out, the (re-)emergence of flexibility as a dom-
inant regime of accumulation in the late 1970s
and 1980s was associated with instability in
the economies of developed countries and
competition fromthird worldindustrializing
nations that could mass-produce standardized
goods cheaply. For McDowell (1991), it was
also a change in the basic societal conditions –
such as the increasing disappearance of the
nuclear family as the standard domestic unit
and the increasing entrance of women into
the labour force – that challenged the many
of the ideals underlying the Fordist regime of
accumulation and led to the growth in impor-
tance of flexible accumulation. However,
Gertler (1988) cautions against assuming that
this means that flexible accumulation replaced
Fordist modes of accumulation; rather, flex-
ible accumulation re-emerged in this period as
the dominant regime in developed countries
(see also Norcliffe, 1997).
For geographers, flexible accumulation is
associated with what Storper (1997b) refers
to as the ‘resurgence of theregion’inindus-
trial geography. Because of the need for
continuous innovation and rapid adaptation
to changes in consumer demands, trusting
relationships with numerous suppliers who
can provide components just in time and
expertise that facilitatesinnovationis import-
ant. At the same time, flexible accumulation
requires producers to have access to a pool of
skilled labour, something that can often be
found in specialized regions or clusters,
where complementary industries exist.
Examples include Motorsport Valley in
Oxfordshire, UK (Henry and Pinch, 2001),
Silicon Valley in California, USA (Saxenian,
1994), and Santa Croche in Italy (specializing
in leather production: see Amin, 1989). jf
Suggested reading
Cooke (1988).
flows A name for movements between
relatively fixed nodes innetworks, flows can
be ofcommodities,money, people, energy or
even ideas. In the 1980s and 1990s, a series of
developments in both theory and global rela-
tions made reference to ‘flows’ increasingly
common in a wide range of academic fields.
In theoretical arguments, long-standing
Marxist concerns with explaining economic
processesintermsofthecircuitofcapitalcame
to be critically supplemented with Foucauldian
and other post-structuralist arguments
about the need to understandidentityand
powerin terms of the flow of power through
social relations. Though it is often forgotten,
the jargon of deterritorialization developed by
the French–Italian philosophical duo Deleuze
andGuattari(1983)wasjustsuchanepistemo-
logicalintervention: not an empirical claim
about the geography ofpostmodernity, but a
postmodern psychoanalytical argument about
the need to follow diverse flows of desire and
thereby critique containerized concepts of the
human psyche in modern ego-psychoanalysis
(cf.psychoanalytic theory). More generally,
the critical import of treating power in terms of
micro-flows did have implications for theories
ofspace(seeproduction of space). Just as
marxist geographyhad challenged absolutist
and fixed assumptions about space in econom-
ics by exploring capital as value in motion in
global and urban landscapes (Harvey, 1999
[1982]), so in turn did the ideas of Foucault
help inspire new approaches to politics that
challenged spatial yet geographically dead con-
cepts ofplacesand individuals simply holding
power over powerless multitudes (Sharp,
Routledge, Philo and Paddison, 2000). Power
had to be rethought relationally in terms of the
flows of ideas and interactions that created
people (in different ways in different spaces) as
both agents and subjects, a notable implication
being that sites ofsubjectivityformation could
thereby be reconceptualized as historical geog-
raphiesoftruthandpower(e.g.Clayton,2000).
Applied to human–environment relations too
and supplemented further by the work of
feministscholars (Haraway, 1991) andsci-
ence studies(Latour, 1988), even the most
concrete and stilled naturallandscapes– such
as the dammed waterscapes offormerly flowing
rivers – could be rethought this way as flows
of knowledge, power, capital and energy
coming together inhybridformations in differ-
ent ways in different contexts (White, 1995;
Swyngedouw, 1999, 2007).
In addition to these epistemological interests
in the overdetermined landscapes of flow,
worldwideeventsassociatedwithrecentrounds
of capitalistglobalizationhave also brought
attention to the increasing flows of commod-
ities, capital, information and people across
borders. For example, the growth of cross-
border flows of internationaltrade(especially
their increasing size as a proportion of world
GDP) provides a key index of increasing global
economic interdependency, an index that is
only eclipsed in its significance by the even
more rapid acceleration of cross-border
investmentflows (foreign direct investment)
as a sign of the growing importance and
independence oftransnational corporationsGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_F Final Proof page 257 31.3.2009 1:20pmFLOWS