Geographies of Economic Resilience
Chay Brooks (Sheffield), Nick Williams (Leeds) and Tim Vorley (Sheffield)
There has been a growing interest in the concept of economic resilience in recent years, however its conceptual contours still remain unclear (Martin et al 2016). Resilience however has become a means for both academics and policy makers to unpack the causes and effects of uneven development of regional economies (Martin, 2012; Boschma, 2015). Resilience research has focused on the ability of regional economies to recover from external shocks and react to crises and social change. The diverse geography of resilience has been widely attributed to the competitiveness of the business base, although the presence of a highly skilled and mobile labour force, formal and informal business (support) associations, and local inter-firm networks and entrepreneurial activity have also been identified as important critical factors in the shaping of resilience (Pendall et al, 2010).
The aim of these sessions are to explore how the geographies of resilience are shaped by different factors. As the concept of economic resilience has come to the fore in the social sciences, and economic geography in particular, there is a need to develop the foundations of this fuzzy concept. As opposed to ‘concept stretching’ (Shaw, 2012), we contend that the there is an opportunity in economic geography to refine and develop the concept of resilience theoretically and empirically. To this end the session invites conceptual and methodological contributions that explore different spaces and scales of economic resilience, with a view to better understand how individuals, organisatons and economies to prepare, absorb and respond to exogenous shocks.
We invite papers related, but not limited to the following topics:
• The role of entrepreneurship in shaping economic resilience
• New methodological approaches to understanding resilience and entrepreneurship
• The impacts of public policy in shaping resilience
• Entrepreneurship and resilience in non-western societies
• The role of social entrepreneurship in shaping resilience
• Institutions, resilience and entrepreneurship
• Historical research on entrepreneurship and resilience
• Entrepreneurship and resilience in spaces of crisis and conflict
Those interested in participating should email an abstract of no more than 250 words [log in to unmask] by 1st October 2016, and selected session participants must also formally submit their abstract online by the AAG deadline, October 29th 2016.
References
Boschma R., 2015. “Towards an evolutionary perspective on regional resilience” Regional Studies 49 733-751.
Martin R., Sunley P., Gardiner B. and Tyler P., 2016. “How regions react to recessions: resilience and the role of economic structure” Regional Studies 50 561-585.
Martin R, 2012, “Regional Economic Resilience, Hysteresis and Recessionary Shock” Journal of Economic Geography 12 1–32
Pendall R, Forster K A, Cowell M, 2010, “Resilience and Regions: Building Understanding of the Metaphor” Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society 3 71–84
Shaw, K. (2012). Reframing resilience: challenges for planning theory and practice. Planning Theory & Practice 13, pp. 208–212.
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