Spaces of practice in advanced business services: rethinking London ^Frankfurt relations

This paper explores the relevance of Bourdieu's 1980 spatial theorisation in Le Sens Pratique (The Logic of Practice 1990, Polity Press, Cambridge) for understanding intercity relations in contemporary globalisationöspecifically, interdependencies between Castells's `space of flows' and `places' in advanced business services. Bourdieu's relational concepts are reviewed with reference to evidence from in-depth interviews with business actors in London and Frankfurt at the time of European Economic Monetary Union. The intention is to deepen understanding of emergent relations between the cities and, in so doing, to contribute to the reinterpretation of Bourdieu's input to geographical thinking. doi:10.1068/d410t (1) On London and Frankfurt see Beaverstock et al (2001a; 2001b; 2003; 2005; 2006), Hoyler and Pain (2001). On the City of London see Cook et al (2007), Taylor et al (2003). On northwest Europe see Hall and Pain (2006), Pain (2006; 2007a), Pain and Hall (2007). Context of the London ^ Frankfurt study The premise for the 2000 ^ 01 London ^Frankfurt study was that the introduction of the euro and the decision to locate the European Central Bank (ECB) in Frankfurt, with London outside the EMU, would lead to a change in relations between these leading UK and German financial centres (Beaverstock et al, 2001a). The international financial press reported events at the time as though a major international conflict was taking place, with an intense battle between the cities. But interviews with senior business decision makers in leading global financial and business service firms in each city immediately revealed a very different unwar-like narrative. Contrary to media representations, the euro and ECB location were seen as irrelevant to London ^Frankfurt relations. The research therefore became an exploration, not of a politically triggered rebalancing between the cities as expected but of an altogether more complex interrelationship. The theoretical framework for the study reflects Castells's (1996) theorisation of cities as a `process' in which networks of advanced service firmsöfirst identified by Sassen (1991; 1994) as key agents in globalisationöare generators of `global-city' interlinkages (Taylor et al, 2002). Sassen has emphasised the role of global cities as centres of spatial concentration associated with the global dispersal and integration of economic activity. Simultaneous internationalisation and centralisation of multinational company (MNC) command-and-control functions has been mirrored by their supporting financial and specialised business services, making selected global cities, including London and Frankfurt, key foci for knowledge, power, and wealth in the world economy. Importantly, Sassen has seen the historical legacy of development as privileging some cities over others as sites of concentration, leading to the ``placeboundedness of significant components of the global information economy'' (Sassen, 1995; 1999, page 7). According to this perspective, place is therefore prioritised in the production and reproduction of global cities. In spite of the transformation in information and communication technologies (ICTs), Sassen has suggested that `̀ even the most advanced information industries have a production process that is partly place-bound'' (2000, page 1). In contrast, Castells has focused attention on the relationships between cities made possible by advanced telecommunications. For Castells, `̀ advanced services ... are at the core of all economic processes ... all can be reduced to knowledge generation and information flows'' (2000, page 409). Under conditions of globalisation, the business districts of cities are ``information-based, value-production complexes'': `̀ localities do not disappear, but become integrated in regional networks that link up their most dynamic sectors'' (page 412). Thus, `̀ the global city is not a place, but a process ... by which centres of production and consumption of advanced services ... are connected in a global network'' (page 417). A crucial distinction between Sassen's and Castells's theorisations has therefore been Castells's emphasis on global cities, not as places of concentration but as characterised by `̀ the structural domination of the space of flows'' (page 429). Building on these perspectives, the study has conceptualised global cities as foci of connectivity within a space of interactionöin other words, while cities have a material form, they are increasingly defined by flows. Parallel quantitative research (Taylor et al, 2002) has attempted to measure London ^ Frankfurt intercity linkages using Internet data on the location, size, and command-and-control functions of offices in multicity advanced service networksö banking/finance, accountancy, insurance, legal, management consulting, and advertising services. The premise has been that the presence of multiple service networks in global cities constructs c̀onnectivity' and informational linkages between them in a `global-city network'. Significantly, analysis based on 2000 data revealed 2 K Pain