Economic Geography

The geographers’ reception of geographical economics
Rather predictably, the geographers’ first reaction to the new geographical econom-
ics was one of virtually unqualified rejection. In a brief review of Krugman’s book,
Johnston (1992: 1066) dismisses it with the comment ‘not recommended’.
Martin (1999: 67) writes that geographical economics, ‘is not that new and it
A perspective of economic geography
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most certainly is not geography’. In a similar vein, Lee (2002: 353) rebuffs the
entire enterprise with the comment that ‘there are . . . precious few grounds for
some mutually beneficial conversation here’.
Something of these reactions can no doubt be ascribed to geography’s
endemic professional anxieties reflecting its relatively low standing on the
academic totem pole, certainly by comparison with economics. Krugman’s taste-
less self-promotion as the creative genius par excellence of economic geography,
and the champion of four-square thinking generally, did nothing to assuage
those anxieties. The geographers’ main complaints about this work have tended
to revolve around their concern that it is unduly cut off from the wider social and
political frameworks within which economic issues are actually played out. Many
economic geographers’ perception of their own work, as well, points to practices
of research that are grounded, open, polycentric, focused on rich empirical
description, and deeply conscious of the contingency and complexity of things
(Boddy 1999; Thrift and Olds 1996). I shall take issue with this particular line
of self-justification later, but let us for the moment simply note some of its basic
modulations. Thus, Clark (1998: 75) suggests that ‘a fine-grained substantive
appreciation of diversity, combined with empirical methods of analysis like 
case studies are the proper methods of economic geography’. Martin (1999: 77)
castigates geographical economics for its neglect of ‘real communities in real
historical, social and cultural settings’. In a similar vein, Barnes (2003), picking
up on the work of Geertz (1983), proclaims that all knowledge is local and that
locational analysis in geography is (or should be) born out of specific contextual
settings.
Some of these comments point to significant deficiencies of geographical
economics, and they need to be taken seriously (see also David 1999). In my
opinion, however, they provide at best only peripheral glosses on the main issues
at stake and they fail signally to grapple with the target’s central weakness, which,
as I hope to demonstrate, reside in its limited analytical grasp of agglomeration
economies and locational processes. I would also argue that the geographers’
critique has tended to veer too enthusiastically in favor of the virtues of the
empirical and the particular and too forcefully against theoretical systematization
and formal analysis, thereby implicitly abdicating from far too much that is of
value on their own side (though I suspect that most of the geographers
mentioned earlier would not consider this to be a fair judgment of what they 
are saying). In any case, a scientifically meaningful and politically progressive
economic geography can scarcely allow itself to be reduced merely to close
dialogue with endless empirical relata (Plummer and Sheppard 2001; Sayer
2000). A more penetrating engagement with the internal theoretical structure of
geographical economics, it seems to me, is more than overdue.