Critical studies of globalization seek to unmask how this stage of capitalist history reshapes patterns of uneven development around the world. While globalization can reproduce long-standing patterns of North–South unequal exchange, in this paper, I focus on how capital mobility and competition contribute to uneven development. Drawing primarily on Neil Smith’s theory of uneven development, I offer a theoretical discussion of how capital’s capacity to seesaw from place to place in its search for higher profits—and the spatial competition between places that this capacity triggers—constitutes a source of unevenness. Regions, nations, and localities adapt to capital’s seesaw by offering, among others, cheaper labor and lower environmental regulation costs. While this can work for a time, advantages are either eroded by the unfolding contradictions of capitalism or competed away by the emergence of new areas. In the last section, I offer a tentative illustration of this argument with a brief examination of pollution havens and Special Economic Zones.
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