Huiwen Gong

Exploring the clustering of creative industries

ABSTRACT During the last decades, a large body of literature has been published on the clustering of creative industries, but it has not been reviewed in a systematic way. In this review paper, we fill this gap. The review leads to the identification of several deficiencies of current research. Based on that, we distil avenues for future empirical research on the drivers of the clustering of creative industries, which are embedded in a comprehensive analytical framework.

Regional resilience: the critique revisited: Entrepreneurship, Growth and Development in Uncertain Times

One of the most intriguing questions in economic geography is why it is that some regional economies manage to renew themselves, whereas others remain locked in decline. In addition to evolutionary concepts, the idea of resilience is derived from ecology, psychology and disaster studies to tackle this question. After a strong critique of the regional resilience concept in 2010 pointing at three fundamental shortcomings, namely the focus on equilibrium and multi-equilibriums, the neglect of state, institutions and policy at several spatial levels and, the neglect of culture and social factors affecting adaptability, a burgeoning conceptual and empirical literature on regional resilience has emerged. This chapter therefore aims at revisiting the early critique on the basis of a review of this recent literature. It concludes that although most critique has been taken seriously, other, new challenges have recently emerged, such as the fuzziness of the concept, both among academic researchers and policy-makers, the way how to measure resilience and the way how evolutionary analysis should be carried out.

Moving beyond Anglo-American economic geography

ABSTRACT Over the last fifteen years, we have been observing an increasing fragmentation of economic geography, concerning both schools of thought, perspectives, paradigms, themes and the educational background of researchers. The poly-vocal character of economic geography includes a variety of language areas, a phenomenon so far unknown to a large part of Anglo-American economic geographers. Particularly in the literature about theories, perspectives and paradigms, the non-English speaking world is largely ignored as a basis for debate. Even worse, leading scholars in the field increasingly use the term Anglo-American economic geography to refer to the whole field, although they describe trends and theories in both general and authoritative terms. The aim of this paper is to move beyond Anglo-American economic geography by introducing and reviewing economic geography literature in some other main languages, namely Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. The purpose of doing so is not merely to show that there is more than Anglo-American economic geography, but also to derive from these non-English voices insights in how to move to an integrative paradigm of a truly international economic geography.

Co-evolution in contemporary economic geography: towards a theoretical framework

ABSTRACT Although co-evolution is a key concept in contemporary economic geography because of its relevance for achieving deep contextualization and sound policy recommendations, it has not largely been taken up in recent empirical work. This is partly due to the lack of a comprehensive theoretical framework. This paper develops such a framework in which two key issues are stressed: the multi-scalarity of co-evolving populations and the nature of change. Moreover, an agenda is set for more theoretically informed future research on co-evolution.

The restructuring of old industrial areas in East Asia

ABSTRACT The shift of manufacturing industry from Japan, the first industrializing nation in East Asia, to neighbouring South Korea and China saw the emergence of restructuring problems and policies in traditional industries and regional economies depending on them. Based on a literature review on this topic in East Asia, this paper draws three conclusions. First, the resource endowments of the three countries differ greatly and consequently also the magnitude of restructuring problems. Second, governments in all three countries strongly affect restructuring processes, albeit with different policies and at different spatial scales. Third, although many studies have a strongly applied, policy-oriented character, recent research, particularly in China, has started to use evolutionary theories and to engage with debates of mainstream economic geography.

Moving beyond Anglo-American economic geography: authors’ response

In our recent article, we discussed the state of the art of economic geography (Hassink, Gong, & Marques, 2018). We observed an increasing fragmentation over the last fifteen years, concerning schools of thought, perspectives, paradigms, themes and the educational background of researchers. In our article, we particularly focused on the language-related hegemony of Anglo-American economic geography and stressed that it is particularly in the literature about theories, perspectives and paradigms that the non-English-speaking world does not participate much in the discourse. The recent book reviews on the latest international textbook on economic geography by Barnes and Christophers (2018) are vivid illustrations of the topicality of the issue. In his review, Alvarez León (2018, p. 3) writes that he ‘ ... suggests that one promising avenue for the discipline’s future is to continue the work of Barnes and Christophers by more assertively expanding the conversation beyond its current Anglo-American core’ (see also Hassink, 2018). Our aim with the article was to move beyond Anglo-American economic geography by introducing and reviewing economic geography literature in some other main languages, namely Chinese, Spanish and Portuguese. The purpose of doing so was not merely to show that there is more than Anglo-American economic geography, but also to derive from these non-English voices insights on how to move to an integrative paradigm (Hassink & Gong, 2017) of a truly international economic geography. This truly international economic geography is a rich, multidimensional and multilingual economic geography that fosters diversity and should also lead to a more equal trade balance and less unequal spaces of geographical knowledge production between Anglo-American and nonAnglo-American economic geography. To make a first step in this direction, we encourage reviewing literature in non-English languages, as we have done in our paper, to set an example. This exercise could lead to both new empirical examples and cases, but also to contributions to theoretical debates and theorizations in an inductive way from the periphery. Concerning the actors involved, we identified in particular intermediary, multilingual scholars playing a key role in fostering exchange. Moreover, we see a role for both English native-speakers, such as journal editors and textbook authors to be more open to other languages, as well as scholars and institutions in non-English-speaking regions, to be more self-critical about adopting theories developed in Anglo-American economic geography.