New Economic Geographies

Economic knowledge and the construction of the New Economy

Research addresses the concepts of virtualism and community of practice in the New Economy.  Research is extending virtualism, which refers to the material power of economic ideas, from its original focus on academic theory to encompass practical theories of the economic. A major finding supported by work on the music industry, has been the continuing framing and contextualisation of much contemporary economic activity by software and Internet protocols, demonstrating the significant legacy effects of the New Economy, which was dismissed as a mere chimera in the wake of the spectacular collapse in the value of high technology stocks from 2000 onwards. Innovative research in the Ukraine shows clearly how processes of soft capitalism are implemented in processes of industrial restructuring.  In other work, studies of transnational elites and expatriate communities in banking and professional services have illustrated the stretching of communities of practice over space through the existence of transnational inter- and intra-firm relational knowledge-networks between a network of global city financial centres.

Recent new research projects are now investigating:

• Spaces of business education and the (re)production of financial theory in practice (ESRC) [website]
• Conceptualising the 'professions' (ESRC seminar series)