Geographies of asylum, legal knowledge and legal practices

Law and legal discourses are an integral part of social life, a central means of producing social identities and exercising social power in day to day life. Critically informed geographical perspectives on law have illustrated in a number of ways how the legal and social (and therefore the spatial) are mutually constitutive. This paper argues that perspectives from critical legal geography can offer insights into the operation of asylum and immigration law in the UK in the late 1990s. This paper argues that legal practices and relations are organised in hegemonic and counter-hegemonic ways in different places and institutional contexts in London. In addition law and legal practices comprise a particularly important way in which ‘community’ can be constructed simultaneously across a variety of different scales in ways that can marginalise and exclude relatively powerless groups like asylum seekers. Thus refugee identities offer a particularly clear example of how social realities are constituted by law and legal practice.     

Distant networking: The knowledge acquisition strategies of 'out-cluster' biotechnology firms

This paper addresses the conditions that enable new biotechnology firms (NBF) operating outside major biotechnology clusters, to obtain the resources and competences necessary to emerge and grow. Drawing on in-depth research on the structure, rationale and evolution of scientific and technological relationships of a group of Portuguese NBFs, the paper discusses the knowledge sourcing strategies devised by these firms and the type of factors that favour their adoption. NBFs are found to draw creatively from a diverse combination of local and distant technological relationships and to profit from a number of mechanisms that can reduce the impact of geographical distance on access to partners and on the transmission of knowledge. This behaviour is favoured by factors associated with the strength of the local science base in relevant fields and to the level of international mobility and exposure achieved by local scientists.     

Regional knowledge capabilities,embeddedness of firms and industry organisation: Bioscience megacentres and economic geography

Changes in epistemology in biosciences are generating important spatial effects. The most notable of these is the emergence of a few 'Bioscience Megacentres' for basic and applied bioscience medical and clinical research (molecular, post-genomic, proteomics, etc.), biotechnology research, training in these and related fields, academic entrepreneurship and commercial exploitation by clusters of 'drug discovery' start-up and spin-off companies, along with specialist venture capital and other innovation system support services. Large pharmaceutical firms that used to lead such knowledge generation and exploitation processes are becoming increasingly dependent upon innovative drug solutions produced in such clusters, and megacentres are now the predominant source of such commercial knowledge. 'Big pharma' is seldom at the heart of megacentres such as those the paper will argue are found in about four locations each in the USA and Europe, but remains important for some risk capital ('milestone payments'), marketing, and distribution of drugs discovered. The embedding of these processes also creates major new regional disparities, which some regional governances have recognised, causing them to develop responsibilities for regional science policy and funding to offset spatial biases intrinsic in traditional national (and in the EU, supranational) research funding regimes. Responses follow a variety of models ranging from market-following to both regionalised (decentralising by the centre) and 'regionalist' (ground-up); in each case, the role of megacentres is justified in health terms. But their role in assisting fulfilment of regional economic growth visions is also clearly perceived and pronounced in policy terms.     

Former Soviet cities in globalization: an intraregional perspective on interurban relations through networks of global service firms

This paper presents an empirical study of the globalizing urban landscape in the post-Soviet region. In order to understand the position of cities in relation to each other in the context of economic globalization, the study considers the transnational city network in the post-Soviet region. At the center of analysis are the locational strategies of global service firms operating in the former Soviet cities. We adapt the interlocking network model proposed by the Globalization and World Cities research (GaWC) network to the regional level to uncover the interurban relations. Unlike the classical studies of the GaWC, this study focuses on the analysis of intraregional spatial patterns of globalization. The research shows that the globalizing regional city system is in the midst of substantial restructuring and that the state of former Soviet Union (FSU) cities in relation to Moscow is altering. The integration of FSU cities into the global economy mostly occurs through capital cities. However, under the current political and economic circumstances, the position of each capital city within the region has become diversified. The analysis indicates that the globalization of cities within a particular region reproduces similar processes on a world scale, which are characterized by spatial concentration and hierarchical relations. However, our research has shown that patterns of urban globalization at the regional level significantly depend on the historical context and national economic and political tendencies, thus creating conditions for the penetration of the world economy into cities.     

Knowledge maps as aids to knowledge management in spatial planning

This paper presents four ‘knowledge maps’ or ‘schemes’ which can be used as aids to knowledge management in spatial planning. The schemes relate to the four dimensions of knowledge, i.e. content, sources, application and methods. The schemes are based upon theoretical considerations as well as on practical experience with knowledge management for planning projects, some examples of which are given. They are, furthermore, tested in various ways as to their usefulness. Their primary purpose is, in fact, to make aspects of knowledge management which in practice are often applied in an intuitive manner more explicit, and thus to enhance their reliability.     

Culture in global knowledge societies: knowledge cultures and epistemic cultures

Abstract

This paper explores the concepts of knowledge culture and epistemic culture against the background of contemporary transformations in global society. Studies of knowledge culture came to prominence in the 1970s, with the trend towards laboratory fieldwork and direct observation in the new sociology of science. If the focus in such early studies was on knowledge construction, the focus in an epistemic culture approach by contrast is on the construction of the machineries of knowledge construction, relocating culture in the micropractices of laboratories and other bounded habitats of knowledge practice. Not all places of knowledge, however, are bounded spaces, and there is a case to be made for including in the empirical agenda more distributed locations. This is done here by introducing the concept of 'macro-epistemics', to describe wider networks of knowledge generation such as what is often known as 'the global financial architecture'. The discussion concludes by moving out from macro-epistemic circuits to questions of the cultural environment of epistemic settings, and of the more general knowledge culture in which specific knowledge processes are embedded.     

浅谈图书馆知识管理的创新

本文从图书馆知识管理入手,强调知识管理是图书馆可持续发展的保证,指出应在管理观念、内容、机制、人才培训等几个方面进行创新。     

Local and nonlocal knowledge typologies: technological complexity in the Irish knowledge space

This paper advances a measure of knowledge complexity to analyse for Ireland whether more complex knowledge is generated by local or foreign firms. Information on assignees, technological structure and global ownership contained within a recently developed Irish patent database forms the basis for distinguishing between technologies developed by local and nonlocal firms. Thereafter, our knowledge complexity index uses a modified bipartite network to link these technologies to their country of origin, i.e. local or nonlocal. Our results indicate that the most complex technologies tend to be produced in a few diverse regions. Furthermore, the majority of complex knowledge is generated in technology classes where the share of foreign activity is greater than local firms.     

Innovation in knowledge intensive industries: The nature and geography of knowledge links

Knowledge has become a key source of competitiveness for advanced regions and nations, indicating a transformation of capitalism towards a “knowledge economy”. Knowledge intensive sectors in production and in services have a lead in this respect, they can be considered as role models for the future. The innovation process, the mechanisms of knowledge exchange and the respective linkages in those industries differ quite markedly from those in other sectors. Clustering and local knowledge spillovers are frequently stated phenomena, although it is still unclear as to what the nature and geography of those knowledge links are. The aim of this paper is to examine the character of the innovation process and the type of interactions in those industries, in order to find out how strongly they are related to regional, national and international innovation systems. We will analyse the sources and the mechanisms of knowledge exchange and their relevance for innovation. The paper develops a typology of innovation interactions and provides empirical evidence for Austria based on data from a recent firm survey.     

抗战时期日商洋行在安徽的商业垄断经营

抗战期间,日军为了达到"以战养战"的目的,在华中等占领区实行经济统制政策,设立洋行,以便掠夺资源和倾销洋货。在安徽沦陷区,广设洋行,排斥华商,垄断贸易,对居民和商店实行"配售",倾销日货;指定日本大商行负责所有军粮等采购,形成上下层级分明的洋行购买组织,垄断商业。其商业垄断经营形式多样,危害很大,严重破坏了市场秩序及沦陷区人民的生产和生活。     

Place in legal geography: Agency and application in agriculture research

Systemic failure of our land management, legal, and regulatory institutions is revealed by the serious and adverse social and environmental impacts of land use practices in private agriculture, evident in severe land and water degradation, precipitous decline in biodiversity, and reduced resilience to natural hazards and climate change. The efficacy of the standard treatment of environmental law and regulation is often hampered by the cultural and legal priority of property rights. We take a different approach, using legal geography to refocus attention on the salience and agency of place and responses to degradation, such as conservation farming and regenerative agriculture, which are reforming dominant land management cultures and institutions from within. By recognising the role of place in leading geographically responsive land use decision-making and more sustainable, resilient, and productive agricultural practices, an alternative model of private land ownership may be possible, as well as greater environmental sustainability. For researchers, our approaches too must be sensitive and responsive to place agency and our methodologies must evolve to acknowledge the agency of place. Place agency in legal geography has great potential for application in reforming suboptimal industrial agricultural practices and legal models of property ownership, and also for revitalising our scholarship.     

Citizenship and the production of landscape and knowledge in contemporary Canadian nuclear fuel waste management

This article considers the relationship between Aboriginal peoples in Canada and the nuclear industry in the contemporary geography of Canadian Nuclear Fuel Waste management. It explores the ways in which the knowledge produced by the Canadian nuclear industry, through the work of the Nuclear Waste Management Organization about nuclear waste, its management and its effects, gains primacy over the knowledge and experience of the Serpent River First Nation (SRFN). I identify a discourse of citizenship as instrumental to pursuing and maintaining industry control over knowledge produced about this policy issue. Of particular interest is the manner in which this discourse operates to disqualify and subjugate the alternative experiences of, and knowledge about, nuclear waste and radioactivity contained in the oral histories and testimonies of the SRFN. I suggest that the discourse marginalizes the knowledge of the SRFN through the use of scaled representations of identity and place, to create a particular 'Canadian' account of the fuel chain and its effects.     

Global firms in local information societies: Work and employment issues for Europe

The strategies of large firms have a major influence on the evolution of the global information society because they dominate the markets for information and communication technologies. This paper examines the user rather than the producer role of large firms, and focuses on the surrounding issues relating to evolving patterns of work and employment. Its discussion of these issues and their policy significance reflects the perspective of the EU on what is effectively a global agenda on the future of work in the information society.     

Developing cross-industry innovation capability: regional drivers and indicators within firms

ABSTRACT

The role of firms in the process of regional renewal and path development is a somewhat neglected area in the existing literature. With few exceptions, the literature is mainly concerned with aggregated development paths. To cover this gap, the current study turns its attention to cross-industry innovation capability (CIIC) building in firms and discusses how conditions for innovation and learning in a region drive this process. We introduce a new concept of CIIC – that is, the firm’s ability to transform knowledge and ideas from different industries into new products, processes and systems and/or its ability to adapt existing products, processes and systems to new industries – and identify its drivers and indicators. The discussion is supported by empirical studies of firms in three Norwegian case regions that undergo the restructuring process due to the recent severe decrease in oil prices. Our empirical data demonstrate that organizationally thick and diversified regions are more favourable for firms’ abilities to develop CIIC and cross-industry innovation activity. As a result, we emphasize that future regional policies should have a stronger focus on the linkages between internal firm characteristics and regional innovation systems to contribute to the firms’ absorptive capacity for developing cross-industry innovation.     

A qualitative comparison of South Africa's geomatics professional body's academic model against industry's understanding of SDI knowledge and skills requirements

The South African Spatial Data Infrastructure (SASDI) was established in 2003.Registration of geographical information science (GISc) practitioners by the South African geomatics professional body followed in 2004 and accreditation of university GISc programmes in 2012. In 2010, the Committee for Spatial Information identified inadequate knowledge and skills of GISc practitioners as a challenge for the implementation and maintenance of SASDI. In response, SDI knowledge and skills requirements for GISc professionals were specified by GISc industry representatives and the professional body's academic model was qualitatively compared against these requirements. Results are discussed and improvements recommended.