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Power and Scale: The Shifting Geography of Industrial Relations Law in Australia
Author(s) -
Weller Sally
Publication year - 2007
Publication title -
antipode
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 2.177
H-Index - 98
eISSN - 1467-8330
pISSN - 0066-4812
DOI - 10.1111/j.1467-8330.2007.00558.x
Subject(s) - neoliberalism (international relations) , scope (computer science) , scale (ratio) , context (archaeology) , power (physics) , politics , sociology , economic geography , legislation , political economy , perspective (graphical) , political science , law and economics , economic system , epistemology , law , geography , economics , mathematics , physics , cartography , archaeology , quantum mechanics , computer science , programming language , philosophy , geometry
In an increasingly complex literature exploring the geographies of socially constructed scale, interest has focused on the relationship between scale, power and the contested political terrains through which these relations are played out. In this paper, I argue that these interactions must be understood in specific contexts, where shifts in scale are inextricably linked to shifts in the sources and instruments of power. By applying a scale perspective to the analysis of recent industrial relations legislation in Australia, I show that the nature and direction of rescaling is “fixed” by the powers of institutional actors and the scope of their jurisdictions. I then draw on the distinctively scaled relations of the Australian context to assess the extent to which Australia's national rescaling processes can be seen as representing a process of convergence toward universal “spaces of neoliberalism”.