Economic Geography

An economic geography for the new empire
Every Empire is served by a stratum of intellectuals who have specialised in
manufacturing consent, and this one is no exception. At the ‘high-theory’ pole
this consists of a theological elite – a Priesthood – who articulate and legitimate the
broad cognitive and normative assumptions that render Empire as destiny, or at
least, unavoidable. At the humbler, practical, pole it consists of a mass of policy
‘artisans’ who play an important role licensing and lubricating the Imperial 
project in specific local situations, helping to construct the specific channels and

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projects through which hegemonic perceptions and imperatives find their way
into governance at all scales.
The academic ideas of the age tend to be closely related to those of the most
powerful groups. So it is not surprising that ‘Post Cultural Turn Geography’ has
generously partaken of, and sometimes added a few tweaks to, these classic
Imperial practices. In parallel with the global projection of neo-liberalism and
rise to unchallenged hegemony of the United States, a combination of postmod-
ernism and post-structuralism became the cuckoo in the official intellectual 
nest (Callinicos 1999: 297). Anglo-American human geography was one of the
most thorough and lasting conquests (Soja 1989). The post-modern element
now looks more than a shade old fashioned, neo-modernist grand narratives
being louder and more monolithic than ever (notably that there are no alterna-
tives to neo-liberal economics and US-style ‘liberal democracy’). But its post-
structuralist cognitive and normative foundations live on the prevailing dominant
academic (and non-academic) orthodoxy in the West (and increasingly elsewhere). 
They have licensed an evolving sequence of post-post-modern discourses 
from Actor Network Theory, Relationality, to non-representational ‘theory’, and
beyond.