The imagined economy: Mapping transformations in the contemporary state

This essay explores the hermeneutics of contemporary discourses of 'state', 'economy', and 'global'. First, we trace the ways in which the content of and relationships between these concepts have evolved discursively. Second, we propose an hermeneutic 'map' of the state under globalisation that elucidates the concrete spatial and institutional consequences of these discursive processes. This comprises three interrelated spatio-temporal elements-the offshore, private and anti- economies-producing a dynamic structure that is simultaneously produced by, and reproductive of, discourses of globalisation.