Service Economy, Geography of

Services and the Green Economy

“…Having set out the case for a service based perspective on green economic development thus far, before going any further it is important in terms of the goals of this book to consider in more depth some of the longstanding (and not unproblematic) debates about the nature of the service economy itself. Social scientific interest in the nature of the 'service' sector is longstanding, with work spanning a range of disciplines emerging during the 1970s as it was recognised that a growing proportion of advanced industrial economies GDP was accounted for by service industries rather than agriculture, mineral extractive or manufacturing industries (Hermelin & Rusten 2015). This service transition is well rehearsed in a literature spanning decades, but in the context of the second decade of the twenty-first century and the focus on this book, a number of key features of the contemporary debate about what the service economy 'is', how it relates to the rest of the economy, and the geographical and scalar dimensions to service industry activity are important.…”