Economic Geography

Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen and Helen Lawton Smith

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Amy Glasmeier explores why economic geographers have been largely 
absent in policy-making circles, particularly in the USA. Her chapter records and
deplores the lack of willingness for economic geographers to critically engage 
in debates that span academia and public policy. She argues that academic
engagement in the political process best occurs when society is gravitating in that
direction. Therefore at times like the 1980s, and in the current period (2006)
(post-Hurricane Katrina), many streams come together in a confluence of ideas
that result in an intellectual consensus about critical problems to which geogra-
phers’ best efforts and significant energy are profitably aimed. She implores
economic geographers not to be silent and to use their skills and knowledge
vociferously engaging in debates and making a difference to how issues are being
understood. 
John Lovering takes to task economic geography’s excessive embrace of 
the Empire of Capital. He provides a critique of what he identifies as the Post-
Cultural-Turn Economic Geography (PCTEG), arguing that due to a number of
influences, PCTEG is economic only in a thematic sense and is removed from an
empirically informed awareness of the planet we live on.
Ann Green reflects on developments in labour market geographies, how 
they are measured and understood. Since the 1980s, methods of analysis have
become more qualitative, theoretical, more focused on social and cultural issues
and towards more detailed disaggregation. She identifies four major concerns 
of researchers: labour market adjustments, the balance between migration and
commuting, area perceptions in labour market behaviour and the role of labour
market intermediaries. She identifies changing policy issues and argues that
economic geographers have an important role in contributing to the debate in
what policy levers are available at different geographical scales to influence policy
outcomes. Green argues that a central question for research is ‘What is the capac-
ity for mobility and flexibility in labour markets?’
Ed Malecki dates the late 1970s as the time when technological change 
was recognized by a small number of scholars, including himself, as the explana-
tion for why companies, especially large companies, were located and how those
locations changed over time. He argues that technology, broadly conceived as
knowledge and application, continues to be fundamental to technological
change and related regional development. 
Finally, we would like to thank all of the contributors to the five sessions at 
the Centennial Meeting of the AAG. We are particularly grateful to Allen Scott
for his keynote, which gave our event such a wonderful start. All of the sessions
were enormously stimulating. We thank the audience for their participation 
and contribution. We hope that this book captures the excitement experienced
by economic geographers, at these sessions, looking ahead at the twenty-first
century.
Introduction: the past, present and future of economic geography
7

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