One Size Fits All? Applying the Creative Class Thesis onto a Nordic Context

The creative class thesis put forward by Florida [(2002a) The Rise of the Creative Class and How it's transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life (New York: Basic Books)] has in recent years been subject to vivid debate and criticism. This article applies the creative class thesis onto a Nordic context in order to examine whether Florida's theory proves fruitful in a context different from the US. Based on qualitative data, the paper analyses the role of people climate and business climate for the location of the creative class and firms in three different kinds of regions in four Nordic countries. The analyses demonstrate that the people climate tends to be of secondary importance to the business climate in explaining the location of the Nordic creative class. This should be seen as a result of the urban hierarchy within the Nordic countries as well as a strong welfare policy, which ensures an equal distribution of public provision and supports dual career households. Together, these factors diminish the role of people climate for location choices. The study also finds that the notion of people climate has different meanings in various places, and what attracts or repels the creative class depends on the life phases of the members of the creative class. The study raises concerns about the potential for applying the creative class approach beyond large city regions, which limits its usability in regional planning.     

Same Sea,Different Ponds: Cross-Sectorial Knowledge Spillovers in the North Sea

Knowledge spillovers are crucial to innovation and upgrading, but it is largely unclear what knowledge spillovers are made of and how they actually happen. The importance of Marshall–Arrow–Romer vs. Jacobs externalities is also a debated matter, whereas the concept of “related variety” has recently come to occupy a middle-ground position. However, the relatedness concept is ambiguous in terms of operationalization and emphasizes codified knowledge on behalf of other knowledge resources that are important for innovation, particularly if firms cross into new sectors. This paper sheds light on the “black box” concepts of knowledge spillovers and relatedness by exploring cross-sectorial transfers from the mature offshore oil and gas sector into the emerging offshore wind industry. A qualitative research design allows for a more nuanced understanding of the contents of knowledge spillovers and (un)relatedness between sectors.     

The Micro-foundations of Regional Branching—the Case of Digitization of Publishing

Abstract

Theorizing within evolutionary economic geography on regional branching of industries has so far been depicted as evolving through routine replication among different economic actors that hold various degrees of relatedness. Methodologically, related variety and unrelated variety have been studied quantitatively, treating relatedness between economic agents as pre-defined industrial classifications. This represents a need for a complementary qualitative and in-depth understanding of how knowledge is re-combined in various settings. Based on a qualitative case study in the publishing industry, whose technological platforms and business models are currently facing severe challenges associated with digitization, this paper seeks to improve our understanding of how knowledge is re-combined and re-applied in various ways. The paper explores and discusses how this industry branches out into new activities, and reflects upon the channels through which these processes unfold. How is the old and the new in the economy bridged? How is the relationship between specialization and diversification played out? In this sense, the paper seeks to contribute to improving our understanding of the epistemic micro-foundations for regional branching and economic development.     

A comprehensive numerical chronology for the pre-Columbian cultures of the Palpa valleys,south coast of Peru

Before the arrival of the Spaniards in Peru in 1532, many different societies flourished in the coastal desert of southern Peru. Of these, one of the best known is the Nasca culture (living in the area between about 260 cal BC and 640 cal BC.), which created the famous geoglyphs on the desert floor. In this paper we present a numerical chronology for the cultural development in the valleys of Palpa, in the northern part of the Nazca region, which spans the time from the Archaic Period (starting there around 3760 cal BC) to the Late Intermediate Period (terminating with the arrival of the Spaniards in 1532 AD). The chronology is based on more than 150 ¹⁴C samples collected by our project from well-documented archaeological excavations of 17 different sites in and around Palpa. Thanks to the advanced AMS-¹⁴C dating technique, demanding only few milligrams of organic material, we could focus on samples of plants, like beans, corn, or reed, representing single years of growth or use, and also on delicate materials like straw from clay bricks (adobe) and textiles. All single ¹⁴C dates were combined to cultural phases using a Bayesian statistical model, implementing the a priori information of the archaeological contexts, and adopting the relative ceramic chronologies available for this area.     

The creation of cultural policy in the media: a field research of cultural discourses in Germany

In Germany, cultural policy is formally made on the level of municipalities, the Länder (federal states) and the federal government. With approximately eight billion Euros per year, they finance a large percentage of cultural and arts activities: music, theater, dance, museums, libraries, film and the preservation of sites of historic interest. The federal government sets the legal framework in which art can be produced and distributed, and finances it indirectly through tax reductions (VAT reduction), copy right laws, and special health insurance and retirement arrangements for artists (Künstlersozialkasse). Within this institutionalized legal and governmental setting, the discursive dimension of politics is often forgotten, particularly when policy creation is being discussed. This article focuses on the discursive dimensions of politics within the field of classical and contemporary music and offers a discourse analysis of mass media coverage to investigate policy‐making.