№ 2 - 2007
Sergeyev V.M., Kuz’min A.S., Nechayev V.D., Alekseyenkova Ye.S.
The Trust and Spatial Interaction of Social Nets

In the article, an attempt has been undertaken to provide theoretical furtherance of the globalization model proposed in Ц. and D. Anderssons’ work, “The Gateways into the Global Economy”. In the said work, the world economy is interpreted as a multilevel system, whose upper level is constituted by a net of the so-called “gateways into the global world”, e.g. of compact territories of megapolises combining in them the functions of transport junctions, financial centres, as well as centres of education, of science and of political influence. Proceeding from the conclusions made by the creators of the model, the authors of the article concentrated on the analysis of the inner structure of the “gateways”, convincingly demonstrating that the “gateways into the global world” form a natural and comfortable milieu for the functioning of the social nets in the political and economic sphere. According to their conclusions, the type of professional activity in the zone of the “gateways” is determined by the need for minimizing transactional expenses, both financial and temporal, and is substantively connected with the very role of the zone as the hub of current coordination of everyday decisions in the framework of the global economy. Special attention is given in the article to the research of spatial localization of political, economic and intellectual centres as of the factor apt either to augment or to lessen the chances of the “gateways into the global world” appearing.