Cultural Geography

different: that the rise (and especially the early

1990s recovery) of the Valley was really a story

about a finely articulated local social division of

labour, social cooperation, and a widely shared

regional culture of openness and mobility that

promoted the free flow of knowledge. This does

not mean that it remained closed to outsiders:

indeed, to the contrary, it attracted large numbers

of workers and entrepreneurs from other regions

and countries (Saxenian, 1999). Nor does she

exclude competition from her analysis.^16 Never-

theless, according to Saxenian, the Valley owes

much of its continuing success to a regional

culture of cooperation and trust, and its ability to

integrate talented newcomers into its socially

organized production system.

However, this view has recently been con-

tested by Cohen and Fields (1999) who interpret

Silicon Valley’s success in rather different terms.

They emphasize competition and secrecy to a

much greater extent than Saxenian did. More-

over, they argue that the kind of trust prevalent in

the Valley is based far less on deep knowledge

acquired through direct, close interaction over

time, and far more on the circulation of informa-

tion – through indirect contact – concerning the

performance-based reputation of potential sup-

pliers or customers. While they too emphasize

the importance of a highly articulated social divi-

sion of labour (which has produced, among other

things, a well-developed array of specialized

legal and other professional services), their char-

acterization of the region’s economic organiza-

tion seems much closer to the traditional urban

economist’s notion of agglomeration economies

realized through market exchange.

Power and (work) place

Going farther afield, one is struck by how infre-

quently questions of power – in the workplace, in

inter-firm relations or in communities – appear

in today’s cultural economic geography of pro-

duction literature.^17 It is as if the infatuation with

innovation and ‘the new’ in much of this litera-

ture has diverted attention away from questions

concerning ‘social relations of production’ in the

older (less sparkly) sense of the phrase. These

two fields of enquiry need not be seen as mutu-

ally exclusive. For example, inside the firm these

social relations still play a major part in deter-

mining workers’ roles in implementing new

technologies and modes of workplace organiza-

tion (Kochan and Osterman, 1994; Kumar and

Holmes, 1997), and in producing and transmit-

ting tacit knowledge for the firm to exploit for

commercial advantage.^18 Social relations and the

distribution of power between workers and

managers are also implicated in the manner in

which the spoils from innovation are distributed,

which may in turn influence the commitment of

workers to the firm’s corporate strategy and

culture. In turn, these workplace social relations do

not develop in a vacuum, but are influenced and

enabled by the regulatory climate (state/provincial,

national and even supranational) in which the firm

is situated (Gertler, 1997; 2001a; Peck, 1996;

Rutherford and Gertler, 2001; Wills, 2000).

Interestingly, an alternative view of social

relations of production has begun to emerge in

recent work on the ‘new economy’, in which the

firm has receded into the background and the

worker has come to the fore. Of course, we are

not talking about just any old workers here. This

is a literature that has become enraptured with

what Richard Florida (2001) and others refer to

as ‘talent’ – highly skilled, much sought-after

new economy workers.^19 Strongly implicit in this

work is the argument that the central relationship

within the capitalist knowledge economy is no

longer the employment relation between worker

and manager/owner. Instead, in a seller’s market

in which talented labour is in short supply and

able to choose between employers (and commu-

nities), the principal relationship is now between

workers and local labour markets. Talented

labour chooses where to live and work based on

the local density of employment opportunities as

well as broader social and quality-of-life charac-

teristics of local communities. These include a

range of ‘soft’ cultural attributes such as social

variety, openness to difference, tolerance and

low barriers to entry by newcomers – in addition

to the normal list of desirable place attributes

(cultural and entertainment amenities, appealing

natural environment and built form, and so

forth). Under such conditions, occupational

groupings and affinities constitute the principal

source of social interaction providing labour

market information and security (Markusen,

2001). Clearly, this kind of ‘fast company’

scenario applies only to a special class of worker

and perhaps only under certain phases of the

business cycle when demand for such labour is

especially strong (Thrift, 2000b). It remains to be

seen just how lasting and widespread this transi-

tion away from the firm and the employment

relation and toward the community turns out to

be. With recent evidence indicating that even the

‘new’ economy cannot escape the vagaries of the

business cycle, I would venture that at best

the jury is still out.

In other instances where power relations are

implicit in the work of economic geographers,

the treatment is still quite unsophisticated. I refer

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