Ray Hudson

‘The Learning Economy, the Learning Firm and the Learning Region’ A Sympathetic Critique of the Limits to Learning

The recent growing interest in ‘learning’ and ‘knowledge’ as a - maybe the (only) - route to corporate and regional economic success is one facet of the engagement between economic geographers and regional analysts on the one hand and evolutionary and institutional economists on the other. This focus on knowledge is often presented as a dramatic breakthrough, promising radical theoretical reappraisal and opening up exciting new possibilities for the conception, implementation and practise of policy. Recognizing the importance of innovation and knowledge creation to economic success is hardly novel, however. The paper first summarizes the claims made by the proponents of ‘learning’, and some links are drawn between the pre-eminent emphasis that they place upon knowledge and learning and other literatures that analyse ongoing changes in the organization of production and work in contemporary capitalism and which have different emphases. The aim is to situate and contextualize claims about the significance of ‘learning’. These claims are then placed within the context of continuities and changes within capitalism, and the ways in which these have been understood, as a further step in this process of contextualization and situation. Finally, some conclusions are briefly drawn around the limits to learning, and questions of learning by whom, and for what purpose, in the context of the politics and policies of social, economic and territorial development.

Rethinking Change in Old Industrial Regions: Reflecting on the Experiences of North East England

The author reflects upon regional economic change and the ways in which this is conceptualised and understood, drawing heavily but not exclusively on some thirty years of research on economy, politics and society in the North East of England. The principal question that this paper addresses is: how are the long periods of continuity, punctuated by occasional major shifts in developmental trajectory and the regions place in the global economy, to be understood? The author seeks to answer this question by exploring the extent to which continuity and change in the regions developmental trajectory can be understood in terms of evolutionary and institutional concepts and the varying engagement of the state with issues of socioeconomic development and change. The value of theoretical plurality in seeking to understand uneven development in capitalism is demonstrated and the limits to public policies that seek to address regional problems indicated.

Modes of governing municipal waste

From recent debates on governance and governmentality, two key analytical imperatives arise: the need to engage simultaneously with the structures and processes of governing, and the need to recognise the plurality and multiplicity of governing sites and activities. In seeking to address these imperatives, we develop an analytical approach, the modes of governing approach, which engages with the rationalities, agencies, institutional relations, and technologies of governing that coalesce around particular objectives and entities to be governed. Drawing on the example of municipal waste management, we illustrate how this framework can illuminate the dynamic and multiple nature of governing, and outline the key modes of governing which currently shape the policy and practice of municipal waste.

Contemporary Crisis Across Europe and the Crisis of Regional Development Theories

Hadjimichalis C. and Hudson R. Contemporary crisis across Europe and the crisis of regional development theories, Regional Studies. This paper explores the prima facie puzzling issue of why so much contemporary theory in economic geography and regional planning – specifically New Economic Geography (NEG) and New Regionalism (NR) – has so little to say about the causes of the current post-2007 crisis and its geography globally and in Europe. It is argued here that this reflects its obsession with the regional ‘success stories’ of the 1970s and 1980s, its failure to appreciate the onset of crisis and the reasons for it in these regions in the 1990s, and its failure to appreciate the nature of capitalism as a crisis prone social system of combined and uneven development. Thus, the current economic crisis pushed dominant regional development theories into a homologous deep theoretical crisis. It is concluded that the time is ripe for a paradigm shift in theory and that this should involve a reconsideration of earlier theoretical approaches that fell out of fashion for a variety of intellectual and political reasons and of current radical social movements.

Governing municipal waste: Towards a new analytical framework

Abstract Recent years have seen a rapid rise in the political saliency of the ever growing volumes of municipal waste produced in the UK. In this paper, we outline the preliminary findings of a research project that is examining the nature and development of municipal waste policy (MWP) in north-east England. We provide an overview of the changing national, regional and local policy framework for sustainable municipal waste policy, arguing that the European Landfill Directive has had a profound impact on policy priorities and goals at all levels. Nonetheless, commentators and policy makers alike have identified significant ‘barriers’ to progress, including institutional fragmentation, instability and uncertainty, financial constraints, and public participation. While the ‘barriers’ metaphor has served to identify some of the key challenges, we suggest that it offers only a partial view of the issues at hand and can serve to perpetuate an unhelpful division between the ‘technical’ and ‘social’, and between policy making and practice. In this paper, we develop a new conceptual framework for analysing MWP based on an understanding of the multiple modes of governing through which policy is constructed and contested. We argue that this approach is also relevant for other areas of environmental policy and planning which have, to date, only partially engaged with broader debates about the changing nature of the state and governance. Bringing these concerns into the analysis of environmental policy and planning is, we believe, a key challenge for future research.

Welfare as Work? The Potential of the UK Social Economy

The authors provide a critical assessment of the emerging academic and policy consensus over the potential of local social economy initiatives to deliver social and economic regeneration. Drawing on material from 60 case studies in the United Kingdom, they examine three central claims made for the social economy: that it is empowering, economically sustainable, and capable of providing a real alternative to the ‘mainstream’ public and private sector economies. They argue that the empirical evidence offers only ambiguous support for these claims and that the full potential of the UK social economy is not being realised. They identify several factors currently inhibiting the development of effective local social economy projects in the United Kingdom. They conclude by proposing a range of measures that could remove the financial and practical barriers currently constraining the development of an effective and lasting social economy in the United Kingdom.

Changing industrial production systems and regional development in the New Europe

The continuing expansion and deepening integration of the European Union is redefining the map of threats and opportunities for both companies and regions in Europe. In this paper I analyze the changing geography of the production system in three industries – automobiles, clothing and steel – as a product of the strategies and tactics of companies, states (at EU, national and regional levels) and trades unions, as they seek to shape geographies of production to favour their interests within this changing European political–economic space. It is argued that the end product of this process will be the creation of new and sharper forms of regional uneven development and qualitative differentiation between regions, as well as a renewed widening rather than further narrowing of regional differences in economic performance and well–being.

Making Music Work? Alternative Regeneration Strategies in a Deindustrialized Locality: The Case of Derwentside

The closure of the British Steel Corporations Consett works in 1980 marked the end of an era in north-west Durham as the last major element of the old coal and steel economy disappeared after 140 years. It produced fears of a profound economic and social crisis within the locality. It also served as a catalyst for devising and implementing new regeneration strategies: one based around a conventional reindustrialization programme, the other around local initiatives encompassing music and cooperative development. These alternatives are examined and related to more general debates about the possibilities for local development.

Territorial Agglomeration and Industrial Symbiosis: Sitakunda‐Bhatiary, Bangladesh, as a Secondary Processing Complex

Abstract [Correction added after online publication March 16, 2011: The contact information for two authors was listed incorrectly. The email addresses for Farid Uddin Ahamed and Nasreen Akter have been corrected in this version.] This article both joins with recent arguments in economic geography that have made connections between work on industrial symbiosis and agglomerative tendencies and recasts this work. Drawing on the case of Sitakunda-Bhatiary, Bangladesh, it shows that symbiosis is intricately bound up in the global circulation of wastes and their recovery through secondary processing. It draws attention to the importance of key places as conduits in the transformation of materials and secondary processing; emphasizes their importance as sites of symbiotic activity; and shows how such places exemplify economies of recycling, reuse, and remanufacturing, but in conditions of minimal environmental regulation. It therefore shows that contemporary symbiosis is not necessarily clean and green and may be very messy; that it can be generative of agglomerations, not just dependent upon prior agglomerations; that such agglomerations may be cross sectoral, not just interplant; and that symbiosis needs to be thought of not just through geographic proximity, but through the spatialities of globalization.

Regional Devolution and Regional Economic Success: Myths and Illusions about Power

Abstract The proposition that regional devolution in and of itself will lead to economic success has become deeply embedded in beliefs and policy discourses about the determinants of regional prosperity, and in turn has led to political demands for such devolution. In this paper I seek critically to examine such claims, using the case of the north‐east of England as the setting for this examination. The paper begins with some introductory comments on concepts of power, regions, the reorganization of the state and of multi‐level governance, and governmentality, which help in understanding the issues surrounding regional devolution. I then examine the ways in which north‐east England was politically and socially constructed as a particular type of region, with specific problems, in the 1930s — a move that has had lasting significance up until the present day. Moving on some six decades, I then examine contemporary claims about the relationship between regional devolution and regional economic success, which find fertile ground in the north‐east precisely due to its long history of representation as a region with a unified regional interest. I then reflect on the processes of regional planning, regional strategies and regional devolution, and their relationship to regional economic regeneration. A brief conclusion follows, emphasizing that questions remain about the efficacy of the new governmentality and about who would be its main beneficiaries in the region. The extent to which devolution would actually involve transferring power to the region and the capacity of networked forms of power within the region to counter the structural power of capital and shape central state policies remains unclear.