In this paper we aspire to develop a situated method in order to interrogate the spaces and subjects of the globalising economy. In our brief review of the social science literatures on economic globalisation, we identify a promising intellectual convergence around the theme of imaginaries. We develop an argument that global imaginaries involve both discourses and practices that are, in turn, constitutive of new spaces and subjects. We identify the particular significance of calculative practices such as benchmarking and allied techniques in constituting global imaginaries in the New Zealand context. We then demonstrate how our method might inform a case study of the globalising retail-banking sector by revealing multiple spaces and subjects. In analysing the emergence of new economic spaces and subjectivities in this way, our aim is to give situated content to the concept of global imaginaries and to make visible the constitutive power of governing practices.

Davies, K. K., K. T. Fisher, M. E. Dickson, S. F. Thrush, and R. Le Heron. 2015. Improving ecosystem service frameworks to address wicked problems. Ecology and Society 20(2): 37.http://dx.doi.org/10.5751/ES-07581-200237

What might geography in ‘the universities’ look like if geographers seriously confronted the growing dichotomy between research and teaching? This challenge goes to the heart of ‘the university’ as a site of learning. The authors argue that the globalizing character of higher education gives urgency to re-charting the university as an environment that prioritizes co-learning as the basis for organizing educational activities in geography and potentially beyond discipline boundaries. By co-learning is meant systematic approaches to maximizing the synergies between research and teaching activities to capitalize on prior learning and experiences of all involved. The authors' argument is that feedback gained through co-learning will reshape the nature and quality of both research and teaching environments as we know them. Four methodological framings of co-learning, derived from established practice in geography, are presented, to highlight possible directions of development that are especially strategic in the current context of globalizing higher education. It is suggested that with strategies that explicitly maximize co-learning, the development of geography could occur in distinctive ways that would not happen if research and teaching were progressed in isolation.

This paper seeks to open up what economic geographers think they can do as academics engaging in the policy realm. It draws on the author's role as an academic and his policy persona as academic expert and academic with expertise that has been guided by post‐structural political economy (PSPE) thinking. It is Auckland‐centred, situated in three trajectories: PSPE thought and practice developing at the University of Auckland, the Auckland Regional Economic Development Strategy (AREDS) trajectory of the Auckland Regional Council and Auckland City Council's sustainability trajectory. The paper recovers in PSPE terms dimensions of two 2006 policy moments, those of the Metropolitan Auckland Project (MAP) and the Mayoral Taskforce on Sustainable Development (MTSD), in which the author participated. Placing intellectual (PSPE) and policy trajectories (growth and sustainability) into conversation allows a unique exploration of co‐constitutive dimensions between academy and policy worlds. Conceptually and methodologically, the moments in the policy trajectories are accessed by (i) analytic description of the policy trajectory from the outside in terms of academic understandings of institutional processes and (ii) in‐the‐room deliberations about policy decision possibilities. New insights about academy‐policy relations emerge from the PSPE focus on rooms and moments.