Society, Community, and Development: A Tale of Two Regions

Michael Storper, Lena Levinas and Alejandro Mercado-Celis
Additional contact information
Lena Levinas: IE / UFRJ - Instituto de Economia da Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro - UFRJ - Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro [Brasil] = Federal University of Rio de Janeiro [Brazil] = Université fédérale de Rio de Janeiro [Brésil]
Alejandro Mercado-Celis: Departamento de Ciencias Sociales - Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana, Unidad Cuajimalpa

Post-Print from HAL

Abstract: Contemporary social science remains quite divided about the type of coordination that allows some groups of agents to carry out successful economic development and which distinguishes them from cases of failure. In some cases, it is said to be traditional or non-market forms of coordination, such family, networks, or shared traditions: these are "communitarian" sources of organization. In most mainstream economics, however, the opposite is said to be necessary: anonymous and transparent rules of the market, property rights, and contracts. These are "societal" forces. For example, for some analysts, Silicon Valley is a case of community, while for others it is due to appropriate societal forces. The same cleavage can be found in rival interpretations of the success of the Asian Tigers, the industrial clusters of the Third Italy, or any of a host of other cases. A more robust explanation shows how both communitarian and societal forces act as checks and balances on one another, all the while each creating specific but different sources of efficiency in the economy. This view is illustrated via a study in contrasts, between a failed case of low-technology economic development in the Brazilian Northeast, and a success story in the state of Jalisco, Mexico

Date: 2007-04
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-01053957
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Published in Polenske, Karen. The Economic Geography of Innovation, Cambridge University Press, pp.310-339, 2007, 9780521689533

Downloads: (external link)
https://sciencespo.hal.science/hal-01053957/document (application/pdf)

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:hal:journl:hal-01053957

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Post-Print from HAL
Bibliographic data for series maintained by CCSD ().