Page - (000048) - in Knowledge and Networks

38 matters, namely, what people think of each other a priori, and the nature of power relations , affect prospects for knowledge sharing (Brown, Jenkins, & Thatcher, 2012 ). Moreover, research has shown that knowledges are communicated in verbal and nonverbal ways, including body language and other contextual cues (e.g., Harvey, Novicevic, & Grarrison, 2004 ), potentially inhibiting productive interaction in physical or virtual face-to-face settings (Brown et al., 2012 ; Shachaf, 2007 ). Bias is embodied, reinforcing the importance of incorporating faces as well as bodies in research on networks. Critical human geographers writing about issues in fi eld strat- egies have highlighted some of the problems of, for example, focus groups, wherein power relations can surface and thereby produce silences among some members (Hyams, 2004 ). Similarly, in the business world, brainstorming sessions can inhibit creativity as different participants take on more and less responsibility in a group- think culture (Cain, 2012 ). Sometimes network analyses incorporate power rela- tions (e.g., Faulconbridge & Hall, 2009 ) regarding, for example, selective recruitment by gatekeepers and executive search fi rms (Faulconbridge, Beaverstock, Hall, & Hewitson, 2009 ), agents’ relational positioning (Weller, 2009 ), different kinds of proximities (Jones & Search, 2009 ), and uneven access to circuits of knowledge (Faulconbridge, 2007 ; Grabher, 2002 ). 14 And sometimes research in economic geography on networks connects with gender issues (Blake & Hanson, 2005 ; Hanson & Blake, 2009 ; McDowell, 2000 ). However, there is relative silence on issues of race and ethnicity and, more generally, issues of difference broadly construed. 15 The “soft” fi eld of feelings and interpersonal relations remain central yet relatively unexplored. 16 (Riley & Ettlinger, 2011 ) and neighborhoods (Joseph, Chaskin, & Webber, 2007 ). Given that the usual goal is defi ned not in terms of the nature of interaction, but rather in terms of the pattern of co-location, success is relatively easily achieved, perhaps in part explaining views that segregation is not really a problem. In contrast, a topological and non-Euclidean (as opposed to topographic and Euclidean) approach to segregation recognizes that segregation ripples through everyday life at fi ne scales, within so-called mixed residential communities such as schools, as well as in work- places, including virtual workplaces. 14 See Christopherson and Clark ( 2007 ) for a discussion of power relations in fi rm networks in which the actors are represented at the scale of fi rms. 15 For example, Ash Amin, who has written extensively on issues in economic geography on knowledge generation (Amin, 2004 ; Amin & Cohendet, 2004 ; Amin & Roberts, 2008 ), has pub- lished on issues of race (e.g., Amin, 2010 ) and more general social theory (Amin & Thrift, 2013 ), but this part of his scholarship tends to be discrete from his publications on issues in economic geography. Similarly, Doreen Massey, whose early scholarship (Massey, 1984 ) paved the way for analysis of spatial divisions of labor, eventually departed from issues of fi rms and the economy (e.g., Massey, 1991 , 2005 ). 16 The allusion to emotions here differs from ideas about “emotional intelligence” in the business and management literature, which engages emotions in the context of fi xed hierarchical structures and focuses on particular actors who are leaders to manage the emotions of their staffs—a top- down approach that implicitly is about policing emotions to fi t with a prescribed confi guration of emotion and reason to accommodate fi rm goals of productivity. The perspective here differs inso- far as fi rst, the usual instrumentality of the social for the economic is reversed, and second, emo- tions are not to be managed or possibly suppressed, but rather understood so as to enable constructive relations (Ettlinger, 2004 ). N. Ettlinger