Economic Geography

The future of the fruitful marriage
The cross-fertilization between political economy and economic geography has
been a fruitful one. Many of the economic geographic contributions – conceptual,
methodological, empirical – that came from the post-civil rights/Vietnam period 
of academic ferment have passed on into the mainstream of the field. I have high-
lighted the synthetic nature of these – how insights that emerged not only from
political economy but also from sociology and political science have enriched
economic geography and added to its toolkit. As the disciplines have slipped back
into their separate grooves, cross-disciplinary exchanges have dwindled, although
they are still particularly powerful in fields like urban and regional planning,
where I teach. Of course, intellectual work in the high season featured here was
enlivened by an explosion of activism and diversity of popular movements. There
are counterparts today (environmental, human rights, feminist, union, and anti-
globalization movements), but they are not as linked, visible and successful. In the
absence of these, academic work tends to fall back into normalcy and research into
more esoteric intellectual veins. Abstraction is back in fashion, while grounded
theory and empirical testing of theory is embattled. Few ask whether our work 
is having a real impact on the world or is read by or of interest to intelligent lay 
readers. If we said it in plain language, would they find what we do important?
I have pointedly written a ‘history of economic geographic thought’ essay. I
am concerned that our field is no longer training our students in how the field
has evolved or in linking that understanding to events and movements in the
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Ann Markusen

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Economic geography and political economy
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larger society. I encourage students and younger faculty to read the classics in the
field and to spend time, preferably in seminars or with others, grappling with the
diverse bodies of work within economic geography. We should all read broadly
and know about advances in the other sciences and humanities, especially in this
field where synthesis is so remarkably possible and badly needed.