The double crisis: in what sense a regional problem?

ABSTRACT

We are now facing Andrew Sayer’s ‘diabolical double crisis’, which encompasses both a deep financial crisis and an environmental one. The scale, scope and nature of this double crisis is downplayed in the regional studies literature, much of which still focuses on innovative growth models often divorced from broader social and ecological contexts. To help solve both crises we call for regional studies to explore new models that allow a focus to be made on the most important issues of our time. We illustrate this by focusing on the contradictions in the waste produced by contemporary regional economies: waste of abundance, labour and resources.

KEYWORDS:

• inequality
• climate change
• precarious labour
• waste
• wealth
• redistribution

JEL:

• R11

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The authors thank the Regional Studies Association (RSA) for invitations to present, discuss and debate preliminary work on this topic at Regional Studies-sponsored conferences and workshops. A very preliminary version of this paper was presented at the RSA European Conference, Dokuz Eylül University, Izmir, Turkey, 2014. Many people provided constructive feedback including anonymous journal referees – your thoughtful critiques are greatly appreciated.

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

ORCID

Betsy Donald https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6130-3249

Patricia Mia Gray https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1002-0879

Additional information

Funding

The authors thank the Cambridge Political Economy Trust/Centre for Business Research, University of Cambridge, 2015–18, and the British Academy/Leverhulme Small Research Grant – SRG 2015 Round for research funding which allowed the authors to work on this paper together.