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The predicament of firms in the new and old economies: a critical inquiry into traditional binaries in the study of the space-economy

Department of Geography, 1036 Derby Hall, 154 North Oval Mall, Ohio State University, Columbus, Ohio 43210, USA, ettlinger.1{at}osu.edu

Working with the assumption that the social and the material are mutually embedded, this article suggests that actors in the business world tend to separate social from material concerns despite the entanglement of these two dimensions. This disconnection — a binary logic applied in the context of blurry realities — creates problems, the resolution of which requires change in production logic. The predicament of firms is the apparent inability of actors to develop a production logic that recognizes the entwinement of the material and the social; rather than changing from a unidimensional to a multidimensional logic, strategies continuously oscillate between one unidimensional logic (emphasizing social or material concerns) and another (emphasizing the opposite), thus perpetuating the predicament. The oscillation occurs in both the old and new economies, but is compressed in the new economy. Recognizing this oscillation in the new and old economies requires dehomogenizing each to uncover problems that prompt change. Recognizing the transformation of production logics within the old and new economies requires awareness of, and retreat from, binary logic in academic analysis.

Key Words: binaries • business-to-business • compression • e-commerce • global economy • networks • new economy • old economy • society and technology.

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