Peter Meusburger

Spatial Mobility of Knowledge: A Proposal for a More Realistic Communication Model

Abstract The recurring erroneous predictions about the impact of the Internet on the spatial distribution and “mobility” of codified knowledge, most deficits in research about knowledge spillovers, and knowledge sharing in clusters, organizations and networks can be traced back to an oversimplification of the communication process between a producer of knowledge and the recipients of information, a missing distinction between knowledge and information, and insufficient categorizations of various types and grades of knowledge. The categories of implicit and explicit or tacit and codified knowledge are not sufficient; they must be supplemented by categories focusing on the grades and carriers of knowledge. The main part of this paper focuses on the communication process between two individuals—a communicator and a recipient of information. An extended and more realistic communicator/recipient model is the basic cornerstone of any research about the mobility of knowledge and will also influence studies on business ecologies, knowledge spillovers and networks. The paper first discusses some of the assumptions that lead to erroneous conclusions about the mobility of knowledge and then proposes a communication model between a communicator and a recipient of information that could more adequately fulfil this need.

Relations Between Knowledge and Economic Development: Some Methodological Considerations

Although superior knowledge, competence, and expertise; high levels of training; and major investment in education and research are often regarded as prerequisites of economic success, the relationships between knowledge and economic action are not as straightforward as they may seem in the literature. The spatial social, political, and economic context in which actors or social systems seek to achieve their objectives largely determines whether competence or research can be parlayed into economic success. Yet a milieu, or context, is not an independent variable in a cause-and-effect relation influencing what actors do. It represents potential that actors must be able and willing to use to achieve the desired effect. It can also impede some actors in the development of their skills and can obstruct the performance of innovative organizations. The author tries to shed additional light on the relationships between knowledge and the economy.

From Mediocrity and Existential Crisis to Scientific Excellence: Heidelberg University Between 1803 and 1932

Universities are sometimes idealistically seen as an institutional embodiment of academic ideas, as prominent places of research where universally valid scientific truths are generated and taught, or as havens of intellectual freedom. From the outset, however, universities have been shaped by political, economic, religious, and ideological interests. They have depended on external financial resources, suffered from internal and external conflict, interacted with their cultural environment, and derived part of their intellectual vigor from the extent and character of their spatial relations. One can use many diverse approaches to investigate the intellectual ups and downs of universities, drawing on several indicators of research output and scientific reputation.

The Role of Knowledge in the Socio-Economic Transformation of Hungary in the 1990s

At the end of the 1980s, the majority of experts and politicians expected that a transfer of capital, technology, institutions, and management practice from western countries would successfully transform the centrally planned economies of communist states into market economies in a relatively short period of time. In the early discussion, spatial disparities and time lags in the success of the transformation process did not appear to be an important issue. Ten years later, the lesson has been learned that a transformation process needs, above all, endogenous knowledge resources. Imported capital, technologies, and managerial techniques must be matched with internally available professional skills, experience, creativity, entrepreneurship, as well as attitudes and value systems conducive to a market economy to be effective. Endogenous knowledge resources are the key mechanisms that determine how quickly outside knowledge and technologies are obtained, understood, and incorporated (Malecki 2000). Even managerial and organisational techniques are culturally determined (Schreyogg 1996, 80-84), and have to be modified and adjusted when they are transferred to a different cultural milieu.

Relations Between Knowledge and Power: An Overview of Research Questions and Concepts

This chapter explores the multiple linkages between knowledge, civil society, governance, and democracy. Broader questions about relations between knowledge and freedom are placed in the context of whether these linkages are codetermined by an enabling of the knowledgeability of modern actors. Emphasis is placed on the growing opportunities for reflexive cooperation in civil society organizations, for social movements, and for an increasing influence on democratic regimes by growing segments of society. The specific aim of this chapter is more modest. Access to knowledge and the command thereof are at the core of its inquiry. Both access to knowledge and its command are stratified. Three barriers to access to knowledge are examined and questions raised about whether expertise and civil society can be reconciled, whether reconciling civil society and knowledge can be conceived of as a private good, and, finally, whether the social sciences and humanities are a source of enabling knowledge.

Cultural Memories: An Introduction

The revival of public and scholarly interest in collective cultural memories since the 1980s has been a genuinely global phenomenon and is somewhat paradoxical. Memory is a form of temporal awareness more readily associated with traditional, nonindustrialized societies rather than with the globalized, mobile, and deracinated world of today, which ostensibly floats free of all historical moorings, disconnected from earlier generations and periods. Yet the rise of a self-consciously postmodern, postcolonial, and multicultural society seems to have reanimated memory as a social, cultural, and political force with which to challenge, if not openly reject, the founding myths and historical narratives that have hitherto given shape and meaning to established national and imperial identities. This trend, initially accelerated by the lifting of the censorship and political constraints that had been imposed in both the “East” and the “West” during the Cold War, has been facilitated since the mid-1990s by the Internet, the default source of information in the global public sphere. Uncovering the historical experiences of marginalized communities, previously silenced because of their ethnicity, religion, gender, or sexuality, is now a primary objective of historical inquiry. It is inspired in part by an emerging “politics of regret” (Olick & Robbins, 1998, p. 107) but also by a desire to provide a sense of historical legitimacy and depth to newly established social, cultural, and political constituencies. This change has necessitated an increased level of systematic analysis of different kinds of nontextual evidence, from oral testimonies to the many other nonwritten ways in which intergenerational individual and collective memories have been articulated.

Knowledge, Cultural Memory, and Politics

After categorizing different types of collective memories, the author discusses tensions between collective memories and the knowledge of individuals. He notes that collective memories are often based on Manichean morality and that “memory industries” try to manipulate well-informed and highly educated societies in ways similar to those used by emerging nineteenth-century nation-states to manipulate their undereducated or illiterate societies. It is argued that designers of monuments and exhibitions should increase the attention they pay to the knowledge of the audience and the reception of exhibitions by visitors. The interpretation of texts, politically loaded images, and monuments depends more on the observer’s prior knowledge, ideology, and emotions than on the intentions of the producer of images and monuments. The final section deals with the nemesis represented by collective memories based on Manichean morality.

Power, Knowledge, and Space: A Geographical Introduction

The interest of geographers in relations between knowledge, power, and space has a long tradition but it was reinvigorated by critical engagements with Foucault and Gramsci. For Foucault, space is fundamental in any exercise of power, and knowledge and power are integrated with one another. New inventions of communication have influenced the ways in which those in power can generate, store, evaluate and transmit information; the distance over which rulers or headquarters of organizations can give orders and execute control; the spatial division of labor, the scope of surveillance, and the optimal locations for exercising power. Being at or near the center of a domain also has psychological significance because it denotes importance, reputation, competence, and trustworthiness. It increases the chances that experts and scholars will receive public attention and be able to influence key decision-makers. Centers can function as truth spots, and sites of knowledge generation, information control, and power execution.

Introduction: Knowledge and the Geography of the Economy

This introductory chapter revisits the crucial role of knowledge and innovation in the process of economic development. It challenges some of the persistent puzzles in traditional economic thought about knowledge and prepares the scene for an inclusive and multidisciplinary dialogue about the concept, creation and reproduction of knowledge. Is economic growth finite? What drives future economic development? Does geography make a difference to where and how economies develop? Though these fundamental questions lie at the heart of economics, many academic disciplines contribute to the promising answer as to how knowledge could make sustained economic growth possible. This introduction develops a geographical perspective of the knowledge economy and offers points of departure for a more realisitic and situated approach to the relation between knowledge and economy.

Nähe- und Distanz-Praktiken in der Wissenserzeugung – Zur Notwendigkeit einer kontextbezogenen Analyse

Gemeinhin ist inzwischen anerkannt, dass sich ein Wandel von der Industrie- zur Wissensgesellschaft vollzogen hat. Doch nicht erst die Diskussionen zur Wissensgesellschaft und Wissensokonomie haben zahllose Untersuchungen dazu ausgelost, wie neues Wissen generiert wird und wie sich Wissensarbeit vollzieht. Zu der Frage, welche Rolle die Dimension der Nahe beziehungsweise der Distanz in der Wis-sensarbeit spielt, gibt es verhaltnismasig wenig Arbeiten, deren Befunde zudem oft von einfachen Voraussetzungen ausgehen. Im Folgenden soll auf ein Desiderat hingewiesen werden. Es wird argumentiert, dass Prozesse der Wissensarbeit und die damit verbundenen Nahe- beziehungsweise Distanz-Praktiken nur angemessen analysiert werden konnen, wenn die Kontextbedingungen einbezogen werden.