This book offers a novel insight into the economic dynamics of modern biotechnology, using examples from Europe to reflect global trends. The authors apply theoretical insight to a fundamental enigma of the modern learning society, namely, how and why the development of knowledge and ideas...

This book presents an analytical framework for understanding the shifting ‘great divide’ in capitalist economies of knowledge. The authors develop a novel economic sociology of innovation, based on the ‘instituted economic process’ approach. By focusing on economies of knowledge, they...

[eng] The paper explores how the emergence of bioinformatics has disrupted existing forms of economic organisation and the boundaries between market and non-market activities. New combinations of capabilities have emerged at the interface of biology, computer science and mathematics leading to...

This paper discusses the re-emergence of biofuel innovation systems in the USA and Brazil. We develop a view of eco-innovation systems as emerging and evolving to solve ecological problems. We then consider the role of the State as a core actor in the mobilization of innovation systems and...

Faced with the twin challenges of anthropogenic climate change and 'peak oil', the need for an urgent and radical transformation of transport energy has been widely recognised. Adopting a neo-Polanyian economic sociology approach, this article asks what conditions European governance capacity to...

The paper addresses the new competition for land arising from growing and changing demand for food when combined with increasing global demand for transport energy, under conditions of declining petro-chemical resources and the urgent need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. The paper starts...

The vast majority of products (i.e. goods and services) are provided to the consumer through several co-ordinated and contributing agents acting together. This paper is concerned with improving our understanding of processes of provision and innovation that involve several contributing and...

Genetic engineering is placed in the context of a history of transformations of the relations between 'cultivated nature' and 'naturally occurring nature'. It is argued that genetic modification is a bio-socio-economic process, producing new diversity within cultivated nature. Viewing bio-...

A theoretical social epistemology, arguing for a 'relational realism', is developed as part of the internal work of the research process in a social science investigation. It is suggested that theorising the nature of knowledge interactions is fruitful both in developing an epistemology of the...