The Dictionary of Human Geography

Comp. by: VPugazhenthi Stage : Revises1 ChapterID: 9781405132879_4_K Date:31/
3/09 Time:14:26:50 Filepath:H:/00_Blackwell/00_3B2/Gregory-9781405132879/appln/
3B2/revises/9781405132879_4_K.3d

cosmopolitanism andethicsand the awkward

and intractable peculiarities of his geography

is important’ precisely because it opens a

space for a crucial ‘dialecticbetween cosmo-

politanism and geography’ (Harvey, 2000a,

pp. 535, 559). Other critics have mapped

that space in radically different terms. Since

the end of thecold war, and even more in-

sistently after 9/11, several hostile and usually

(though by no means invariably) American

commentators have described contemporary

europeas in thrall to Kant and his vision of

‘perpetual peace’, while leaving the USA the

supreme task of bringing order to the Hobbe-

sian world of ‘failed states’ and collapsing

states, of warlords and transnationalterror-

ismbeyond its boundaries. That said, Elden

and Bialasiewicz (2006, p. 644) argue that ‘the

characterisation of a ‘‘Kantian’’ Europe, weak,

complacent, and ‘‘out of touch’’ with current

global realities, tells us more about the United

States and its imagined role than it does about

Europe’. dg

Suggested reading

Bu ̈ttner and Hoheisel (1980); May (1970);

Elden and Bialasiewicz (2006).

kibbutz A collective Zionist village. Over

250 rural kibbutz settlements (‘kibbutzim’ in

the plural) have been established in Israel/

Palestine since 1909. Kibbutz communities

combine two ideals –socialismand Zionism.

Until the 1970s, kibbutzim were considered

the torch bearers of the Zionist project by

embodying its main goals: colonizing,

Judaizing and farming the contested frontiers,

leading the Israeli army, and symbolizing

the new national culture. The ‘kibbutznik’

became an icon of Zionist identity– the

‘new Jew’ – a strong, independent, settler–sol-

dier. However, with the gradual decline of

hegemonyheld by Israel’s Ashkenazi (Western)

Jews and Labor Movement, the special status

of the kibbutzim has eroded. Today, most kib-

butzim have become urbanizing villages, and

have shed many of their socialist features. oy

Suggested reading

Gavron (2000); Rosner (2000).

knowledge economy An economic regime

in which knowledge-intensive manufacturing

and service activities become dominant, and

in which the skill and expertise of workers

and theinnovationthat this facilitates lie at

the heart of the success of firms, regions and

national economies. The idea of a knowledge

economy derives from Drucker’s (1969)

account of the role of the ‘knowledge worker’

in manufacturing industries, and it has been

developed through knowledge-based views of

the firm and arguments about the centrality

of knowledge to the competitiveness of

national economies. The concept of apost-

industrial society based on advanced,

knowledge-rich services was also instrumental

in attracting the attention of academics and

policy-makers.

From a policy perspective, the idea of

the knowledge economy has been used to fore-

ground discussions, in the Anglo-American

world in particular, about the need to invest

in skills development and training for workers,

and to promote the shift towards advanced

knowledge-intensive industries (OECD, 2000).

These debates have often been tied to discus-

sions of national competitiveness (Dunning,

2000), which tacitly assume a spatialdivision

of labourin which the economies of Western

Europe, North America and South East Asia

act as ‘leaders’ in the knowledge economy,

whilst less developed nations will fulfil less

knowledge-intensive roles, particularly in

manufacturing assembly processes.

Academic debates have addressed three

main issues. First, Gregersen and Johnson

note that ‘all economies are knowledge-

based. Even so-called primitive economies

depend on complicated knowledge structures’

(1997, p. 481). Consequently, discussion has

recognized degrees of knowledge-intensity.

Second, the regional geography of the

knowledge-economy has been foregrounded

in analyses ofclusters,learning regions,

industrial districtsand innovative milieux.

But Martin and Sunley (2003) remain uncon-

vinced that theregion is the appropriate

scaleof analysis, while others position regions

within globalnetworks of knowledge that

include both the embodied movement of

personnel and the virtual circulation of

knowledge through global telecommunication

systems (Amin and Cohendet, 2004). Third,

considerable attention has been paid to the

discursive effect of the concept itself (seedis-

course). Thrift (1997b) posits the contem-

porary emergence of a ‘soft capitalism’,

whose ideologies and practices powerfully

shape the ways in which policy-makers use

ideas of competitiveness and innovation asso-

ciated with the knowledge economy. Thus

Larner (2007) shows how the New Zealand

government developed policies based on the

logics of the knowledge economy to harness

the expertise of expatriates and emigrants in

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_K Final Proof page 401 31.3.2009 2:26pm

KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY