Globalizing Parisian thought-waves: recent advances in the study of social regulation, politics, discourse and space

Abstract

In recent years, the French regulation approach has heavily infiltrated the research agendas of the social sciences. This has been particularly conspicuous in economic geography, urban and regional analysis and political economy. Within these subdisciplines, some new research inquiries have departed from the original ‘first generation’ concern with economic crisis to analyse a range of issues such as the state form, and local and regional governance. This article reviews several of the more promising analyses which have consciously sought to fill some ‘missing links’ in the ongoing regulationist research project, and which have considerably enhanced our undertaking of the contemporary regulatory milieu. These post-Parisian themes have focused on the process of regulation and its discursive and political constitution; the geography of regulation and spatial scale; and the role of the state in and through the regulatory process. The article concludes with some implications for applying this emergent regulationist agenda to empirically informed research.