In the context of the historic evolution of capitalism, Suarez-Villa (social ecology, U. of California-Irvine) explores the advent of a form of market capitalism rooted in invention and the development of new technologies. He examines the infrastructure that supports invention and the relationship of techno-capitalism with science, corporate business, and government. Annotation copyrighted by Book News Inc., Portland, OR

'Entrepreneurship had been high on the jobs growth and economic development agendas for many years and this edited book makes an important and timely contribution to the debate. . . the book is nicely poised to bring together space, innovation and economic growth linked together with entrepreneurship. . . This book provides an excellent and worthwhile insight into many of the issues with many contributions that significantly add to our understanding of entrepreneurship and regional development.' - Ronald W. McQuaid, Growth & Change

The twenty-first century will be the age of global interaction and organized patterns of networks. This important book addresses the strategic dimensions of networks, especially in transportation and information communication technology in Europe. The authors examine the challenges brought about by European unification and accession, through which a coherent and efficient European network system will need to be implemented. The topics addressed include the emergence of new network structures and strategies, the implications of European integration policies for network operations and developments, and the assessment of network synergy effects.

Current research shows what many in the Christian community already know: young people are leaving the church. This raises important questions: Why are young people leaving? How can the church respond? Some have responded to this issue out of a posture of fear and anxiety, trying to find new ways to strengthen doctrinal beliefs or practices of faith formation and discipleship. What if the best response isn't to strengthen our theology or tighten our hold on the lives of young people? What if the best response is a posture of love that lets young people go? Using the insights of philosopher Charles Taylor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Poetic Youth Ministry argues that the church must take seriously the formative power of social and cultural patterns that shape the social imaginaries of young people. Rather than seeing the problem as young people abandoning faith, the Christian community should see the issue as young people exchanging one form of faith for another. This allows the church to approach the issue from a posture of love, calling young people to embrace their identity in the new humanity revealed in the death and resurrection of Jesus Christ.

A new version of capitalism, grounded in technology and science, is spawning new forms of corporate power and organization that will have major implications for the twenty-first century. Technological creativity is thereby turned into a commodity in new corporate regimes that are primarily oriented toward research and intellectual appropriation. This phenomenon is likely to have major social, economic, and political consequences, as the new corporatism becomes ever more intrusive and rapacious through its control over technology and innovation. In his provocative book Technocapitalism, Luis Suarez-Villa addresses this phenomenon from the perspective of radical political economy and social criticism. Grounded in the premise that relations of power influence how human creativity and technology are exploited by the new corporatism, the author argues that new forms of democratic participation and resistance are needed, if the social pathologies created by this new version of capitalism are to be checked. Considering the new sectors affected by technocapitalism, such as biotechnology, nanotechnology, bioinformatics, and genomics, Suarez-Villa deciphers the common threads of power and organization that drive their corporatization. These new sectors, and the corporate apparatus set up to extract profit and power through them, are imposing standards, creating business models, molding social governance, and influencing social relations at all levels. The new reality they create is likely to affect most every aspect of human existence, including work, health, life, and nature itself.

In the last few years research on regional development has increased dramatically. Real-world concerns have - to a certain extent - driven this scientific concern of interest. The field has been given a big boost in particular by the process of European integration and the attempt to understand how this deeper integration will work at the regional level. This volume makes a modest attempt to reconsider the issue of regional development mainly from an European perspective and in the light of the transition of society towards a knowledge-driven economy. It originated from the Thirteenth European Advanced Studies Institute in Regional Science, held in Istanbul, July 2-8, 2000. In producing the book, as friends and colleagues, we have benefited from the possibility of exchange of ideas and experience. We have also received useful assistance from the referees who have offered observations and advice in their written reports. The soundness of their comments has contributed immensely to the quality of the volume. We should, in addition, like to acknowledge the timely manner in which contributing authors have responded to our requests, and their willingness to follow the stringent editorial guidelines.

This title analyzes the conception of economic development in modern regions, which has gone through a fundamental change since the early 1980s. Regions are today increasingly looked upon as independant market places that are connected via interregional and international trade and not as administrative units embodied in a national state. Two complementary theoretical frameworks explain the specialization of economic activity at the regional level. The traditional approach assumes that the comparative advantages of regions depend upon differences in the supply of lasting resources. In contrast the newer complementary framework called the "new economic georgraphy", assumes that the dynamic interaction between geographical market potentials and rational firms in its own way creates the comparative advantage of regions. The book examines the policy implications of the complementarity of the competing views in a variety of geographic and functional contexts.