The learning region in an age of austerity: capitalizing on knowledge, entrepreneurialism, and reflexive capitalism

A recent round of academic analyses (e.g., Castells, M., 1996. The Rise of the Network Society. Blackwell, Oxford) are emphasizing the e€ective production and translation of knowledge as a critical factor in establishing a sustainable post-Fordist regime. A notable inference of these accounts is that such productions and translations appear to be gravitating towards certain regions. In an emerging regional political economy, illustrious regions in Western Europe and the United States are being hailed as exemplars in terms of convening economic re ̄exivity, capitalizing on knowledge, and socializing risk. In turn, those less illustrious regions are being summoned to activate interactive learning, re ̄exive knowledge networks, innovation, and social capital. The author reviews and critically assesses this new regionalist thought in economic geography. He then draws on this to analyze Lowland ScotlandÕs ongoing policy endeavor to establish a new form of Ôre ̄exive capitalismÕ. In undertaking this he make two claims. First, much of the new regionalist thinking has paid insucient attention to the intricate social relations between the recent regional renaissance and the restructuring of the state. Second, many of the policy innovations associated with the new regionalism should be seen as running parallel alongside a deeper political e€ort to ÔmanageÕ the erosion of the Keynesian welfarist institutional settlement. In a concluding section drawing on the work of Ulrich Beck, he argues that these emerging social geographies of re ̄exive capitalism require to be highlighted to the extent that they constitute an important sociopolitical backdrop with which to locate the more speci®c imprint of risk in economic development. Ó 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved. Regions are becoming focal points for knowledge creation and learning in the new age of global, knowledge-intensive capitalism, as they in e€ect become learning regions. These learning regions function as collectors and repositories of knowledge and ideas, and provide the underlying environment or infrastructure which facilitates the ̄ow of knowledge, ideas and learning (Florida, 1995a, p. 527). [R]egional institutions do indeed matter . . . [However] those analysts who emphasize the role of local or regional institutions to the exclusion of all others . . . do us a disservice that is as great as the denying of any role for regional institutions (Gertler, 1997, p. 56). 1. Re ̄exive capitalism and the resurgence of regional