NEO-MARSHALLIAN NODES IN GLOBAL NETWORKS

The literature on industrial districts seems to have reached something of an impasse. On one side the proponents of industrial districts sit around their camp fires, supposedly wild-eyed with enthusiasism, talking flexible specialization and postfordism. On the other side are a series of supposedly grim-faced critics, shouting destructive comments about globalization and corporate networks from out of the mist. This paper is an attempt to break out of this often acrimonious impasse. It takes the emergence of new localized industrial complexes seriously, but seeks to set them firmly within a context of expanding global corporate networks. The paper is in four parts. The first summarizes the key arguments of the 'localization' thesis which predicts a return to industrial districts. The second attempts to reformulate the localization and globalization theses so as to provide a space for local agglomeration within growing global production filieres. The third part attempts to illustrate this reformulation via a consideration of the history of two industrial districts: Santa Croce in Tuscany, which has become a Marshallian industrial district of the old kind over the last 20 years, but is now beginning to develop more global productive linkages; and the City area of London, which finally stopped being a conventional Marshallian industrial district at the same time that Santa Croce was becoming one, and which now heralds a new form of localization. The fourth part addresses some of the spatial policy implications of internationalization on different types of economy.