ABSTRACT
This chapter starts from the position that it is impossible to separate off the question of ‘where’ employment change occurs from the questions of ‘how and why’—in other words that it is impossible to separate geography from production. This is demonstrated in a number of ways. Perhaps most importantly in this paper three different forms of production reorganization are identified, each of which may result in job loss but each of which has different implications for the geography of job loss. Intensification, rationalization and technical change are each argued to have, integral to their definition as forms of production change, different spatial implications. These different geographical implications concern the potential degree of variability of job loss between areas, the likelihood or otherwise of ‘location factors’ being important at all, and even the role of any particular location factor. In other words, it is argued, geographical pattern may be at least as much an outcome of what is going on in production as of any variation in the characteristics of areas and, further, those very characteristics of areas (location factors) may operate differently (have a different impact on location) depending, once again, on what is going on in production. Finally on this subject it is argued that geography itself may affect the kinds of changes adopted in production. The two-geography and production-are genuinely interlinked, and the one cannot really be understood without the other.
