Does resistor placement change power dissipation in simple LED circuit?
What matters is the voltage across the terminals of the resistor (as you would measure with a meter connected directly across the resistor). It doesn't matter how the voltage gets there. 

So, no it doesn't matter which order they're connected when they're in series, because the magnitude of the voltage across the resistor will always be the supply voltage minus the LED forward voltage.  

Whether you measure the voltage across the resistor as positive or negative doesn't matter either, since the power dissipation of the resistor is the square of that voltage divided by the resistance.