I am an economic and political geographer, but I seek to contribute to interdisciplinary scholarship as well. My research interests may be seen as lying within one or more of the following related set of clusters:

Finance

In my research on offshore finance in the Caribbean I emphasized the role of policy makers in small resource-poor islands who enacted deliberate development strategies to attract financial institutions. I investigated how certain factions of the state and the business community worked to guarantee the conditions for attracting and retaining an activity as fickle as finance "in the name of development." More recently I re-worked some of these ideas, together with an exploration of the meaning of citizenship in an age of offshore-ness, through an empirical study of recently revealed links between political leaders in The Republic of Ireland and bankers in the Caymans (see the chapter in Offshore Financial Centers and Tax Havens, 1999).

Globalization

My research on offshore finance led me to consider, and counter, some salient framings of globalization. I have been engaged in a project critically appraising the concept "globalization." In examining how globalization is a discursive constellation, I developed an interest in the creation and circulation of a set of quintessentially "global subjects." In a project examining the organization and content of international MBA courses and the discourse of strategic management, I investigated the subject of the "global manager." This paper is in the multi-disciplinary collection Globalization and Governmentality. In this work I employ a theoretical and methodological framework indebted to poststructuralism and feminism. Also, I have been analyzing the ways in which representations of the "Exploited Third World Child Worker" operate particularly vis-à-vis policy discourse and a politics of consumption in the global north. The "third world" child worker is, I argue, another actor in the cast of globalization but one very different from the global manager. In this work I have explored some relations between developmental psychology (as evident in globalized notions of childhood) and theories of economic development. I am continuing this work on globalization and development with a focus on Non Governmental Organizations (NGOs) (see below).

Social Theory and Geography

Early work in feminist geography, working together with John Paul Jones III (now at University of Arizona) (http://web.geog.arizona.edu/jones.html) and Heidi J. Nast (now at De Paul University) (http://condor.depaul.edu/~intstuds/) resulted in a National Science Foundation-funded workshop and the book, Thresholds in Feminist Geography. More recently, trying to bring together feminist geographical analysis and critical conceptualizations of the globalizing world economy, I wrote a chapter for Mapping Women, Making Politices: Feminist Perspectives on Political Geography edited by Lynn A. Staeheli, Eleonore Kofman, and Linda Peake.

Development

Recent scholarship offering critical perspectives on development as a discourse, as a set of embedded and institutionalized social practices, and on options for people living in poverty has significant overlaps with the critical literature on the politics of globalization. These synergies have led to me to operate in the borders of these two literatures when considering issues such as place-based political movements, questions of ethnic/regional identity, and gender in the contemporary world.

At the present time, I am working intensively with colleagues John Paul Jones III (see above), and Oliver Froehling (Centro de Dialogos y Encuentros Interculturales and Universidad de la Tierra, Oaxaca, Mexico) on a National Science Foundation-funded research project titled "Transnational Networks of Non Governmental Organizations." The project has involved, at various stages, UK graduate students Laurel Smith, Sarah Moore, Jamie Winders, David Walker, and Maggie Walker. The research is examining transnational networks linking international and locally based non governmental organizations. Our focus is upon emerging spatial and organizational arrangements and their impact on the operations of both international NGOs (INGOs) and NGOs. The research is empirically centered on selected INGO-NGO networks that link organizations across the globe and include NGOs operating in the southern Mexican state of Oaxaca. Our approach and methodology draw from both economic geography and development studies. Using interview methods refined by economic geographers researching corporations, we are investigating the spatial strategies and managerial practices of the major INGO in each network. Using participant observation and organizational ethnography techniques commonly employed in development studies, we are investigating the day-to-day operations of Oaxaca-based NGOs included in the networks. Overall, the research is aimed at determining if and how NGO involvement in transnational networks matter. Does it structure their form and operations in ways that reinforce geographies of north-south and global-local relations, or are these transnational networks opportunities for NGOs and their communities to engage in more autonomous regional development? Various papers reporting on the research are in the works. Please contact me via e-mail for details.