In Architectures of Knowledge, Ash Amin and Patrick Cohendet argue that the time is right for research to explore the relationship between two other dimensions of knowledge in order to explain the innovative performance of firms: between knowledge that is 'possessed' and knowledge that is 'practiced' generally within communities of like-minded employees in a firm. The impetus behind this argument is both conceptual and empirical. Conceptually, there is a need to explore the interaction of knowledge that firms possess in the form of established competencies of stored memory, with the knowing that occurs in distributed communities through the conscious and unconscious acts of social interaction. Empirically, the impetus comes from the challenge faced by firms to the hierarchically defined architecture that bring together specialized units of ((possessed)) knowledge and the distributed and always unstable architecture of knowledge that draws on the continuously changing capacity of interpretation among actors. In this book, these questions of the dynamics of innovating/learning through practices of knowing, and the management of the interface between transactional and knowledge imperatives, are approached in a cross-disciplinary and empirically grounded manner. The book is the synthesis of an innovative encounter between a socio-spatial theorist and an economist. The book results from the delicate interplay between two very different epistemologies and consequent positions, but which progressively converged towards what is hoped to be a novel vision. The book begins by explaining why knowledge is becoming more of a core element of the value- generating process in the economy, then juxtaposes the economic and cognitive theorization's of knowledge in firms with pragmatic and socially grounded theorization's and a critical exploration of the neglected dimension of the spatiality of knowledge formation in firms. The book concludes by discussing the corporate governance implications of learning based on competencies and communities, and a how national science and technology policies might respond to the idea of learning as a distributed, non-cognitive, practice-based phenomenon.

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about the social economy and the term 'the third way' has attained a level of household recognition, especially in America and Britain. Academics and commentators have debated the usefulness of the social economy as a restraint on capitalist excesses with some arguing that the 'third way' is but a poor substitute for a welfare state. This book provides a refreshing and accessible account of real life experience in a social economy.
By focusing on new evidence, this book critically analyses such themes as:
*the range of academic and policy expectation that have emerged in recent years in the developed world
*the policies of New Labour in Britain
*the dynamics of social enterprises in Bristol, London, Middlesbrough and Glasgow.
These critical assessments lead the authors to reflect in the future potential of the social economy and the possible policy changes that are necessary to maximise whatever opportunity the sector provides.

Increasingly, many people in the democracies are turning to a strongarm politics for reassurance against globalisation, uncertainty and precarity. In countries ranging from the US and Britain to Brazil, India and Turkey, support grows for a nativist politics attacking migrants, minorities, liberals and elites as enemies of the nation. Is there a politics of belonging that progressive forces could mobilise to counteract these trends? After Nativism takes up this question, arguing that disarming nativism will require more than improving the security and wellbeing of the ‘left-behind’. The lines drawn by nativism are of an affective nature about imagined community, with meanings of belonging and voice lying at the heart of popular perceptions of just dues. This, argues Ash Amin, is the territory that progressive forces – liberal, social democratic, socialist – need to reclaim in order to shift public sentiment away from xenophobic intolerance towards one of commonality amid difference as a basis for facing existential risk and uncertainty. The book proposes a relational politics of belonging premised on the encounter, fugitive solidarities, public interest politics, collaboration over common existential threats, and daily collectives and infrastructures of wellbeing. There is ground for progressives to mount a counter-aesthetics of belonging that will convince the discontents of neoliberal globalisation that there is a better alternative to nativism.

Originally published in 1986, this book was published at a time when the manufacturing structure of advanced economies was transformed. The growing internationalization of production, the rising power of giant corporations and the increasing rate of technological innovation remain key issues today. The impact of these changes is felt unevenly between regions, shown by huge job losses in some places and high-tech based growth in others. Drawing together contributions from economists, geographers, sociologists and management specialists, the problems facing the declining regions are discussed and analyzed. The book will be of interest to researchers, planners and policymakers concerned with the regional aspects of technological change and industrial restructuring.

As the current economic crisis spreads around the globe questions are being asked about what king of capitalist or post-capitalist economy will follow. There is increasing talk of the need for stringent economic regulation, the need to temper greed and individualism, to make the economy work for human and social development. The search is on for a kinder, greener, less unequal and more redistributive economy. This transitional moment, with its pointed questions about the economy to come, provides an opportunity to assess the role and potential of the 'social economy', that is, economic activity in between market and state oriented towards meeting social needs. Until a decade ago, the term was used mainly by the fringe to describe the 'alternative economy'. Typically, organisations providing affordable child-care to low-wage families in a poor neighbourhood, or those making goods from recycled materials for low-income households, were considered to be residual or marginal to a mainstream dominated by markets and states. In the last decade, expectation in both the developed and developing world has changed in quite radical ways. Mainstream opinion is starting to see the social economy as a source of building social capabilities as well as developing new markets in welfare provision. Policymakers around the world have begun to support the social economy, and increasingly on business grounds, jostling with traditional interest on the fringe in the sector as a moral and social alternative to the capitalist economy. It is precisely this emerging but disputed centrality of the social economy that makes this book so timely. The book positions the social economy conceptually and normatively with the help of case evidence from a number of developed and developing countries. Uniquely, it brings together in English the work of leading scholars of the social economy who are also actively engaged in national and international policy formulation. Although it argues a case for seeing the social economy as distinctive from the state and market in terms of aims, values, and actors, it also notes many overlaps and complementarities once the economy is conceptualised as a plural entity responding to needs in diverse organisational combinations. The book also shows that expectations - social and economic - cannot be divorced from local institutional and historical circumstances and legacies. Accordingly, while certain generic policy principles can be shared internationally, interventions on the ground cannot ignore the demands of situated practice and legacy.

Originally published in 1986, this book was published at a time when the manufacturing structure of advanced economies was transformed. The growing internationalization of production, the rising power of giant corporations and the increasing rate of technological innovation remain key issues today. The impact of these changes is felt unevenly between regions, shown by huge job losses in some places and high-tech based growth in others. Drawing together contributions from economists, geographers, sociologists and management specialists, the problems facing the declining regions are discussed and analyzed. The book will be of interest to researchers, planners and policymakers concerned with the regional aspects of technological change and industrial restructuring.

This book moves beyond seeing the commons in the past tense, an entity passed over from the public into the private, to reimagine the commons as a process, a contest of force, a reconstitution, and a site of convening practices. It highlights new spaces of gathering opening up, such as the digital commons, and new practices of being in common, such as community economies and solidarity networks. The commons is seen as a contested domain of the collective and as a changing way of being in common, with the balance poised in the tensile play between political economy and social innovation. The book focuses on the possibility of recovering a future in which more can be held by the many, focusing on three concepts: nation and nature as a commons, publics and rights, and bodies, concerning the management of lives and livelihoods. Across these three passage points, the book finds evidence of a commons under attack but also defended in fragile though promising ways. With contributions from leading scholars, this thought provoking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in geography, environmental studies, politics, anthropology, and cultural studies.

This book moves beyond seeing the commons in the past tense, an entity passed over from the public into the private, to reimagine the commons as a process, a contest of force, a reconstitution, and a site of convening practices. It highlights new spaces of gathering opening up, such as the digital commons, and new practices of being in common, such as community economies and solidarity networks. The commons is seen as a contested domain of the collective and as a changing way of being in common, with the balance poised in the tensile play between political economy and social innovation. The book focuses on the possibility of recovering a future in which more can be held by the many, focusing on three concepts: nation and nature as a commons, publics and rights, and bodies, concerning the management of lives and livelihoods. Across these three passage points, the book finds evidence of a commons under attack but also defended in fragile though promising ways. With contributions from leading scholars, this thought provoking book will be of great interest to students and scholars in geography, environmental studies, politics, anthropology, and cultural studies.

The vision of the original architects of the European Community was to create a Europe of economic prosperity and social harmony. Economic integration has come ever closer, but sustained growth and a reduction in social disparities seem as far away as ever. This book examines the prospects for the real cohesion in Europe and finds that, far from promoting it, many of the Community's current policies are divisive. The neo-liberal philosophy is producing policies which favour relatively wealthy regions and major corporations at the expense of less favoured regions and peoples.

This title was first published in 2003. Development is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon, driven by the expansion of one or more sectors and their influence on the others. It is the outcome of local interdependencies among firms, households and institutions which give rise to specific territorial patterns of local systems. Policies of development cannot therefore restrict themselves to undifferentiated intervention from the centre to the periphery, but must be able to stimulate and sustain endogenous bottom-up growth by means of specific programmes. Thus, individuals and organizations, public or private interact, take decisions and devise strategies in a context that is simultaneously co-operative and competitive. The first in a series, this volume brings together a team of leading international social scientists from the IGU study group on local development. Illustrated by a wide range of global case studies, it analyses what knowledge is required for industrial production and how best to organize this knowledge, embedded as it is in physical, human and social capital. It focuses on the formation of social capital and the various forms into which this may evolve, in particular, the sets of institutions which regulate relationships within and among firms. It provides an understanding of how such institutions encourage co-operation in conditions of uncertainty, overcoming suspicion and caution, managing participation and ensuring compliance with agreements by applying sanctions.

Despite the rhetoric of "unification" and of a "single Europe", Europe is still marked by sharp social and regional disparities. More acutley than ever, Europe faces the dual problem of how to ensure sustained growth and how to combine it with social equity. "Cohesion" is the term coined by the European Community for its aim of reducing the social and regional gap in the European Union. This book explores the potential for cohesion in Europe, assessing the difficulties facing "less favoured" regions in the context of the Community's policies on economic integration and social cohesion, and looking at the wider processes of industrial change in Europe. It argues that current measures which purport to facilitate cohesion will not be adequate, suggesting that the Community's measure for promoting growth and productivity are biased towards the interests of the advanced regions and the major corporations.

This title was first published in 2003. Development is a complex and heterogeneous phenomenon, driven by the expansion of one or more sectors and their influence on the others. It is the outcome of local interdependencies among firms, households and institutions which give rise to specific territorial patterns of local systems. Policies of development cannot therefore restrict themselves to undifferentiated intervention from the centre to the periphery, but must be able to stimulate and sustain endogenous bottom-up growth by means of specific programmes. Thus, individuals and organizations, public or private interact, take decisions and devise strategies in a context that is simultaneously co-operative and competitive. The first in a series, this volume brings together a team of leading international social scientists from the IGU study group on local development. Illustrated by a wide range of global case studies, it analyses what knowledge is required for industrial production and how best to organize this knowledge, embedded as it is in physical, human and social capital. It focuses on the formation of social capital and the various forms into which this may evolve, in particular, the sets of institutions which regulate relationships within and among firms.

In recent years there has been a great deal of discussion about the social economy and the term 'the third way' has attained a level of household recognition, especially in America and Britain. Academics and commentators have debated the usefulness of the social economy as a restraint on capitalist excesses with some arguing that the 'third way' is but a poor substitute for a welfare state. This book provides a refreshing and accessible account of real life experience in a social economy.
By focusing on new evidence, this book critically analyses such themes as:
*the range of academic and policy expectation that have emerged in recent years in the developed world
*the policies of New Labour in Britain
*the dynamics of social enterprises in Bristol, London, Middlesbrough and Glasgow.
These critical assessments lead the authors to reflect in the future potential of the social economy and the possible policy changes that are necessary to maximise whatever opportunity the sector provides.

Increasingly, many people in the democracies are turning to a strongarm politics for reassurance against globalisation, uncertainty and precarity. In countries ranging from the US and Britain to Brazil, India and Turkey, support grows for a nativist politics attacking migrants, minorities, liberals and elites as enemies of the nation. Is there a politics of belonging that progressive forces could mobilise to counteract these trends? After Nativism takes up this question, arguing that disarming nativism will require more than improving the security and wellbeing of the ‘left-behind’. The lines drawn by nativism are of an affective nature about imagined community, with meanings of belonging and voice lying at the heart of popular perceptions of just dues. This, argues Ash Amin, is the territory that progressive forces – liberal, social democratic, socialist – need to reclaim in order to shift public sentiment away from xenophobic intolerance towards one of commonality amid difference as a basis for facing existential risk and uncertainty. The book proposes a relational politics of belonging premised on the encounter, fugitive solidarities, public interest politics, collaboration over common existential threats, and daily collectives and infrastructures of wellbeing. There is ground for progressives to mount a counter-aesthetics of belonging that will convince the discontents of neoliberal globalisation that there is a better alternative to nativism.

It has long been an interest of researchers in economics, sociology, organization studies, and economic geography to understand how firms innovate. Most recently, this interest has begun to examine the micro-processes of work and organization that sustain social creativity, emphasizing the learning and knowing through action when social actors and technologies come together in 'communities of practice'; everyday interactions of common purpose and mutual obligation. These communities are said to spark both incremental and radical innovation. In the book, leading international scholars critically examine the concept of communities of practice and its applications in different spatial, organizational, and creative settings. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated practice and different types of creative outcome, the interface between spatial and relational proximity, and the organizational demands of learning and knowing through communities of practice. More widely, the chapters examine the compatibility between markets, knowledge capitalism, and community; seemingly in conflict with each other, but discursively not. Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of situated knowing and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of organizational creativity and knowledge capitalism in general.

Architectures of Knowledge seeks to demonstrate that a recognition of the importance of the role of knowledge in ecnomics may lead to a new conception of the firm and public policy. To construct an alternative theorisation of knowledge formation and knowledge governance in firms, the book assembles together the most advanced research in different disciplines: economics, science and technology studies, cognitive sciences (including situated and distributed cognition), economic geography, and managment science. Placing the concept of community at the very centre of the argument, the book arrives at an understanding of the way in which new pieces of knowlege are created and mobilised in economic activities.

It has long been an interest of researchers in economics, sociology, organization studies, and economic geography to understand how firms innovate. Most recently, this interest has begun to examine the micro-processes of work and organization that sustain social creativity, emphasizing the learning and knowing through action when social actors and technologies come together in 'communities of practice'; everyday interactions of common purpose and mutual obligation. These communities are said to spark both incremental and radical innovation. In the book, leading international scholars critically examine the concept of communities of practice and its applications in different spatial, organizational, and creative settings. Chapters examine the development of the concept, the link between situated practice and different types of creative outcome, the interface between spatial and relational proximity, and the organizational demands of learning and knowing through communities of practice. More widely, the chapters examine the compatibility between markets, knowledge capitalism, and community; seemingly in conflict with each other, but discursively not. Exploring the frontiers of current understanding of situated knowing and learning, this book is for all those interested in the economic sociology of organizational creativity and knowledge capitalism in general.

In the future, will European regions be overwhelmed by global forces, or will a new localism lead to a Europe of the regions? This book argues that neither will occur, but that regional economic prosperity will depend upon the degree to which regions are able to mobilize flexible institutional strategies, and to harness the forces of globalization to their own ends.

In the West, "the Left," understood as a loose conglomeration of interests centered around the goal of a fairer and more equal society, still struggles to make its voice heard and its influence felt, even amid an overwhelming global recession. In "Arts of the Political: New Openings for the Left," Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift argue that only by broadening the domain of what is considered political and what can be made into politics will the Left be able to respond forcefully to injustice and inequality. In particular, the Left requires a more imaginative and experimental approach to the politics of creating a better society. The authors propose three political arts that they consider crucial to transforming the Left: boosting invention, leveraging organization, and mobilizing affect. They maintain that successful Left political movements tend to surpass traditional notions of politics and open up political agency to these kinds of considerations. In other words, rather than providing another blueprint for the future, Amin and Thrift concentrate their attention on a more modest examination of the conduct of politics itself and the ways that it can be made more effective.

The contributors to Grammars of the Urban Ground develop a new conceptual framework and vocabulary for capturing the complex, ever-shifting, and interactive processes that shape contemporary cities. Building on Marxist, feminist, queer, and critical race theory as well as the ontological turn in urban studies, they propose a mode of analysis that resists the staple of siloed categories such as urban "economy," "society," and "politics." In addition to addressing key concepts of urban studies such as dispossession and scale, the contributors examine the infrastructures of plutocratic life in London, reconfigure notions of gentrification as a process of racial banishment, and seek out alternative archives for knowledge about urban density. They also present case studies of city life in the margins and peripheries of Sao Paulo, Kinshasa, Nairobi, and Jakarta. In so doing, they offer a foundation for better understanding the connective and aggregative forces of city-making and the entanglements and relations that constitute cities and their everyday politics. Contributors. Ash Amin, Teresa Caldeira, Filip De Boeck, Suzanne Hall, Caroline Knowles, Michele Lancione, Colin McFarlane, Natalie Oswin, Edgar Pieterse, Ananya Roy, AbdouMaliq Simone, Tatiana Thieme, Nigel Thrift, Mariana Valverde

The contributors to Grammars of the Urban Ground develop a new conceptual framework and vocabulary for capturing the complex, ever-shifting, and interactive processes that shape contemporary cities. Building on Marxist, feminist, queer, and critical race theory as well as the ontological turn in urban studies, they propose a mode of analysis that resists the staple of siloed categories such as urban "economy," "society," and "politics." In addition to addressing key concepts of urban studies such as dispossession and scale, the contributors examine the infrastructures of plutocratic life in London, reconfigure notions of gentrification as a process of racial banishment, and seek out alternative archives for knowledge about urban density. They also present case studies of city life in the margins and peripheries of Sao Paulo, Kinshasa, Nairobi, and Jakarta. In so doing, they offer a foundation for better understanding the connective and aggregative forces of city-making and the entanglements and relations that constitute cities and their everyday politics. Contributors. Ash Amin, Teresa Caldeira, Filip De Boeck, Suzanne Hall, Caroline Knowles, Michele Lancione, Colin McFarlane, Natalie Oswin, Edgar Pieterse, Ananya Roy, AbdouMaliq Simone, Tatiana Thieme, Nigel Thrift, Mariana Valverde

As the current economic crisis spreads around the globe questions are being asked about what king of capitalist or post-capitalist economy will follow. There is increasing talk of the need for stringent economic regulation, the need to temper greed and individualism, to make the economy work for human and social development. The search is on for a kinder, greener, less unequal and more redistributive economy. This transitional moment, with its pointed questions about the economy to come, provides an opportunity to assess the role and potential of the 'social economy', that is, economic activity in between market and state oriented towards meeting social needs. Until a decade ago, the term was used mainly by the fringe to describe the 'alternative economy'. Typically, organisations providing affordable child-care to low-wage families in a poor neighbourhood, or those making goods from recycled materials for low-income households, were considered to be residual or marginal to a mainstream dominated by markets and states. In the last decade, expectation in both the developed and developing world has changed in quite radical ways. Mainstream opinion is starting to see the social economy as a source of building social capabilities as well as developing new markets in welfare provision. Policymakers around the world have begun to support the social economy, and increasingly on business grounds, jostling with traditional interest on the fringe in the sector as a moral and social alternative to the capitalist economy. It is precisely this emerging but disputed centrality of the social economy that makes this book so timely. The book positions the social economy conceptually and normatively with the help of case evidence from a number of developed and developing countries. Uniquely, it brings together in English the work of leading scholars of the social economy who are also actively engaged in national and international policy formulation. Although it argues a case for seeing the social economy as distinctive from the state and market in terms of aims, values, and actors, it also notes many overlaps and complementarities once the economy is conceptualised as a plural entity responding to needs in diverse organisational combinations. The book also shows that expectations - social and economic - cannot be divorced from local institutional and historical circumstances and legacies. Accordingly, while certain generic policy principles can be shared internationally, interventions on the ground cannot ignore the demands of situated practice and legacy.