The globalisation of high technology production : society, space, and semiconductors in the restructuring of the modern world

The global operations of transnational corporations, particularly in areas of high technology, are among the most striking features of the new international economic order. This book analyzes how the production of high technology commodities has shifted from a regional to a global scale, and challenges existing notions of the international stratification of societies and their developmental possibilities. Focusing on the production of semi-conductors in California, Scotland and the developing societies of East Asia, Jeffrey Henderson demonstrates that semi-conductor and similar forms of high technology production constitute a new mode of industrialization with new implications for economic and social development. He shows that a distinct regional division of labour is emerging in the developing countries of East Asia, with its own cores and peripheries, and concludes that conventional ways of understanding how transnational corporations organize their global operations, the significance of state policy and the consequences these have, need to be re-thought radically. This book should be of interest to lecturers and students of geography, development studies, sociology, economics, business and management studies.

1. A New Mode of Industrialisation 2. The International Division of Labour, Industrial Change and Territorial Development: Theoretical and Methodological Issues 3. Semi-conductor Production: Labour Processes, Markets and the Determinants of Globalisation 4. East Asia: The Emergent Regional Division of Labour 5. Hong Kong: The Making of a Regional Core 6. Scotland: The European Connection 7. Prospects for Globalisation and Development 8. Semi-conductors, Development and the Changing International Division of Labour.