The Construction of Mainstream Local Economic Initiatives: Mobility, Socialization, and Class Relations

Abstract

The mainstream of local economic initiatives in Western Europe and to a lesser extent the United States embodies mild intervention in production, attention to welfare, and collaborative class relations. Thus, in the midst of national neoliberalism, there is a return to the pragmatic, interventionist politics of the postwar built on class consensus at the local level. In this paper we seek to explain the paradox in terms of the contradictory unities of capital mobility and socialization, of disciplinary class relations and cooperation, of money and productive capital, and their contemporary spatial forms. The spatial ambit of mainstream local economic initiatives is important in mediating these contradictions. Localism has been vital in constructing their cooperative class relations.

Key words:

• local economic initiatives
• capital mobility
• socialization of production
• neoliberalism
• centrism