ABSTRACT
Reading the completed manuscript of an edited book prior to writing the conclusion encourages reflection on the strengths and weaknesses of the collection as well as providing a final opportunity to draw out the key themes that have emerged. By adopting an interdisciplinary approach, it is hoped that this book will have advanced understanding of the complex, evolving relationship between knowledge, space and economy. When we embarked on this project in 1997 it was apparent that the social sciences were beginning to develop theoretical and, to a lesser extent, methodological approaches to understanding the growing importance of knowledge in economy and society. One of the reviewers of the original proposal for the book even considered that knowledge was too new a topic to warrant an edited collection. With the benefit of hindsight, some of the five aims specified in the original proposal were extremely ambitious:
To consolidate and encourage an interdisciplinary research agenda around the notion of knowledge, space and economy concentrating on different forms of economic knowledges.
To identify the diversity of theoretical perspectives for understanding the nexus of knowledge, space, economy.
To highlight the contested nature of knowledge.
To provide a series of theoretically informed case studies that explore the significance of knowledge for individuals, organisations and nation states.
To highlight the spatiality of economic knowledges.
