Geographies of knowledge, practices of globalization: learning from the oil exploration and production industry

In this paper we initiate a dialogue between work on the geographies of globalization and knowledge economies, areas of inquiry that have tended to develop in isolation. We argue for a critical harnessing of these two bodies of work to (1) understand how and where different types of knowledge are acquired, produced and mobilized by firms as they seek to 'go global', (2) map the multi-scalar geographies of knowledge that enable practices of globalization and (3) examine the ways in which networks of knowledge structure emerging geographies of production. We demonstrate the potential of this move using oil exploration and production as an example.