1.   A key concept in understanding such major shifts, and relating them to wider economic change, is uneven development.

2.   But uneven development does not simply mean that types and quantities of physical and social phenomena vary from place to place.

3.   The former argues the case of viewing relations between central and local government in terms of tensions generated by uneven development.

4.   Uneven development can change in both its pattern and its form over time.

5.   But it is the realm of production itself which is seen by this perspective as lying at the heart of capitalism and uneven development.

6.   So Massey sees relations and changes in the realm of employment as key starting points for understanding uneven development.

7.   Its prime starting-point is that of uneven development of class relations.

8.   Uneven development implies, of course, that class relations take quite distinct forms in, say, the USA, Britain, Sweden or Japan.

9.   The first concerns the continuing insistence that class and class-based processes are necessarily the principal mechanisms underlying uneven development and social change.