Book Reviews

Abstract

The ambiguous term ‘‘new economy’’, and its near-pseudonyms ‘‘information economy’’ and ‘‘knowledge-based economy’’ present huge challenges to empirical researchers. From a distance, the idea of a new economy seems simple, inviting easy sweeping generalizations, but the closer you approach it to try to take its measurements, map its reach, or plot its growth, the more it dissolves into nebulousness. Attempts to define its boundaries in relation to the ‘‘old economy’’ are fraught with difficulties. Some are based on fairly crude posthoc distinctions (e.g. ‘‘the NASDAQ industries’’) which turn out, on closer examination, to have little underlying logic. Others err in the opposite direction and, in their attempts to operationalize abstract notions of what the informatization process consists of, run the risk of creating complex typologies which are extremely difficult, if not impossible, to map onto the real world. In either case, any definition, or at least any definition which makes reference to specific technological infrastructures, processes, products, or delivery media, is likely to become rapidly outdated in the light of continuing technological change. Industrial Sunset compares the processes of industrial transformation and eventual decline in the Great Lakes region of Canada and the United States between 1969 and 1984. Through an examination of two cities on either side of the border – Youngstown and Detroit and Hamilton and Windsor – readers are offered a skillful analysis of economic decline and how workers, their unions, and their communities responded to job loss. The book makes a valuable contribution to the literature on de-industrialization. skillfully