• Overview and Aims
• Background to the series
• Seminars
• The Series Organisers
• Contact

Overview and Aims

This series of six seminars will cover the following themes:

Theme 1 - Cultures of Competitiveness: Discourses and Knowledge Brands

Theme 2 - Financialization of Competitiveness

Theme 3 - Competitiveness, Global Production and Labour Relations

Theme 4 - Changing Cultures of Competitiveness in Education

Theme 5 - Changing Cultures of Competitiveness: Social and Environmental Dimensions

Theme 6 - Social Exclusion and Socially-Creative Spaces

These timely themes are selected because they:

(i) reflect 'changing cultures of competitiveness'; and (ii) represent a range of areas in which competitiveness, its preconditions, and its effects are significant.

The first theme explores the branding of distinct bodies of knowledge and practice concerned with competitiveness. It provides a distinctive framing for themes 2-3, each of which deals with a substantive area for which competitiveness is central and each of which is organized by relevant experts who will be able to mobilize their own networks to the advantage of all participants. The final three themes reflect the social dimensions of competitiveness and act as observatories to examine the political and policy implications of 'changing cultures of competitiveness'.

The series' main aim is to provide a context for presenting and promoting interdisciplinary ana-lyses of 'competitiveness' as a body of knowledge and related policy. Its main objectives are to:

• enhance our understanding of 'competitiveness' by examining it as a body of economic knowledge;
• examine the role and impact of 'competitiveness' in financial, production, education practices;
• explore economic, social and territorial formulations of 'competitiveness' and their changing nature;
• initiate discussions on the policy implications of these various formulations of 'competitiveness';
• identify examples of good competitiveness practices in which unevenness and inequalities have been reduced;
• establish conceptual and policy research on 'competitiveness' in social science outside economics and management; and
• enhance discussions among regional, national and international organizations (governmental, non-governmental, business and civil society)
• discuss and rethink politics and policies of competitiveness from alternative perspectives.