Patrimoines productifs, secteur et territoire

The paper deals with sector and territory as productive entities. We have adopted an historical institutionnalist approach encompassing both economics of organization and economics of knowledge. In reference to the concept of activity, both sector and territory are envisaged as “container of resource” (Giddens), with positive externalities of a patrimonial nature.

Sector and territory are differenciated as follows: the sector's acces to patrimony is based on the embodiment of activity in the division of labour; the territory's access to patrimony is based on the integration of activity in space. Therefore, a production system is defined as the coupling of these two dimensions: it is a whole structuring of productive activities in a territory, whether this territory is local, regional, national or continental.