:

1. The Multinational Corporation and Geography: What is the role of multinational corporations in today's globalized world? Are multinational firms transcending geography, crossing multiple geographies, or transposing a particular geography? How powerful are multinational corporations today? How do multinational firms relate to nation states and vice versa? Does the perception of multinational corporations change in relation to the state of national economies?
2. State Capitalism and Geography: Do we see a return of state capitalism? How similar/different is contemporary state capitalism from its historical antecedents? What are the geographical implications of this return of state capitalism?
3. History, Culture, and Geography: What is the interplay between geography and historical and cultural heritage? What are some of the interesting ways in which the consequences of colonialism or the transatlantic slave trade still evident in the contemporary geography of globalization? Are culture and geography determinant of destiny? Can we free ourselves from the colonial and slave encounter to reinvent a more sustainable kind of globalization?
4. Finance, Risk, and Geography: How does geography matter to finance? How does geography impact the capacity to access credit and establish creditworthiness in today's world? Are capital markets global? How does the geography of finance inscribe itself in different regions of the world? What are the consequences in terms of risk of this peculiar geography?
5. People and Geography: How does globalization play out on individuals – increasing the distance between those embedded in local geographies and a minority of footloose cosmopolitans or turning all connected individuals into "rooted cosmopolitans"? Is the cosmopolitan impulse only for the rich? Can the poor become cosmopolitan? What are the long term impacts of "brain drain" on home countries? How might the financial and economic crisis impact movements of people across national boundaries?
6. Global Value Chains and Geography: What are the changing geographical footprints of global value chains? How do global value chains generate positive or negative externalities? Has the idea of work been redefined through the emergence of those global value chains? How do global value chains impact local geographies – in Europe, in the Americas, in Africa, and in Asia?
7. Agglomerations and Geography: How do cities reconcile the constitutive contradictions between sites of globalization and deeply localized geographies? Can agglomerations such as cities or industrial clusters be made to order?
8. Diversity, Globalization, and Geography: What does the management of diversity mean in a globalizing world? What is its impact on the management of human resources, on marketing, and on strategy? How does the diversity outside the firm impact practices inside the firm?
9. Governance and Geography: Can globalization and the global firms be governed? What are the geographical dimensions, implications, and limits of transnational governance?
10. Focus on Asia: Is Asian growth inevitable or fragile? What are the most significant consequences of the massive social and economic transformation happening in Asian countries? Do sub-national regions in Asia matter? If so, in what ways do they matter?

Submission details

 

15 October, 2012	Deadline for sending the short paper (2,000 words incl. references)
15 November, 2012	Decision letters sent
15 December, 2012	Deadline for registration
1 February, 2013	Deadline for sending the full paper
21, 22 February, 2013	Conference

Conference Organizers

Arijit Chatterjee, Assistant Professor of Management, ESSEC Business School

Marie-Laure Djelic, Professor of Management, ESSEC Business School and Director of the Center for Capitalism, Globalization, and Governance

 

Conference Website

http://globalization-and-geography.essec.edu

 

For more information, please contact:

Hanane Rahmoune

Management Department, ESSEC Business School
singaconf2013@essec.edu

 

 

ESSEC (École Supérieure des Sciences Économiques et Commerciales) is one of the Grandes Écoles in France and one of foremost business schools in the world. Founded in 1907, ESSEC Business School is reputed for its international orientation and has partnerships with Cornell University, Dartmouth College, Northwestern University, University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley, University of Mannheim, Seoul National University, Keio Business School, Hong Kong University of Science & Technology, University of Peking, Fudan University, and Indian Institute of Management at Ahmedabad. ESSEC's Asia Pacific campus was established in Singapore in 2006.

--
Arijit Chatterjee
Assistant Professor
Management Department
École Supérieure des Sciences Économiques et Commerciales

Phone: (33) 134 43 3918 | (65) 9237 8274
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