Knowledge Economy: Spatial Approaches

Abstract

Knowledge economy can be defined in several ways. It is abstract yet concrete, a thing and a process, structured by practices and structuring societal practices, imagined and material, economic and political, theorized and experienced. As a scholarly abstraction, it has been debated under many rubrics, such as knowledge-based economy, intangible economy, knowledge capitalism, learning economy, cognitive capitalism, new economy, information economy, and creative economy. The knowledge economy is nonetheless customarily used to denote the socio-spatial organization of late capitalism since 1980s. In this context, knowledge and creativity are highlighted in the economic production process at the expense of physical resources and manual labor. The knowledge economy has been extensively studied from the perspective of social sciences. The emergence of thematic journals such as the Journal of the Knowledge Economy indicates at least a gradual institutionalization of the knowledge economy as an interdisciplinary field of study. The geographical literature on the knowledge economy includes two main and partly overlapping strands. Economic geographical literature conceptualizes the knowledge economy as both spatial innovation systems and as knowledge creation and transfer. A critical political economy approach, in turn, examines the knowledge economy as connected to urban transformation, the state, and geopolitics.