The Concentration of Capital in UK Grocery Retailing
‘Postmodernisation’ is introduced as a unifying concept for the set of processes which characterise the development of the space economy in the 1980s. The concept consists in effects which include: an increase in the unevenness of developmental potential between ‘inner’ and ‘outer’ British regions, growing polarisation in income and unemployment indices over space, a shift towards economies of scope by producers, a growing dynamism in localities with large service-class components displaying a privatistic consumption culture, and a growth of casualised and informal labour-market opportunities at the expense of ‘lifetime’ employment. This contrasts with a set of processes characteristic of what may be termed the ‘modernisation’ period circa 1945–1975 in which there was a relatively even spread of developmental opportunities across regional space, there was income and employment convergence, production pursued volume markets and economies of scale, collective consumption provision was socially predominant a...