Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
interdependencies', while certainly valuable, is missing or downplaying the most impor-
tant cause and condition of the evolution of economic knowledge, namely markets. It
surely implies that we should devote more attention to markets in regional and local
economies both as experimental spaces and as mechanisms shaping production.
Finally, the paradigm implies that restless regional and local economies with dynamic
rates of knowledge evolution will bring together two things. First they will have high
knowledge heterogeneity as a result of having individuals with specialised and idi-
osyncratic knowledge that can be actualised as non-average behaviour. Second, such
economies require high rates of information l ow as these are necessary for the emer-
gence and sustainability of social understanding. According to Metcalfe and Ramlogan
(2005), shared social understanding in turn allows the growth of new idiosyncratic and
specialised knowledge through the exchange and combination of information and also
allows personal knowledge to be tested and put to use. Another implied challenge for
economic geography then is not only to understand how institutional contexts shape col-
lective understandings, but also to give much greater attention to the growth of personal
knowledge and beliefs about economic action as these act as basic engines of economic
change.
7. Some conclusions: fragments of a research agenda?
Our aim in this discursive chapter has been to begin to explore the scope and limits of
'complexity thinking' in evolutionary economic geography. It is clear that there are
several key issues that require close attention in any research agenda aimed at construct-
ing a complexity-based evolutionary approach to the subject. Essletzbichler and Rigby
(2007) argue that economic geographers need to move beyond applying evolutionary
ideas and concepts in an ad hoc manner, and develop a more general theory of economic
evolution. In our view, complexity economics does not, as yet, provide the basis of such
a theory, since there is no well dei ned or universally accepted complexity theory as such
that economic geographers can simply turn to and apply to their own set of empirical
issues and concerns. Rather, what exists is a series of generic notions about the charac-
teristics and behaviour of complex systems, and most of these notions have their origin
in the study of physical, chemical and biological systems. These do indeed provide some
interesting potential concepts and ideas for thinking about socio-economic systems, and
about the economic landscape and its evolution. Thus the notions of self-organisation,
emergence and adaptation resonate closely with questions about how the spatial struc-
ture of an economy emerges and changes; about how regional and urban economies rise
and fall in relative prosperity; about why some regional and urban economies appear
more adaptable than others over time to shifts in technology, markets, policy regimes
and the like; about why certain industries and technologies develop in particular geo-
graphical areas but not others; and about how the various spatial networks of economic
relationships and l ows form and evolve. In this sense we believe complexity thinking
could make a valuable contribution to the construction of an evolutionary economic
geography. But as in the case of the use of neo-Darwinian metaphors and ideas, the
abduction of complexity ideas into economic geography is not at all straightforward.
One of the basic issues, we would argue, is ontological. The approach taken thus far
in thinking about the economic landscape as a complex system has been what Perona
would call 'theoretic', and what we would label 'scientii c ontological' or even meth-
