Knowledge, Space, Economy

John Bryson, Peter Daniels, Nick Henry, Jane Pollard

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2002
• eBook ISBN: 9781134656776
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

We are now living through a period of knowledge capitalism in which, as Castells put it, 'the action of knowledge upon knowledge is the main source of productivity.' In the face of such transformation, the economic, social and institutional contours of contemporary capitalism are being reshaped. At the heart of this world are an emergent set of economies, regions, institutions and peoples central of the flows and translations of knowledge. This book provides an interdisciplinary review of the triad of knowledge, space, economy on entering the twenty-first century. Drawing on a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, the first part of the book comprises a set of statements by leading authors on the role of knowledge in capitalism. Thereafter, the remaining two parts of the book explore the landscape of knowledge capitalism through a series of analyses of knowledge in action within a range of economic, political and cultural contexts. Bringing together a set of authors from across the social sciences, this book provides both a major theoretical statement on understanding the economic world and an empirical exemplification of the power of knowledge in shaping the spaces and places of today's society.

1 Introduction

John R. Bryson, PeterW. Daniels,
Nick Henry and Jane Pollard

The knowledge-driven economy is not only a new set of high-tech industries such as software and biotechnology, which are built on a science base. Nor is it only a set of new technologies — information technology and the Internet. It is about a set of new sources of competitive advantage that apply to all industries, high-tech and low-tech, manufacturing and services, retailing and agriculture. The key to our competitiveness is how we combine, marshal and commercialise our know-how.

(Observer, 30 July 1998)

Capturing some of the more populist representations of current economic transformation, the writer in The Observer reflects one of a number of recent appeals to the growing significance of knowledge in contemporary capitalism (see, for example, Coyle 1997; Drucker 1993; Leadbeater 1999). A key argument developed in these literatures is the suggestion that economic competitiveness is now bound up not with new materials per se but with new ways of producing, using and combining diverse knowledges; the same ingredients, in essence, can be rearranged in new, and better, recipes. In similar vein, these arguments are to be found in academic commentaries on economic transformation. A selection of these might include, for example, Lash and Urry (1994) on economies of sign and space, Lundvall and Johnson (1994) on the learning economy, Quah (1996) on dematerialisation and Thrift (1998a) on soft capitalism. It is now clear that in a number of disciplines, including geography, sociology, economics, cultural studies, management, psychology and policy studies, there is a growing acceptance that flows and translations of knowledge are integral to understanding contemporary global capitalisms.

The recognition of knowledge as a factor in the production and reproduction of economies and societies can be traced to the influential work of Daniel Bell (1973) which was informed by the perceived shift from manufacturing to services. More recently, the work of Manuel Castells (1996) on ‘informational capitalism’ has focused further attention on the growing importance of knowledge in contemporary capitalist societies. His ‘informational capitalism’ signals the importance of innovation, knowledge and learning in a globalising, rapidly evolving economy. Castells has been a key advocate, arguing that while information and knowledge have always been important for economic growth, we have entered an era in which the ability of firms, regions, nations and labour to produce, circulate and apply knowledge are fundamental to their competitiveness. Indeed, information and knowledge are now viewed as components and products of production processes in numerous sectors, not only in so called ‘high-technology’ sectors. Thus, ‘informational capitalism’ is not about the growth of a post-industrial information processing sector (à la Bell's sectoral approach). Rather, all departments, sectors and sub-sectors of the economy are, or are becoming, informational in the sense that information and knowledge are widely embodied in the work process and accessed through the increasing powers of information technologies.

An ubiquitous feature of this literature is the nagging recognition that knowledge is a very slippery concept. What is knowledge? What is it to know? What differentiates knowledge from information? Has the importance of various knowledges altered over the last 20 years, and if so in what ways? All of these are key questions to which it is only possible to construct partial answers.

In this volume, we focus on the nexus of knowledge, space and economy. In so doing, we concentrate on three themes. First, we examine different forms of what are construed as ‘economic knowledges’, that is knowledges that are deemed central to constructing competitive advantage in contemporary capitalism. Such a remit leads into several areas of inquiry: what forms do economic knowledges take?; how are different knowledges — geopolitical, regulatory, technical, consumer and genetic, to give only a few ([a-zA-Z]+) — ([a-zA-Z]+) economic either indirectly (through their production, appropriation and use by firms) or directly through their commodification?; how is the production and circulation of economic knowledges mediated by power?

Second, if economic knowledges are being made, then they are made in space and place. How do space and place make knowledges ‘economic’? What are the spatialities of different economic knowledges? How are different forms of economic knowledge produced, mobilised and translated? What are the geographies of these processes? What are the geographies of the knowledge-space-economy?

Third, although the editors’ disciplinary background is economic geography, we believe it is vital to encourage an interdisciplinary research agenda around the notion of knowledge, space, economy. Thus, we have brought together a group of scholars from a range of social science disciplines to explore the meaning and interpretation of knowledge in the contemporary space economy. The sheer diversity of knowledges that are of economic significance, and their contested nature, is conveyed via the different disciplinary backgrounds of the contributors.

The knowledge-space-economy nexus

Although different authors are grappling with different conceptions of knowledge and its production, there are perhaps a number of cognate features of what we might call ‘knowledge economies’. Hodgson (1999: 181–2) considers five developments that have heightened the importance attached to knowledge production, use and circulation: (1) processes of production and their products are becoming more complex and sophisticated; (2) increasingly advanced knowledge and skills are being required in many processes of production; (3) there is an increasing reliance on specialist and idiosyncratic skills; (4) the use and transfer of information is becoming more extensive and important for economic activities; and (5) there is increasing uncertainty in contemporary economic life.

Knowledge economies seem to be characterised by the de-materialisation of production, a shift away from dealing with raw materials and machines toward dealing with other minds; there is a shift from ‘action-centred to intellectual skills’ (Hodgson, 1999: 184). There is also a shift away from physical dexterity and skills to mental processing ability (see also Reich 1991a). The term ‘knowledge economies’ is also intended to capture a sense of accelerating technological change and, related to this, the need for continuous innovation. This acceleration of technological change, and the associated growth of information available to firms, organisations and other agents, is also, it seems, bound up with growing uncertainty. In a rapidly changing world of increasing complexity, predicting future events becomes ever more difficult (Beck 1992). Thus, a more ‘knowledge intensive’ economy is one in which the ability to learn is an important aspect of competitiveness (Porter 1990; Drucker 1993).

If it is accepted that the production and translation of different forms of economic knowledges is of increasing importance in contemporary capitalism (for a critique of this approach see Hudson 2000), then a series of key questions arise concerning the production and distribution of knowledge in economic networks. Contrary to neoclassical economic theory, there are seemingly wide variations in the capacities of firms to create, circulate and manage knowledge. Knowledges and the ability to commodify them are unevenly distributed.

Some of the early attempts to examine knowledge-based economies focused on the changing role of information technologies and the possibilities for such technologies to erode the ‘friction of distance’. This would, goes the argument, lead to the spatial dispersion of many functions and, in essence, signal the ‘end’ of geography (see O’Brien 1992). Prioritised, implicitly and explicitly, in such writing was an emphasis on the ‘hardware’ of information transmission and its diminishing costs in real terms as technologies evolve rapidly. In addition to the technologically determinist bent of such writings, there was also a focus on traded flows of what is now commonly called codified or explicit knowledges, as opposed to tacit, know-how forms of knowledge.

In line with criticisms about globalisation and the end of geography, however, (see, for example, Martin 1994a), the reinvigorated importance of place in contemporary economic times has come to the fore and many have turned to knowledge-based explanations to explain agglomeration or clustering. Invoking high-tech milieu, financial and business services or craft-based industrial districts, these explanations have tended to emphasise the idiosyncratic quality to relationships or transactions between firms (see Scott 1988). More recently, there have been more explicit elaborations of the non-codified, tacit nature of productive knowledges, many of which are untraded (Storper and Salais 1997). Implicit in these arguments is the suggestion that tacit knowledges may not travel well and, significantly, that certain spatialities may help or hinder the production and translation of different forms of economic knowledge.

Many of the chapters in this volume contribute to these debates concerning knowledge-space issues and, most especially, the relationship between forms of knowledge, alternative spatialities of knowledge and different paths of knowledge territorialisation. Several contributions explore the analytical foundations of the knowledge-space-economy through discussion of, for example, the archetypal innovative high technology cluster, drawing on tacit, localised, technologically-based knowledges. Others provide analyses of a variety of economic systems tracing characteristic flows of knowledge and their implications for changing organisational geographies.

A number of distinctive elements emerge from the volume. First, some authors problematise the (still) productivist bias to the identification of knowledge, considering consumer, as well as producer, knowledges, and circuits and networks as well as linear flows. Second, knowledge is often characterised as either tacit or codified, leading to its subsequent ‘mapping’ on to the grid of global-local space. Whilst this approach is discernible in several contributions, others visualise ‘local’ knowledges as comprising a mix of near and far, proximate and distanciated knowledge flows. Third, this collection is testimony to the eclecticism of different disciplines as they grapple with the emerging contours of the knowledge-space-economy. Most especially, this broadening of the spatial matrix of economic knowledge contributes to the ongoing conceptual reassessment of ‘the economic’ and ‘the economy’ (Crang 1997; Thrift and Olds 1996; Amin and Thrift 2000). Increasingly apparent in recent social science literatures about knowledge, is recognition that the metaphors used to think about the economy are changing as its socio-cultural construction is acknowledged. In this vein, the chapters of the book explore the knowledge-space-economy nexus through objects as diverse as the cultural industries, international geo-politics and concepts of the self.

The structure of the book

The themes highlighted around the knowledge-space-economy nexus are developed through three parts. Part I charts the current state of (interdisciplinary) thinking on the changing role of knowledges in capitalism. These chapters, from authors with backgrounds in Geography, Management, Sociology and Economics, exemplify some of the ways and senses in which economic knowledges are being discussed in different disciplines. Recurring themes include acceptance of the significance of knowledge in the economy, privileging of particular forms of knowledge, and the material forms, impacts and implications of different knowledges for objects and actors within contemporary economy and society.

There are two further parts to the book. These draw from and illustrate many of the issues examined in Part I from two different, but related, vantage points.Part II comprises a range of theoretically informed case studies that reveal knowledges at work in space and place. Specifically, these chapters through their focus on organisations, explore the diversity of couplings between knowledge, economy and space as diverse forms of knowledge are made ‘economic’ in time and space.

The focus changes in Part III to consider some of the ways in which individuals contribute to the production, consumption and translation of knowledges. Again, some of the themes highlighted in Part I — such as the growing importance of knowledge and uncertainty in contemporary life — are revisited. With all the uncertainties of the contemporary moment what emerges in this part are some of the difficulties and partialities involved in ‘knowing’ and, indeed, the difficulties that can be encountered in attempting to change patterns and forms of knowledge exchange.

Part I Knowledge, space, economy

Beginning with a geographer's view of knowledge-space-economy, John Allen addresses current commentaries on the spatiality of economic knowledge. He argues for a variety of configurations, shapes and forms that knowledge, and most particularly economic knowledges, may take. Specifically, he suggests that for all the plurality of forms of economic knowledge, cognitive knowledges have enjoyed a relatively privileged position (see Howells below). Allen draws on Foucault's work on knowledge and power to highlight how cognitive knowledge has become the ‘obvious’ knowledge of the contemporary knowledge-based economy — highly prized, highly valued and associated with a select set of economic activities and labour. He argues that the acceptance of such cognitive-based accounts of economic knowledge excludes or downgrades the contribution of a variety of other ‘knowledge’ activities and sectors (broadcasting media or advertising, for example) and impedes efforts to unravel current processes of economic transition. His chapter urges us to acknowledge that there is more than one type of symbolic activity that constitutes economic knowledge and he uses the writing of Cassirer (1979) to highlight the important contribution of aesthetic and expressive, as well as cognitive, knowledge within the economy.

In making this argument, Allen reflects on how it is only cognitive forms of economic knowledge that have become the centre of attention in delineating the contemporary space economy. Furthermore, he articulates the way in which this form of economic knowledge has become enfolded within the widely accepted dichotomy of tacit and explicit knowledge, with its subsequent geographical mapping on to the global—local scale.

Drawing on literatures from the sociology of scientific knowledge, particularly the the oretical perspective of actor network theory, John Law and Kevin Hetherington also focus on the spatialities of the contemporary economy. They do not question the merits or otherwise of the claims about the information economy promulgated by Castells (1996), Bell (1973) and others but, rather, they reflect on how these structures might come into being. Law and Hetherington argue that it may not be wise to consider the transmission of information or global capital flows à la Castells without simultaneously asking specific questions about how the materiality of these relations is achieved and how it is sustained. Actor network theory is used to ‘read’ how objects, subjects, and processes are bound together relationally to produce knowledge(s). The performance of these networks determines the influence (power) of knowledge (see also the chapters by Allen and Odih and Knights). Further, they argue that knowing the global is always the product of the local, of a place and its particular materiality. Through an account of the materiality of knowing, Law and Hetherington sketch a conception of the economy with its knowing locations, points of passage, and active making of space through performance. As such, they conclude that if proper account is taken of material semiotics and the performed spatialities implied, then the concept of ‘globalisation’ is a misleading catch-all phrase that implies the presence of one global system or all-embracing space-time box within which ‘knowing’ is located. This, they suggest, misses the materiality of the ‘global order’ and the complex spatialities implied in its enactment. To their mind, there are a variety of configurations of knowledge, space, economy produced as part of materially heterogeneous networks of near and far, human and non-human.

Jeremy Howells, by contrast, employs a neo-Schumpeterian perspective to explore the specifics of the key relationship between knowledge and innovation and its centrality to firm performance. He concurs with the argument for a historical process involving the increasing volume, spread and speed of knowledge and highlights the recognition of this trend by those involved with the management and organisation of firms. Knowledge and innovation are viewed today as vital determinants of organisational competence and capability. This is best understood, he argues, by exploring the way in which knowledge activity is situated within the firm — the firm as a knowledge repository/generator — and the ways in which innovation and knowledge are shaped by the internal and external relationships of the firm. The problem for the firm is how to harness the knowledge and information embodied in its individual workers for the corporate benefit and for the good of effective collaboration with external suppliers and clients. The construction of an effective organisational ‘memory’ is one requirement; although knowledge is a relational, individual-centred concept (‘the knowing self’), the ultimate objective is shared understanding.

In essence, Howells narrows the spatial focus to investigate the spatialities of knowledge production in innovative firms. This chapter highlights the geographical context of the innovative firm by drawing on the increasingly common characterisation between tacit, local knowledge and codified, ubiquitous knowledge (see Allen above).

As with previous rounds of technological transformation, the emergence of new information and communication technologies prompts questions about the changing spatialities of the generation and circulation of forms of productive knowledge.

For some commentators, the telecommunications revolution of the knowledge space economy presages ‘the end of geography’. By contrast, Castells (1996) was at pains to highlight the geo-politics of the informational economy such that the variable geometry of the informational economy is shaped by the actions and responses of nation states. This changing form and function of the state in a globalising, knowledge-driven economy is the subject of the chapter by Bob Jessop.

For Jessop, writing from a disciplinary background in sociology, knowledge must be characterised, like labour, as a fictitious commodity. Its valorisation of what he terms the ‘extra-economic’ is merely one contradiction of several which knowledge capitalism will face. This is no different to previous capitalist periods that have also faced similar contradictions. Uncertain of what the after-Fordist regime may entail, Jessop's summation is that there wil...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Full Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Contributors
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Introduction
• PART I Knowledge, space, economy
• PART II Knowledge at work in space and place
• PART III Becoming in the (k)now: spaces of identity
• Bibliography
• Index