Economic Geography

Spaces of communication
Galison (1997: 803) suggests that Physics uses trading zones, within which ideas
from different approaches can be exchanged, in order to draw strength from its
diversity. ‘Like two cultures distinct but living near enough to trade, they can
share some activities while diverging on many others . . . in the trading zone,
despite the differences in classification, significance, and standards of demon-
stration, the two groups can collaborate’. This requires certain predispositions to
function: a disposition to communicate rather than exclude; institutional incen-
tives favoring collaboration over competition; and places where trading can occur.
My own experience with GIS and society indicates that under such conditions
useful cooperation is possible, without reducing the exchange to one or the other
approach, or to a monistic account of the world (cf. Longino 2002). Currently,
however, there exist shared dualisms that prevent constructive exchange across
both schisms sketched above, compounded in the latter case by power imbalance.
With respect to the theory/interpretation schism, this dualism is reinforced 
by a shared belief that there are only two possible philosophical approaches to
making sense of the world: a foolproof method or relativism. Each is defended
by one group, presenting it as superior to its other, creating either/or rather 
than both/and attitudes. Increasingly, however, philosophers and sociologists of
science are recognizing that this dualism is indefensible, raising the possibility of
exchange which is pluralist without becoming relativist (Galison 1997; Longino
2002; Bourdieu 2004). Economic geography needs to create places where, and
20
Eric Sheppard

---

conditions under which, non-reductionist but critical exchanges and mutual
learning can occur across these contrasting epistemologies (within and between
the two sides of the dualism), thereby strengthening knowledge production. We
are well placed to experiment with this, because of our widespread collective
experience with an epistemologically diverse context. Such conversations will
require each of us to become more reflexive: to take the effort to learn other
approaches from the inside and to cultivate a willingness to challenge the hard
core ideas and assumptions of any approach. This is hard work: it requires the
time and patience to learn about approaches that our colleagues encourage us to
ignore and the courage to take unpopular positions that exceed any of the cliques
we are invited to join. It also requires us to instill the same ethic in our students,
at the cost of abandoning the temptation to create our ‘own’ schools of scholar-
ship. In my experience, however, it has been well worthwhile.
With respect to the Geography/Economics schism, both sides share the 
view that Economics, defined as mainstream economics, is utterly different 
from Geography. In fact, however, Economics is far broader, with institutional,
political economic, feminist, ecological and post-structural strands that geogra-
phers have much in common with.
2
Here, however, barriers to exchange are
compounded by extreme power hierarchies, both within Economics (where
‘heterodox’ approaches are dismissed by the mainstream) and between (powerful)
Economics and (weak) Geography. The powerful, Bourdieu (2004: 35) argues,
‘enjoy decisive advantage in the competition, one reason being that they consti-
tute an obligatory reference point for their competitors, who, whatever they 
do, are willy-nilly required passively or actively to take up a position in relation
to them’. Bourdieu’s analysis is consistent with my experience in these interac-
tions. Even use of the (mathematical and statistical) language of geographical
economics, to point out inconsistencies in its own reasoning that create space for
insights from economic geographers, has resulted in responses that have left me
feeling like Wittgenstein’s lion: ‘If a lion could talk, we could not understand
him’. I thus sympathize with the frustration motivating Amin and Thrift’s desire
to wish Economics away, but wishing does not make it so. The ongoing evolu-
tion of knowledge production in economic geography will necessarily continue
to be shaped through its relationship
to
Economics, a discipline with which
economic geographers must remain cognizant, in all its guises, if they are to
construct a more equal basis for this exchange (although, as geographers, we
need to pay attention to far more than Economics).
3