Institut für Geographie und Raumforschung der Universität Graz,
Österr. Geographische Gesellschaft, Zweigstelle Graz,
Centre of Southeast European Studies und
Fachgruppe Geographie des Naturwissenschaftlichen Vereins für Steiermark
laden ein zum
Geographischen Kolloquium
Do. 22. Oktober 2015
18.00 h, im Hörsaal 11.03
Assoc. Prof. Christian Sellar Ph.D. (Univ. of Mississippi/USA)
Opening the Black Box of the State
The Investment Promotion Communities Supporting Italian Firms in Sofia, Bratislava and Shanghai
Zum Vortragenden
Christian Sellar, Assoc. Prof. in the Department of Public Policy Leadership, Univ. of Mississippi/USA, is a human and economic geographer with particular interests in local-level governance, regional economic development, industrial geographies of globalization, Europe, and post-socialism. Specifically, he studies the emergence of new systems of political governance, regional production networks, and transnational value chains. His research program began discussing the impact of the outsourcing of Italian clothing and textile firms on industrial and regional change in Romania, Slovakia, Ukraine and Bulgaria. He furthered his study of regional change by analyzing the transformation of policies and government bodies in the same regions, highlighting the complex role played by the EU. Beyond Europe, his current research focuses on Italy’s evolving institutional support to transnational firms, comparing Central Eastern Europe and China. His research findings have highlighted the tight relationship between EU-led institutional change and the restructuring of firms’ value chains. C. Sellar published the results of his research in several international geography journals. He holds a Ph.D. in geography from the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (USA) and another Ph.D. in geo-history and geo-economy of border regions from the Univ. of Trieste (Italy).
Zum Inhalt
Economic geographers and sociologists have called for greater attention and deeper theorization of the role of the state in the global economy. Recent literature in global value chains and production networks is studying the re-articulation between states and markets after the crisis of 2008. Their conclusions show continuity with an earlier scholarship, which studied institutions promoting foreign direct investments. Even before the crisis, investment promotion agencies and other actors aligned national and local governments with neoliberal-minded transnational actors. Professionals working for these institutions constitute communities of practice encompassing the public and private sector, underpinning the global diffusion of neoliberalism.
This lecture looks at the communities of public and private actors supporting Italian firms abroad or ‘investment promotion communities’ (IPCs) at two areas of Central Eastern Europe (Sofia and Bratislava) and one in China (Shanghai/Suzhou). It argues that (i) the promotion of outward investments is an underexplored area of the evolving interactions between states and firms; (ii) IPCs represent a structural transformation of the Italian State that accelerated after 2008; (iii) the IPCs abroad are tightly linked with regional and global trends, such as the different patterns of postsocialist transformation of Slovakia and Bulgaria, as well as the emergence of China. Finally, the talk calls for research beyond Italy, to analyze the larger role of IPCs as interfaces between changing global value chains and evolving state institutions.