Remaking Regional Economies: Power, Labor, And Firm Strategies In The Knowledge Economy

摘要

Susan Christopherson and Jennifer Clark have written a valuable and accessible second volume in Routledge's Studies in Economic Geography series. They provide a conceptual and empirical critique of much current thought and policy regarding regional economies and use their critique to support affirmative alternatives to our thinking and policy approaches. Skeptical of the claim that the modern economy is composed of "regions" that compete and serve as the basis of economic growth, Christopherson and Clark pursue a series of questions: Who are the actual actors? What are their motivations? What are their sources of power? What is their power relative to one another? "The new regionalism does not adequately recognize the difference between regions and firm actors but, instead, obscures the boundary between the region and the firm" (11) to the benefit of particular actors within regions and among firms-certain regional stakeholders and the large firms that can hold state and local governments hostage to threats of relocation.