Apologies for cross-posting
Second Call for papers:
RGS-IBG Annual Conference,London 31 August – 2 September 2005
Session title: New economic geographies of global knowledge production
Session convenors: James Faulconbridge and Sarah Hall, Department of
Geography, Loughborough University.
Discussant: Dr Neil Coe, Department of Geography, Manchester University
Context:
In recent years the ‘knowledge economy’ has attracted increased interest
across the social sciences. Within several powerful popular, academic and
political discourses, economic geographers have pointed to the spatiality
of knowledge and knowledge production through concepts such as ‘learning
regions’. They have also highlighted the stretching of knowledge and
learning, particularly by global firms, through processes such as
expatriation, the globalization of business rhetoric and management models
and most recently through a spatialised sociology of learning.
Nonetheless, comparatively little research has been undertaken on the
spatial dimension of a global ‘knowledge economy’ and there is little
consideration of how knowledge is produced in and between important cites
in the global economy. Moreover, little critical attention has been paid
to the value or cost to businesses of knowledge rich environments and an
ability to interconnect such environments through global knowledge flows.
This session will address these silences through consideration of a range of
empirical, theoretical and methodological approaches to understanding what
constitutes knowledge in the contemporary global economy and how it is
produced and moves in, and between places. Potential topics might include,
but are not limited to:
· Methodological innovations for researching contemporary ‘knowledges in
practice and production’
· The production and management of knowledge within and between different
sites of firms, both manufacturing or service related.
· Critical approaches to knowledge and its links with illegal business
practices such as conflict of interest cases and money laundering.
·Critical analyses of the spatial constraints and/or stretching of learning
as a social process and organizational strategies to deal with such
factors.
·Discussions of theoretical frameworks such as actor-network theory and
relational economic geographies and their role in analysing the spatiality
of knowledge and learning.
Please send expressions of interest, abstracts of no more than 200 words and
5 keywords to both convenors: [log in to unmask] and
[log in to unmask] by Friday 21 January 2005.
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James R Faulconbridge
Department of Geography
Loughborough University
Loughborough
Leicestershire
LE11 3TU
UK
Telephone: +44 (0)7763 060608
www.lboro.ac.uk/departments/gy
www.lboro.ac.uk/gawc
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