Contesting the State: Discourses of the Asian Economic Crisis and Mediating Strategies of Electronics Firms in Singapore

In the last decade or so, human geographers have paid greater attention to the significance of discourses. We acknowledge the importance of discursive constructions and metaphorical representations of economic space, and extend the argument by examining the practices that may follow from such discourses. With use of empirical data from a firm-level survey and interviews with representatives of electronics firms in Singapore, we focus on contested interpretations of the Asian economic crisis at the firm level: how they might differ from state-driven discourses, and the extent to which state discourses (embodied in ministerial speeches and policy initiatives) were accepted, contested, and negotiated through firm-specific practices. The different counterdiscourses and responses of local and foreign firms are also compared. Results show that discourses at the national (state) scale were challenged and contested by firms within the same national space economy because of such material conditions as firm-specific circumstances, spatial extensiveness of their intrafirm and interfirm networks, and their access to various formal and informal information channels. The sampled firms offerered their own readings of the crisis that often contradicted the effectiveness and usefulness of certain policy responses orchestrated at the national scale. Their abilities to weather the crisis were also differentiated significantly between local and foreign firms. The study therefore highlights the importance of understanding the complex interrelationships between discourses and practices at different spatial scales and their capacity to produce (un)intended geographical outcomes.