‘By our metaphors you shall know us’: The ‘fix’ of geographical political economy

Abstract

This paper traces the transformative travels of the metaphor of the ‘fix’ across the unbounded terrain of geographical political economy. It argues for taking the fix seriously as a root metaphor of the field, a signifier of its history and theory-cultures. Critically excavating the entwined genealogies of the metaphor and the field, it illuminates several historically successive and thematic moments of ‘fix thinking’, including: the spatial fix (1980s); institutional and spatio-temporal fixes of regulationist-theoretical approaches (1990s); and the scalar fix of state rescaling theory (2000s). It reviews these stages and their broader intellectual and political implications for critical geographical scholarship.

TAKING CITY RANKINGS SERIOUSLY : Engaging with Benchmarking Practices in Global Urbanism

“…Many rankings also include one or more indicators based on citizen perceptions. This ‘perceptual’ approach, now widespread in recent generations of city benchmarks, underpins and underscores an important element which is influencing the direction of urban development internationally: the role that internationally mobile ‘experts’ (Robin, 2018) and ‘global’ urbanists (Bok, 2018) are playing in shaping cities’ needs to be better appreciated and engaged with. Given the clout the views of these ‘experts’ can have—not just on the rankings themselves but on those who use them in cities the world over (as much as within major built environment companies)—we are reminded of the extent to which the contemporary comparative imagination is (and can be) swayed by the influential opinion of those who are considered to speak legitimately about the present and desirable futures of cities.…”

The real estate risk fix: Residential insurance-linked securitization in the Florida metropolis

“…While this paper has purposefully focused on the task of situating ILS within its unique historical geographical juncture, I propose that ILS needs to also be understood as more than yet another instance of financialization, or simply a new frontier for Harveyian ‘fixing’ (Bok, 2018; Johnson, 2015). Instead, I see ILS as a fix for the Harveyian spatial fix, as an expansive assemblage of properties, institutions and regulations, capital flows, and embodied expertise which work in concert to secure specific geographical circuits of property-led accumulation.…”

“…In the context of a broader legacy of ‘fix thinking’ (Bok, 2018) within geographical political economy, two ideas illuminate a path toward understanding ILS as a real estate risk fix: the notion of re/insurance as infrastructure, and attentiveness to the provisionality of this infrastructure.…”

The annihilation of time by space in the COVID-19 pandemic downturn

“…This is a period when geographical political economy, with its focus on the spatialising contradictions of capitalism’s unstable ‘fixes’ (Bok, 2018), has a renewed relevance. But it is also one in which we will need to re-calibrate theories attuned to capitalism’s annihilation of space to a new reality in which the uncertain fixities of space are being reasserted.…”