POST- FORDISM Studies in Urban and Social Change Published by Blackwell in association with the International Journal of Urban and Regional Research. Series editors: Chris Pickvance, Margit Mayer and John Walton Published Post-Fordism Ash Amin (ed.) Divided Cities Susan S. Fainstein, Ian Gordon, and Michael Harloe (eds.) The City Builders Susan S. Fainstein The People’s Home Michael Harloe Fragmented Societies Enzo Mingione The Resources of Poverty Mercedes Gonzalez de la Rocha Free Markets and Food Riots John Walton and David Seddon Forthcoming Cities afer Socialism Michael Harloe, Ivan Szelenyi and Gregory Andrusz Urban Social Movements and the State Margit Mayer POST- F O R D I S M A READER Edited by Ash Amin a BLACKWELL - d Introduction and editorial arrangement copyright 0 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1994 Other copyright 0 as stated as the end of each chapter First published 1994 Reprinted 1995, 1996, 1997, 2000 Transferred to Digital print 2003 Blackwell Publishers Ltd I08 Cowley Road Oxford OX4 IJF, UK Blackwell Publishers Inc 350 Main Street Malden, Massachusetts 02 148, USA All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purposes of criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the publisher. Except in the United States of America, this book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re-sold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher’s prior consent in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Post-Fordism: a readdedited by Ash Amin. p. cm. - (Studies in urban and social change) Includes bibliographical references (p. )and index. ISBN 0-63 1-1 8856-8 (acid-free paper) ISBN 0-63 1-18857-6 (pbk: acid-free paper) 1. Technological innovations-Economic aspects. 2. Technological innovations-Social aspects. 3. Industrial organization. 4. Capitalism. 5. Regional economic disparities. I. Amin, Ash. 11. Series. HC79.T4P667 1995 94-1 0761 338’.064-d~20 CIP Typeset in 10.5 on 12pt Baskerville by Colset Pte Ltd, Singapore Printed and bound in Great Britain by Marston Lindsay Ross International, Oxfordshire Contents List of Contributors vii Acknowledgements ix 1 Post-Fordism: Models, Fantasies and Phantoms of Transition 1 Ash Amin Part I New Macroeconomic Designs 41 2 Puzzling out the Post-Fordist Debate: Technology, Markets and Institutions 43 Mark Elam 3 The Crisis of Fordism and the Dimensions of a ‘Post-Fordist’ Regional and Urban Structure 71 Josef Esser and Joachim Hirsch Part I1 New Sociologies and Geographies of Industrial Organization 99 4 Flexible Specialisation and the Re-emergence of Regional Economies 101 Charles F. Sabel vi Contents 5 A New Paradigm of Work Organization and Technology? 157 John Tomaney 6 The Transition to Flexible Specialisation in the US Film Industry: External Economies, the Division of Labour and the Crossing of Industrial Divides 195 Michael Storper 7 Competing Structural and Institutional Influences on the Geography of Production in Europe 227 Ash Amin and Anders Malmberg Part I11 Policy and Politics Beyond Fordism 249 8 Post-Fordism and the State 25 1 Bob Jessop 9 Searching for a New Institutional Fix: the Afer-Fordist Crisis and the Global-Local Disorder 280 Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell 10 Post-Fordist City Politics 316 Margit Mayer 11 Post-Fordism and Democracy 338 Alain Lipietz Part IV Post-Fordist City Lives and Lifestyles 359 12 Flexible Accumulation through Urbanization: Reflections on ‘Post-modernism’ in the American City 36 1 David Harvey 13 City Cultures and Post-modern Lifestyles 387 Mike Featherstone 14 The Fortress City: Privatized Spaces, Consumer Citizenship 409 Susan Christopherson Index 428 Contributors Ash Amin is Professor of Geography at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Susan Christopherson is Associate Professor in the Department of City and Regional Planning and Cornell University, USA. Mark Elm is Research Fellow in the Department of Technology and Social Chdge at Linkoping University, Sweden. Josef Esser is Professor of Political Science at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Mike Featherstone is Professor of Sociology at Teesside University, UK. David Harvey is Professor of Geography at the Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, USA. Joachim Hirsch is Professor of Political Science at the Goethe University in Frankfurt, Germany. Bob Jessop is Professor of Sociology at Lancaster University, UK. Main Lipietz is Director of Research at CEPREMAP in Paris, France. Anders Malmberg is Lecturer in the Department of Social and Economic Geography at Uppsala University, Sweden. viii Contributors Margit Mayer is Professor of Politics at the Free University in Berlin, Germany. Jamie Peck is Lecturer in Geography at Manchester University, UK. Charles Sabel is Professor of Sociology at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, USA. Michael Storper is Professor of Regional and International Develop- ment at the University of California, Los Angeles, USA. John Tomaney is Lecturer in Geography at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK. Adam Tickell is Lecturer in Geography at Leeds University, UK. Acknowledgements The publishers and editor are grateful to the following for permission to reproduce material. Sage Publications Ltd for chapter 2, reprinted from Mark Elam, Puzzl- ing out the post-Fordist debate, in Economic and Industrial Debate, volume 11, 0 1990; and for chapter 13, reprinted from Mike Featherstone, Consumer Culture and Postmodernism, @ 1991. Charles Sabel and Berg Publishers for chapter 4, reprinted from Charles Sabel, Flexible specialisation and the re-emergence of regional economies, in P. Hirst and J. Zeitlin (eds) Reversing Industrial Decline?, pages 17-70, 0 1989. Michael Storper for chapter 6. Pion Limited for chapter 7, reprinted from A. Amin and A. Malmberg, Competing structural and institutional influences on the geography of production in Europe, in Environment and Planning A, volume 24, 0 1992. David Harvey for chapter 12. POST- FORDISM A READER Edited by Ash Amin copyright 0 Blackwell Publishers Ltd 1994 1 Post-Fordism: Models, Fantasies and Phantoms of Transition Ash Amin INTRODUCTION These appear to be times of bewildering transformation and change in the structure and organization of modern Western economy and society. It seems that capitalism is at a crossroads in its historical development signalling the emergence of forces - technological, market, social and institutional - that will be very different from those which dominated the economy after the Second World War. Though not uncontroversial, there is an emerging consensus in the social sciences that the period since the mid-1970s represents a transition from one distinct phase of capitalist development to a new phase. Thus, there is a sense that these are times of epoch-making transformation in the very forces which drive, stabilize and reproduce the capitalist world. Terms such as ‘structural crisis’, ‘transformation’ and ‘transi- tion’ have become common descriptors of the present, while new epithets such as ‘post-Fordist’ , ‘post-industrial’ , ‘post-modern’ , ‘fifth Kondratiev’ and ‘post-collective’ have been coined by the academic prophets of our times to describe the emerging new age of capitalism. One observer, Ernest Sternberg (1993), lists no fewer than eight potential new ages. The first is the information age, which will generate wealth through the exercise of knowledge, trade in informa- tion activities and the potentialities for information technology. The second is the age of post-modernity, which will extend the frontier