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International
Journal of Political Science and Development |
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International Journal of Political Science and Development Vol. 3(2), pp. 108–118, February, 2015. DOI: 10.14662/IJPSD2015.012 ISSN: 2360-784X
Research Paper
Going urban: marking cities, city networks and global commodity chains in the capitalist world-system
Alejandro Christian D. Soler
PhD student, Department of Political Science and International Relations University of Delaware. E-mail: csoler@udel.edu
Accepted 20 February 2015
The study of Global Politics has traditionally taken the nation-state,
individual and international system as its units of analysis. This piece
asserts that a glaringly missing unit – the city – is a viable object of
inquiry in the study of globalization and politico-economic processes.
Utilizing the city as a unit of analysis facilitates a more thorough
understanding of the neoliberal capitalist world-economy, which
traditional units of study in international relations tangentially
provide. I posit that actors in cities, from transnational companies to
local officials, deploy power in the form of neoliberal urban policy and
create new and uneven economic geographies, through the organization of
global commodity chains, respectively. I conclude with two propositions:
cities 1) offer a unique explanation and description of power,
inequality, and structure that conventional units of analysis miss out
on, and 2) vivify the reality that capitalism and neoliberal governance
are unquestionably tied to space. Cite This Article As: Soler ACD (2015). Going urban: marking cities, city networks and global commodity chains in the capitalist world-system. Inter. J. Polit. Sci. Develop. 3(2): 108-118.
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