Radical Regions? Space, Time and Gender Relations in Emilia, Provence and South Wales

Abstract

Recent changes in the geography of production in advanced and formerly under-industrialised countries have resulted in some significant adjustments to the socio-spatial structures which became established in the 1950s and 1960s. Amongst the more noteworthy of these have been the growing involvement of women in the labour market, the loss of employment from large cities, especially in manufacturing, the increasing industrialisation of rural areas, and the substantial recomposition of the occupational patterns of workers in regions which were the earliest to industrialise and which became centres of heavy industry. To these could be added the continuing growth of the service industries as sources of employment, the possible move towards a self-service economy, as described by Gershuny (1978), the informal economy (Pahl, 1981) and, stimulated by the present high levels of unemployment, the prospect for many people of a workless state (Showler and Sinfield, 1981). Despite the importance of these tendencies for work to be developing away from manufacturing industry, even, in the face of the new international division of labour, in developing countries (Walton, 1981), this paper will not pay specific attention to non-manufacturing activity.