The volume is positioned in a current renewal within socio-economic studies prompted by the increasing interaction of global and local forces to shape the welfare of societies and the economic performance of firms and places. Comprising articles written by a group of distinguished scholars and practitioners from the international scientific community, the Handbook includes conceptual, critical and forward-looking contributions as well as case studies on Asia, Latin America, Europe, and the United States.

The 53 chapters of the volume are distributed in 4 parts and 11 sections. Each section is presented by a coordinator of section. Including the general introduction from the editors, 65 papers have been written appositely for this volume, contributed by 81 authors, 31 from Italy, 13 from USA, 5 from UK, 5 from Spain, and from Austria, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Sweden, Switzerland, China, India, Japan, Australia, Brazil. All the authors, even when taking different views on industrial districts, have kindly accepted to compare their positions with the unified basic framework provided by the editors.

The first part sets the stage placing the industrial district in historical context, both as an empirical object and as the object of theories and contributions from various social sciences. The second part is devoted to the general discussions on the relations between the local forces of trust, entrepreneurship and cognitive proximity, and the district processes of industrial and local development. The third part comes more directly to the empirical investigations on contemporary IDs, both in methodological terms, and with the reference to important national experiences. The fourth part concludes with reflections devoted to the contemporary challenges to IDs, between globalisation, new technological tendencies, and multi-scalar possibilities of policy support.

Giacomo Becattini, Marco Bellandi, and L. De Propris (eds.) A Handbook of Industrial Districts, Cheltenham: Edward Elgar, 2009

25 February 2010