This highly original book provides an engaging and critical introduction to the knowledge economy. The knowledge economy is a potent force pervading global and national policy circles. Yet few people outside the field of economics understand its central ideas and practices. This book makes these accessible. But it does much more. It provokes 'conversations' between the knowledge economy and those marginalized economies that haunt it: the risk, gift, libidinal and survival economies. These illuminate the knowledge economy's shortcomings and point to alternative possible systems of exchange and sets of values. This multi-disciplinary study takes the knowledge economy out of the hands of the economists and brings it into creative tension with the ideas of key thinkers from sociology, anthropology, philosophy and ecology. Illustrating the benefits of conversing with the ghosts of alternative economies, this provocative book will unsettle the way in which the knowledge economy is understood. Groundbreaking and globally applicable, it has been authored by internationally respected authors and its conceptual breadth pertains to a range of disciplines and gives it its wide appeal.

Cities and the Knowledge Economy is an in-depth, interdisciplinary, international and comparative examination of the relationship between knowledge and urban development in the contemporary era. Through the lenses of promise, politics and possibility, it examines how the knowledge economy has arisen, how different cities have sought to realise its potential, how universities play a role in its realisation and, overall, what this reveals about the relationship between politics, capitalism, space, place and knowledge in cities. The book argues that the 21st century city has been predicated on particular circuits of knowledge that constitute expertise as residing in elite and professional epistemic communities. In contrast, alternative conceptions of the knowledge society are founded on assumptions which take analysis, deliberation, democracy and the role of the citizen and communities of practice seriously. Drawing on a range of examples from cities around the world, the book reflects on these possibilities and asks what roles the practice of ‘active intermediation’, the university and a critical and engaged social scientific practice can all play in this process. The book is aimed at researchers and students from different disciplines – geography, politics, sociology, business studies, economics and planning – with interests in contemporary urbanism and the role of knowledge in understanding development, as well as urban policymakers, politicians and practitioners who are concerned with the future of our cities and seek to create coalitions of different communities oriented towards more just and sustainable futures.

This book opens a window into how two ambitious countries – India and Brazil – are seeking to become knowledge powers in the 21st century. As the knowledge economy became the preferred way of conceptualising the economy and its future direction, in the more economically-advanced countries, our search for understanding also followed the same direction. This generated a body of work that has neglected countries that, like India and Brazil, are attempting to make the leap into knowledge economies. Muzaka explores these motivations and the ways in which they have inspired a number of institutional reforms in India and Brazil. The author offers an investigation of the role the state in shaping the respective intellectual property systems pertaining to the pharmaceutical and agro-biotechnology sectors and the multiple social conflicts that have unfolded as a result.

Over the last two decades, Singapore has undergone a substantial degree of ‘Asianization’. Apart from participating in the Asian values debate of the 1990s, re-visioning itself as ‘New Asia’ and a global-Asian hub, and establishing Asian identities for the commodities it consumes and produces, Singapore has also repurposed its modernity, cultures, and ethos along similar regionalist precepts. However, even in recent times, Singapore continues to vacillate ambivalently between identifying with and differentiating itself from Asia. Responding to the challenges Singapore faces in coming to terms with its Asian identity, this book examines the complex cultural, social, and political underpinnings that have shaped Singapore’s mainstream discourse on Asia. Indeed, it argues that its legacy as a colonial port city, the exigencies of managing the post-independence nation state, and the larger forces of imperialism and capitalism all contribute to its politics of Asianism. Taking a thoroughly interdisciplinary approach that spans history, cultural studies, postcolonialism, and cultural geography, Leong Yew reveals how Asia has been used to narrate Singapore’s beginnings, revalidate Singaporean ethnic culture and to consolidate its practices of consumption and commodification. This book will be welcomed by students and scholars working across a range of fields, including Asian culture and society, Asian politics, cultural theory and postcolonial studies.

Provides an introduction to the knowledge economy. Illustrating the benefits of conversing with the ghosts of alternative economies, this book provokes 'conversations' between the knowledge economy and those marginalised economies that haunt it: the risk, gift, libidinal and survival economies.

This book contains the proceedings as well as invited papers for the first annual conference of the UNESCO Unitwin Complex System Digital Campus (CSDC), which is an international initiative gathering 120 Universities on four continents, and structured in ten E-Departments. First Complex Systems Digital Campus World E-Conference 2015 features chapters from the latest research results on theoretical questions of complex systems and their experimental domains. The content contained bridges the gap between the individual and the collective within complex systems science and new integrative sciences on topics such as: genes to organisms to ecosystems, atoms to materials to products, and digital media to the Internet. The conference breaks new ground through a dedicated video-conferencing system – a concept at the heart of the international UNESCO UniTwin, embracing scientists from low-income and distant countries. This book promotes an integrated system of research, education, and training. It also aims at contributing to global development by taking into account its social, economic, and cultural dimensions. First Complex Systems Digital Campus World E-Conference 2015 will appeal to students and researchers working in the fields of complex systems, statistical physics, computational intelligence, and biological physics.

Gender studies are a key lens through which education has been examined in the past forty years, having become an accepted and popular subfield in educational foundations studies. Moreover, scholars in gender and education have made tremendous contributions well beyond education, influencing humanities and social sciences scholars across the academy. Hearing the stories of these scholars—their development, education, important works, and thoughts on the future—offers unique insights into the genesis and growth of the field and gives new scholars an overview of advances made. Leaders in Gender and Education: Intellectual Self-Portrais does just that, showing the history of gender and education through the eyes of 16 of its leaders. By recounting their experiences and scholarly work, they trace the development of feminist and profeminist research on girls, on boys, and on the issues shaping both gender and education—issues like race, sexuality, neoliberalism, globalization, and more. Importantly, the volume has a global focus, including scholars from the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and Australia. This diversity gives readers a broad sense of the progress of gender scholarship in education around the world. Each essay provides students and researchers alike with not only background on the 16 scholars included, but also the lists of major works—chosen by contributors themselves—direct readers to some of the most important scholarship on gender and education. Taken together, further, the contributors’ thoughts on the future of the field provide glimpses of productive directions for studies of gender and education.