Two ways to look at learning regions in the context of globalization: The homogenizing and particularizing approaches

Olivier Crevoisier

No 12-99, GRET Publications and Working Papers from GRET Group of Research in Territorial Economy, University of Neuchâtel

Abstract: Despite the countless publications on the subject, globalization remains a black box. On the descriptive level, there is relative consensus as to the facts, but the meaning is not truly understood. As a result, extremely contradictory hypotheses circulate, ranging from the ‘end of geography’ the global village and the borderless ‘global company’ to those who highlight the development of territorialized forms of production and the role of proximity. This article brings out the different ways of viewing this phenomenon and their consequences. The main rift between the different approaches is between ‘homogenizing’ approaches and ‘particularizing’ approaches. The former postulate that any phenomenon may be viewed within a ‘universal’ scheme that is ‘a priori’ deemed sufficient to explain reality, while the latter are based on the irreducible singularity of each case and propose constantly evolving explanatory schemas.

Keywords: flexible specialization; epistemology; globalization; innovative milieu; learning region (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G34 L22 O16 R12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 9 pages
Date: 1999-12
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Published in GeoJournal, December 1999, Volume 49, Issue 4, Pages 353-361

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.springerlink.com/content/p0g10042245843m0/ (text/html)
http://doc.rero.ch/lm.php?url=1000,43,4,2009090111 ... regions_20090901.pdf (application/pdf)
file cannot be freely downloaded, thus you can download the document in open access below

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nct:wpaper:12-99

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in GRET Publications and Working Papers from GRET Group of Research in Territorial Economy, University of Neuchâtel Faubourg de l'Hôpital 27, 2000 Neuchâtel, Switzerland. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Alain Paul Segessemann ( this e-mail address is bad, please contact ).