Startseite
Richtlinien
Aktuelles Heft
Geplante Beitrge
Gesamtinhalt
(Band 91 / 2003
bis Band xxx)
Thomas Blaschke:
Geographic Information Systems: From tool to methodology (Band 91/2004, Seite 95): Geographic information
systems (GIS) are technically mature and their use is widespread. However,
methodologies and ontologies have been developed relatively late and the
research focus - at least in academia – has changed from incremental
technological development to broader (and potentially revolutionary) issues of
usability, transferability and applicability for a global audience.
Communicating geographic information via the internet and enabling users to
work interactively with geographic information requires a certain level of
understanding of basic principles, ignorance of which opens the way to misuse
and misinterpretation. Academic research must concentrate on the foundation of
GIScience. Geography is about understanding the cause-effect relationship
between processes in space and time which create facts and footprints in our
spatial reality. Research in pursuit of such an understanding is furthered by
Geographers ability to describe natural processes in a formal framework and to
model and understand socio-cultural processes and their effects. There is a
tendency in software engineering to move from a technological focus towards a
cognitive orientation and to enhance mathematical foundations. This has lead to
a new way of thinking and to the development of a methodology for
object-orientated data handling and analysis, and concepts of hierarchy and
complexity are utilized in a new context.
Ruth Brdlein: Die Reorganisation der deutschen
Regionalbrsen zwischen konomischen und politischen Interessen (Seite 156): Due to its political
and economic history the German stock exchange system is a decentralised one.
Political federalism supports this system, emphasizing the need for regionally
based capital provision. Development in the financial sector has changed the
character of stock exchanges tremendously. Today they must be seen as providers
of information, listing, trading and settlement services, the physical presence
of participants being irrelevant. Liquidity has become the main criterion for
the choice of an exchange. Therefore there is a tendency for consolidation by
mergers and cooperation of stock exchanges not only on the international level,
but also within the national system of stock exchanges. The Frankfurt stock
exchange has significantly expanded, leaving only a minor proportion of
turnover to the smaller exchanges, which have developed different strategies to
avoid a takeover. This paper outlines the tension between the economic
rationale which presses for further consolidation, and the political interests
which are split between proponents of further concentration and the defenders
of the decentralized system. The varied business strategies of the small
exchanges turned out to have quite different degrees of success, so a further
reduction in the number of German stock exchanges can be expected. The more
successful strategies show the emergence of small specialized exchanges but
not of regional exchanges.
Florian Dnckmann und
Verena Sandner: Conservationism and indigenous populations: considerations from
a political ecology perspective (Band
91/2004, Seite 75): Indigenous and
traditional groups are thought to have a particular relationship to their
natural environment and are considered the natural allies of
conservationists. Although many authors have voiced their doubts as to the
validity of this idea of an ecologically noble savage, this alliance between
conservationists and indigenous populations has proven to be relatively stable,
especially since it offers both partners strategic benefits. In this article we discuss the question
of how this idealised perception of autochthonous cultures as promoted by
conservationists affects the self-perception and the resource management
systems of these groups and to what degree elements of a scientific
conservationism are adopted by them or woven into their own cultural model.
Our case studies from Latin America – the Kuna of Panamas Caribbean
coast and the traditional fishers (caiaras) of the Atlantic coast of Brazil – both
demonstrate the strong influence of the global conservationist discourse. The
Kuna are an example of a culture with a relatively strong cultural cohesion.
Social change and a strong group identity are not a contradiction for them and
they are thus in a position to integrate regulative standards of scientific
conservationism (biological reserves, seasonal restrictions) into their own institutional
system. The caiaras on the other
hand were first recognised by the scientific and the conservationist community
as an independent cultural group; a clear delimitation of the groups, however,
is not possible. But as membership in this group has since been tied to certain
privileges, above all the right to live in the highly regulated conservation
areas, the term traditional population has acquired a strategic value for
many actors.
Michael H. Grote: Die Evolution des Finanzplatzes
Frankfurt (Seite
200): With the European Currency Union, Frankfurt and other European financial
centres face a new competitive situation. So far, each nation has developed one
or two leading financial centres – the same development in Europe would
mean a decline in importance for most of them. Theoretical approaches focus
either on the reasons for the existence of financial centres in general or on
the macroeconomic influences on international locations. This paper proposes an
information-based evolutionary approach to financial centre development. The
framework is applied to the situation in Germany after World War II to gain
insights into the mechanisms driving the evolution of financial centres.
Susan Hanson: Geographical
and Feminist Perspectives on Entrepreneurship (Band 91/2004, Seite 1): I undertake a feminist
geographical analysis of entrepreneurship; this entails a critical rethinking
of most of the core concepts employed in studies of entrepreneurship. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with
business owners in Worcester, Massachusetts and Colorado Springs, Colorado, I
tackle six questions: (1) Who can be an entrepreneur and what counts as
entrepreneurship? (2) What is
innovation; what counts as innovation?
(3) How should we think about entrepreneurial context? (4) What geographical factors enter
into the motivations for entrepreneurship? (5) How might we look anew at location decisions? and (6) What insights about
entrepreneurship can we gain from looking at the relationship between
entrepreneurship and place? The
analysis shows how geography and the geography of everyday life are completely
intertwined with peoples decisions to launch businesses and with the
strategies they employ to ensure the success of those businesses.
Thomas Jekel und Martina
Fromhold-Eisebith: Identity and regional economic innovation. Discussion of a
hypothetical relationship (Band
91/2004, Seite 115): Recent concepts dealing with the explanation of regional
innovation and competitiveness put considerable emphasis on social and cultural
factors. One of the ideas advanced is that of regional identity and collective
representation which allegedly enhance social coherence, sharing of information
and collective learning processes. This paper first outlines some assumptions
concerning the function of processes of identification in models of regional
development referring to creative milieus and industrial districts. It then
turns to three different concepts of identity originating from social
psychology, systems theory and economics. We discuss how they may be
interpreted with regard to possible links between identity and innovation in
regional development. Finally, the paper argues for an alternative research
agenda that more adequately connects the notions of regional innovation and identity,
concentrating on two main questions. First, we suggest analyzing the
self-definition of actor groups that bring on and support innovation in a
regional context. Second, analyses should identify the existence of potentially
conflicting development paths which may create positive redundancies and,
hence, options to support regional competitiveness.
Britta Klagge: Regionale Kapitalmrkte, dezentrale
Finanzpltze und die Eigenkapitalversorgung kleinerer Unternehmen
– eine institutionell orientierte Analyse am Beispiel Deutschlands
und Grobritanniens
(Seite 175): Financing needs and conditions of SMEs have changed dramatically
over the recent past. Current academic and policy debates frequently refer to a
perceived equity gap for SMEs as a result of new regulations and
institutional processes of concentration in the financial systems. One aspect
is the spatial structure of financial systems and the argument that the degree
of geographical centralization influences the supply of finance to firms. This paper
discusses the issue of centralized versus decentralized financial systems,
specifically capital markets, using Germany and the UK as illustrative cases of
each respective type. Based on a theoretical discussion of potentials and
problems of regional financial markets the empirical part analyzes the location
and financing patterns in public and private equity markets. The German-British
comparison is of particular policy interest as there are tendencies in the UK
to re-establish regional capital markets for SMEs, whilst in Germany the
decentralized regional capital market system is slowly eroding. The analysis
shows that the spatial structure of financial systems is only effective in
interaction with, and dependent on, other institutional conditions at the
national level. Three dimensions are particularly important and are suggested
as a basis for conceptualizing financial markets from a regional perspective:
type of financial system (bank versus capital market orientation), dominant
coordination mechanism and role of public actors (corporatism versus
liberalism), and political organisation of space (federalism versus
centralism). It is against this background that policies aiming at improving
the equity supply to SMEs above all need to search for solutions beyond the
geographical organization of the financial system and focus on making
investment in SMEs more attractive. Only then can regional financial markets
and actors play an important role in facilitating SMEs access to equity
capital.
Andreas Klee: Life-styles,
culture and space – observations on the spatial dimensions of
socio-cultural groupings in society (Band
91/2004, Seite 63): This article proceeds from the question as how to depict
social disparities adequately reflecting current conditions of modernisation
processes. The author shows how the major contributing factor to shaping an
individual life-style today is no longer simply social class but also –
and more particularly – cultural practices, values and attitudes. This
has in turn given rise to a decline in the relative significance of classical
social-structure analysis in favour of more predominantly culturally-based
approaches, most particularly in the form of life-style concepts. In this
article, the author sets out a model which identifies seven life-style groups
on the basis of 66 variables.
The second part of the
article focuses on the relationship between socio-culturally-defined life-style
groups and space. It is possible to show how different life-style groups use
urban space in different ways, and also assign distinctly different attributes
to it in appraising it. Moreover, we are currently also witnessing the gradual
dissolution of numerous milieus characterised by the homogeneity of their
members in terms of social structure and patterns of behaviour.
In general, culture –
and in particular everyday culture – proves to be an important
distinguishing feature for an analysis of society in terms of increasing
individualisation and diversity of options available to individuals, as well as
for analysing space with regard to how it is perceived and used by specific
groups within society.
Benedikt Korf: Geographies
of Violence: Action-oriented geographical research on civil wars from a
political-economy perspective (Band
91/2004, Seite 24): Political violence and civil war have become a widespread
phenomenon at the beginning of the new millennium and substances of violence,
conflict and anarchy affect the life of many people. While the dominating
political economy paradigm on civil wars has stressed the dichotomy of greed versus grievances as explanatory variables for the incidence
and protracted duration of civil wars, this paper argues for a more
contextual approach that investigates the nexus of greed and grievance in its space-time relation. An
institutionalist political economy perspective can provide important insights
into understanding the institutional logic of warfare and violence in its local
context. I introduce two different approaches in the new institutionalism,
namely the contract (transaction costs) and the distributional school of
thought. Based on empirical studies from the war zones of Sri Lanka, I
delineate the comparative advantages of the contractual and the distributional
theory of institutional change in explaining real-life phenomena on conflicts
over property rights to local resources.
Marcel Rousset-Deschamps: Rumliche Dimension und
Entwicklungsdynamik des Kapitalmarktes in Paris (Seite
218): This paper tests the notion that activities of
the capital markets are embedded in a milieu, produced by the metropolitan
territory. It is not the act of trading itself that is productive, rather, it
is the whole set of actions that contribute to the way how the final act of
trading is made. These actions form a field, i.e. a complex and compact
system. This field is inscribed in the more vast complex of the world city and
its metropolitan society. It is the entire metropolis, the metropolitan
territory in all its complexity, which becomes the means, the essential factor
of production in the conceptual shift from the City to that of a financial
town.
Antje Schlottmann: On
localising culture in communicative practice – the case of East-Germany
(Band 91/2004, Seite 40): In the wake
of the cultural turn calls are being made for new socio-spatial concepts for
an equally new cultural geography. The old representational patterns of
territorial bonding seem to be outdated or at least wanting as regards
contemporary social reality. In this article, however, it is argued that
traditional signifying practices of localizing culture are not obsolete at all,
but tend to get out of academic sight as new or more adequate conceptions are
being sought. This is why it is
suggested in this paper to treat alleged new conditions of the world, such as
globalised, integrated or deterritorialised, as alternative symbolic
appropriations. These alternatives
understandings do not replace previous signifying patterns; however, they tend
to be antagonistic to them. In this perspective, the ambivalent role of the
media becomes obvious: They are both cross-bordering machines of globalisation
and mediators of chorological
taken-for-granted images. The case of East-Germany illustrates, why
traditional geographical imaginations seem to be both, indispensable and problematic, and to conclude, why there is a need for
continuous reflexive socio-geographic research into everyday localising
practices.
Christian
Zeller: Innovationssysteme in einem finanzdominierten Akkumulationsregime
– Befunde und Thesen (Seite
133): So far, innovation oriented research focused on institutions, networks
and interactive learning processes. Financing was taken for granted. This
assumption becomes even more questionable now that the conditions for financing
innovation related investments have changed dramatically. In the course of
liberalization and globalization processes, a finance dominated accumulation
regime with global effects emerged in the USA. Institutional investors such as
investment and pension funds took considerable command over industrial
investments, including R&D expenditures. This is also expressed in a
corporate governance driven by shareholder value. Despite the residual
relevance of national and regional development paths, the dynamics can only be
understood on a global scale. Political power relations and hierarchies between
states are significant regulation factors. Based on these assumptions the paper
presents an analysis of the substantial changes of the US innovation system and
the evolution of the financing of the American biotechnology sector. The
venture capital sector is regarded as embedded in a broader socio-economic
context. This includes the financing mechanisms shaped by large investment
funds and the unique position of the USA in the world economy. The long lasting
downturn at the stock markets revealed how volatile the conditions are for the
venture capital industry and industries under its influence. The funding
mechanisms in a finance dominated accumulation regime provoke a further spatial
and organizational concentration process of innovative activities.