Page - (000014) - in Knowledge and Networks

2 Geography and Networks The network perspective has been influential in geography since the 1960s, when formal network analysis was used in what was called network geometry. By adopt- ing the concept of topology from mathematics (Matthes, 1912), geographers inte- grated topographic and topological perspectives into the analysis of spatial networks. With this new method, geographers sought to solve puzzles such as the traveling salesman1 to determine optimal routes involving the shortest paths in transport and utility networks (Greenberg, Carey, Zobler, & Hordon, 1971; Sagers & Green, 1982). Haggett and Chorley (1969) developed a comprehensive approach for the optimiza- tion of network geometry, which they considered to be the most interesting research topic of location theory at the time. This research has become an important topic especially in engineering disciplines such as operations research, computation sci- ence, mathematics, and economics. Journals such as Networks and Spatial Economics and Operations Research focus on models, techniques, algorithms, and research questions and on ways that production networks, supply chain manage- ment networks, infrastructure, and communication networks can be organized and optimized. Since the 1980s, the research interest in geography has increasingly shifted from material to social connections and from a quantitative to a rather qualitative approach to capturing the multidimensional processes developing in local and global environ- ments. Unlike physical infrastructure, social relationships do not necessarily follow a linear logic by which costs rise or connectivity weakens as distance increases. Geometric distance cannot be accepted as a sufficient condition for determining social interactions. Instead, the availability and use of communication and transport technologies mediate the relationship between physical proximity and social inter- action. The relation between space and social interaction depends on the actor’s choice of technology and mobility (Glückler, 2007). Today, geography is interested in the quality rather than the physical metrics of social and organizational relations. Knowledge is a key resource in economic development, prosperity, and wealth (e.g., Jacobs, 1969; Romer, 1990; Schumpeter, 1911). Knowledge is also socially constructed and diffused in the relational network among people (Brown & Duguid, 1991; Knorr-Cetina, 1981; Wenger, 1998). Geographers have therefore focused on the question to what extent geography influences learning, knowledge creation, and innovation by rejecting the traditional models that calculate the prob- ability of a tie as a function of metric distance (Bathelt & Glückler, 2011; Maskell, 2001; Maskell & Malmberg, 1999). A fundamental observation in the geography of knowledge is that knowledge is often sticky with regard to place and difficult to transfer to or reproduce in other places (Bathelt & Glückler, 2011; Gertler, 1995; Storper, 1997; von Hippel, 1994). This stickiness sometimes leads to idiosyncratic 1 The problem of the traveling salesman consists in finding the minimal route for a journey that starts and ends at the same location and has to pass through a determinate number of intermediary destinations. J. Glückler et al.