Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: While enterprise zones were originally intended to provide tax incentives to businesses for locating in impoverished neighborhoods, virtually all state programs have changed their zone designation rules to permit the designation of non-distressed areas as enterprise zones. No state is better for examining the dynamics and consequences of the expansion, or un-targeting, of enterprise zones than Ohio which is one of the oldest and most expansive programs. In this paper, we examine three issues. First, if enterprise zones are no longer targeted at economically distressed areas, which areas are designated as enterprise zones? Second, which enterprise zones generate the most new jobs and private investment? Third, we evaluate the performance of zones using developmental, efficiency, and equity criteria to answer the question, where should Ohio designate its enterprise zones? This study does not weigh in on whether state enterprise zone programs work in attracting investment and jobs. Instead, this research seeks to orient the discussion toward the question of who, or to be more accurate “where,” benefits under enterprise zones. Our research contributes to the policy and political debate over the value of spatially targeted economic development programs and the impact of intra-state economic development competition.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper investigates free trade zones (including special economic zones, export processing zones, free trade zones, maquiladoras, and similar designations) as spaces where sovereignty, citizenship, and urban life are being renegotiated within global neo-liberalism. Special economic zones can be thought of as a no-mans land of sorts where politics, law and ethics enter a zone of indeterminacy. These special zones are one example of the state lifting and altering its own laws to create, in effect, a bounded experimental space. In these spaces relations are forged, on the one hand, between key global actors (governments, business networks, labor markets, workers, transnational managers, international financial organizations and non-governmental organizations), and on the other between the sovereign state and its citizens. They appear as new urban spaces while transformative of existing cities, to which they are often attached. The paper will build on an ongoing typology project for free trade zones and focus on two specific cases: the Pearl River Delta in China and the US-Mexican border region. It will combine empirical research into the role of special economic zones within the trajectory of globalization with theoretical and ethical questions on the role of the exception in the making of the rule.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper seeks to examine the relationship between globalization and Islam. Globalization's focus on market forces, new technology and new discources of democracy and human rights have different impacts on parts of the Muslim world. It has become evident that globalization has created two contradictory processes, namely homogenization and fragmentation (localization) of global values, democracy, ethnicity and identity. Islam, as a rich and diverse fiber, empowers Muslims to cope with these issues in different ways. What are major historical, socio-political and economic factors that shape the understanding and manifestation of Islam in different parts of the world? It is asserted that there are different zones of Islam, each of which are framed by their respective national culture and diverse historical experiences. This paper will focus on Iran (as the representative of the Persian Zone) and Saudi Arabia (as the representative of the Arab Zone) and elaborate on the diferences between those two zones in regards to coping with the forces of globalization. The main question is: What significance do reactions of both zones to the forces of globalization have to our understanding of 'globalization' per se?

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study examines two public hearings on a zoning proposal that would allow the construction of a Super Wal-Mart Center on a field over the town’s aquifer. Many citizens speak out against the zoning change due to the risk to the drinking water as well as other issues. Citizens face the speaker’s problem of how to make their presentation convincing given the technical matters involved and that Town Board members have likely already heard about these issues. Some speakers draw on the words of others in their presentation. Using another’s words allows the speaker to cite an authoritative source or to respond to what another has said, to evaluate it, and often to challenge it. Speakers use other devices in addition to quotes such as formulations, repetition, and membership categorizations to develop their evaluative stance in the reporting context. Our focus is the discursive construction and rhetoric of using others’ words for the speaker’s own purposes.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: This paper seeks to interrogate critical gaps in current academic discourse and policy practice regarding the negative impact of globalization, through the agency of private sector actors, in zones of intra-state conflict in the developing world. In particular, it seeks to address the key obstacle to more effective global action on the question of economic complicity in armed conflict. While the negative effects of private sector activities, and their most visible, but far from exclusive agents - Multinational Corporations (MNCs) – have been well-publicized by human rights and environmental groups, the same cannot be said of their effects in conflict zones. Too often, advocates and analysts operate on the assumption that these effects are analogous, and that codes of corporate conduct or corporate responsibility (CSR), developed for the protection of human rights or the environment, can be easily adapted to redress this new set of challenges. In so doing, they neglect the particular ways in which trade and finance affect conflict dynamics, while also obscuring the fact that, while there is a fairly robust international consensus on the complicity of MNCs and other economic actors in labor, human rights, and environmental violations, the same does not apply to private sector activities and the incidence or perpetuation of armed conflict. In truth, there is no international consensus, let alone a global standard, as to what constitutes complicity on the part of economic actors in war-torn, war-prone, or otherwise fragile states. Among the proliferation of international CSR standards, very few deal with the problem of economic actors with commercial operations in zones of potential or actual conflict. Too often the question that they address is what economic actors should do to prevent conflict, rather than what is it they are already doing that actively contributes to the onset or perpetuation or profit from armed conflict. The absence of a clear international norm on this issue has perpetuated normative and legal ambiguity that allows economic actors in conflict zones to operate utter impunity. Proceeding from this analysis, this paper will interrogate conceptions of the complicity of economic actors in conflict settings. Drawing from illustrations commonly cited by advocacy and research, this paper will illustrate the wide normative discrepancy among allegations of corporate complicity, as well as detail how this perpetuates the very problem that demands concerted resolution. Drawing upon some established international and national legal norms, the paper will then proceed by illustrating the ways in which economic activities in conflict zones are already essentially prohibited, even if in ways that are unrecognized and therefore unenforced. The paper concludes with an analysis of the opportunities and challenges for translating these existing norms into practice, such that the impunity that currently pervades economic activities that promote or profit from acts of armed conflict can be more systematically reduced.