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‘The Learning Economy, the Learning Firm and the Learning Region’

A Sympathetic Critique of the Limits to Learning

University of Durham, UK

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.

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