The point is to keep going: the global sub-prime mortgage crisis, local labour market repositioning, and the capital accumulation dynamic in Singapore Kean Fan Lim* *Department of Geography, 1984 West Mall, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada, E-mail: 5 keanfan@interchange.ubc.ca 4 Abstract The global subprime mortgage crisis in 2007–2008 led to an economic recession in Singapore, but the economy recovered strongly to post a 14.5% expansion in 2010. This article examines how labour market repositioning policies contributed to this recovery. Following Karl Polanyi’s conceptualization of the economy as an ‘instituted process’, I explore how these policies function as state-driven redistributive strategies aimed at triggering reciprocal responses from employers and workers within the putatively self-regulatory local labour market. The Singapore case foregrounds the causal roles of place- and time-specific state–firm–labour interactions in precluding what Polanyi calls society’s ‘double movement’ against market-driven regulation. This successful preclusion exemplifies how the conditions and relations of economic production are not reproduced solely through market exchange; to sustain the capital accumulation dynamic, complementary acts of reciprocity and redistribution from different socio-economic stakeholders could be equally, if not more, important. Keywords: Singapore, spatio–temporal fix, local labour market, instituted economy, capital accumulation dynamic, Karl Polanyi JEL classifications: P110, O530, J400 Date submitted: 21 March 2011 Date accepted: 10 October 2011 1. Introduction By many accounts, Singapore is ostensibly what Harvey (2010, 63) describes as a ‘calm spot’ in the global system of capitalism; a location where capital can ‘have its way with relative ease’. Ranked as the world’s easiest place to do business in the World Bank’s Doing Business 2010 report, 1 the Singapore economy has been very open to global flows of capital, commodities and people. 2 Economic calmness, however, does not preclude exposure to and potential destruction by tempests; conversely, the impacts of any sudden turbulence could be more keenly felt. After the subprime mortgage crisis deepened in the USA and parts of the EU in late 2007, Singapore’s economy went into recession shortly 1 See http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings 2 For instance, export demand grew at twice the rate of domestic demand from 2000 to 2008, and exports comprised 55.6% (import-adjusted) of Singapore’s total economic demand for 2008 (Ministry of Trade and Industry, 2009). Journal of Economic Geography 12 (2012) pp. 693–716 doi:10.1093/jeg/lbr039 Advance Access Published on 22 December 2011 ß The Author (2011). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com at The University of British Colombia Library on September 12, 2013 http://joeg.oxfordjournals.org/ Downloaded from