Book Review: Urbanization in Nepal. Papers of the East-West Population Institute

this chapter is the use of discriminant analysis in an exercise designed to distinguish the specificity of that part of the semi-conductor industry found in the silicon valley agglomeration as opposed to elsewhere in the USA. In this exercise Scott uses his insights into the nature of emerging transaction-intensive relations to select theoreti, cally informed indicators which differentiate between the type of industrialization found in silicon valley compared to the other US locations of the semi-conductor industry. Here we have a great example of modem industrial geography successfully employing statistical techniques in the task of furthering theoretical understanding. In evaluating the contribution of this book it is necessary to turn to the theoretical claims made at the outset and the way in which these are exemplified in the three empirical case studies. Scott’s thesis is situated clearly within the French regulationist paradigm which has heralded the end of a Fordist regime of accumulation and social democratic mode of social regulation. In New industrial spaces the case is put that the emerging regime of accumulation is one characterized by flexible production systems and labour markets. In the move ‘from Fordism to flexibility’ the new industrial spaces of Scott’s interest have come into being. Much of the theoretical development contained in this book elaborates the Iogic underlying mesolevel processes causing these organizational and locational changes in the industrial economy. Without doubt, Scott’s insights into the new agglomerative effects of an organizational shift in the nature of industrial transactions from internal to external has made an important contribution to our understanding of recent industrial and spatial dynamics. His observations on the increasing flexibility of labour markets are useful but hardly pathbreaking. However, these two processes, important though they are, constitute a rather slim basis upon which to postulate the emergence of a fully fledged new regime of flexible accumulation. Scott makes scant, if any, reference to the importance of capital mobility on a global scale, of the increased rapidity of financial transactions and the intermeshing of productive and speculative investment, among many other aspects of the emerging economic order. In my view, the strength of the book’s theoretical arguments are diminished by these silences. C! early new and flexible forms of production and employment are part of the general picture of change that capitalism is experiencing. Yet there are many other dynamics which are as important in constituting the new industrial spaces this book addresses as are the ones Scott endows with superior effectivity. I remain to be convinced that these aspects of production are worthy of such reified theoretical status as to define the determining logic behind a new regime of accumulation. The importance of the very interesting case studies contained in this volume is, to my mind, weakened by the repeated claim that they represent evidence of the logic of this new, and seemingly unproblematic, regime.