Environment and Planning A 1999, volume 31, pages 665-682 Discursive aspects of technological innovation: the case of the British motor-sport industry S Pinch Department of Geography, University of Southampton, Southampton S017 1BJ, England; e-mail: S.RPinch@soton.ac.uk N Henry School of Geography, University of Birmingham, Edgbaston, Birmingham B15 2TT, England; e-mail: N.D.Henry@bham.ac.uk Received 19 March 1997; in revised form 10 December 1997 Abstract. A discursive approach to technological innovation recognises that scientific and technical innovations are the products of groups of people. The subject of this paper is how this insight from the sociology of scientific knowledge can make a contribution to debates in economic geography. Principally drawing on the work of social constructionists, this approach is used to provide insights into the reasons for both the creation and the maintenance of the geographical agglomeration of small firms constituted by the British motor-sport industry. Introduction The 'cultural turn' is beginning to have an important impact upon economic geography through a growing recognition of the discursive aspects of industrial organisation. In the context of so-called 'new industrial spaces'—new geographical agglomerations of firms—this has meant a shift away from explanations based on quantitative indices of material inputs and outputs and a shift towards explanations based on qualitative indices of information flows (Asheim and Dunford, 1997; Storper, 1995; Thrift, 1994; Thrift and Olds, 1996). In this paper we illustrate the advantages that derive from a discursive approach for understanding one of the key features of many new industrial spaces—technological innovation. In the first section of the paper we provide an illustration of how a discursive approach to technological innovation can be used. In the second section we discuss some of the insights this perspective can provide for understanding the agglomeration of firms. The empirical context for the discussion is the British motor-sport industry (BMSI)—the world's leading industrial agglomeration for the design and assembly of single-seater racing cars. This industry consists of scores of small firms clustered in a 50 mile radius around Oxfordshire in southern England, in what has become known as 'Motor-Sport Valley' (see Henry et al, 1996; Pinch et al, 1997, for maps of the region). Around threequarters of all the single-seater racing cars used throughout the world originate from this relatively small area, with, for example, virtually all the world's leading Formula One and Indycar racing cars designed and assembled in the region. The empirical analysis is based upon an eighteen-month study of the BMSI. In-depth semistructured interviews were undertaken with over fifty senior managers, designers, arid engineers in all the leading firms in the industry, and these interviews were combined with an analysis of archival and published material on the industry. A discursive approach to technological innovation A discursive approach to technological innovation draws upon a number of recent developments in the sociology of scientific knowledge (SSK) (Collins and Pinch, 1994; Latour, 1987; Latour and Woolgar, 1979; Lynch and Woolgar, 1990; Woolgar, 1993). Although this is a highly diverse set of literature, an underlying theme in this