Economic Geography

The intermediate period – from Marxist economic
geography to studies of industrial districts 
and regional clusters
Along with the increased attention within economic geography on the impor-
tance of contingencies, regions and local variations the global economy also
underwent dramatic changes as a result of the transition from Fordism to post-
Fordism (Piore and Sabel 1984). This transition led to a (re)focus on the impor-
tance of agglomerations of networked small and medium-sized firms based on a
flexible production system through vertical disintegration – producing special-
ized, customized and semi-customized products replacing the standardized mass
production of vertical integrated large firms of the Fordist period. These structural
changes in the world economy, which (for some observers) paradoxically took
place along with an intensified globalization, were partly caused by technologi-
cal development introducing numerical operated production technology which
increased the productivity of diversified batch production by minimizing the 
re-adjustment time of machinery, and partly by a development on the .75 of the
consumer market of the western world with increased buying power, more and
more demanding non-standardized products which the networked and flexible
production systems of the industrial districts were able to satisfy. Thus, as can be
seen, this new development is all about contingencies: technology, market trends,
consumer preferences, which all takes place within the context of a capitalist
economic system (or mode of production). Moreover, the new and growing role
of networking, cooperation and collaboration between SMEs in industrial
districts and other types of agglomerated clusters highlights the importance of
non-economic factors (i.e. culture, norms, and institutions) – building social capi-
tal – for the endogenous based, economic performance of regions. Furthermore,
the renewed focus on agglomerations and the regional context also provides
Economic geography as (regional) contexts
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substantiation for Porter’s claim that competitive advantage is based on the
exploitation of unique resources and competencies (Porter 1990), and points 
to economic development as a territorial embedded process, maintaining that
‘competitive advantage is created and sustained through a highly localized process’
(Porter 1990: 19). The continuous success of many of these new economic
(regional) spaces (some of them were in fact not that new [e.g. the industrial
districts of the Third Italy]) also demonstrated beyond any doubt that geography
(understood as ‘context’ and not primarily ‘distance’), contingencies and contexts
still matters in a globalizing economy. It could even be argued that this tendency
towards spatial concentration has become more marked over time, not less.
My own interests in studying industrial districts as a paradigmatic example 
of post-Fordist new economic spaces started in the early 1980s after my move 
to the geography department at the University of Oslo as associate professor
in economic geography in August 1981. After a stay in Rome in the turn of 
the year 1983/84, where I travelled around in the Third Italy and among other
researchers met with professors Garofoli in Pavia (now in Varese) and the late
Brusco in Modena. This was the start of years of cooperation that for my own