The spirit of the time and the spirit of the place as fundamental factors of socio-economic development

The uncertainty that represents the current state of the economy determines the necessity to activate the search for non-traditional factors of socio-economic development. These factors should generally reflect the joint influence of intra-economic, cultural and mental processes, consider historical and geographical prerequisites of socio-economic evolution. The “spirit of the time” and the “genius of the place” (lat. – “genius loci”) are considered to be the basic factors of this kind in the paper. The first factor is the quintessence of ideas, views, mental models that are specific to a certain period of time and that spread throughout the entire space of the studied system. The second factor is a set of traditions, institutions, assessments that exist among economic and social agents on a certain territory. The first one is generally innovative, the second one is conservative. The processes of emergence and expansion of the spirit of the time and the formation and consolidation of the genius of the place have been analyzed. The influence of these factors on the behavior of economic agents and the nature of society have been studied. The possibilities and the levers of managing these factors in the interests of society have been determined. The role of these factors in shaping the flow of events significant in the mental socio-economic environment has been shown. Further development of this direction is the development of the methods for the detailed analysis, forecasting and system modeling of these factors (DVGM analysis) as one of the promising approaches to the integration of spatio-temporal, historical-geographical and socio-economic analysis.