Economic Geography

Conclusions: what geography matters for
Geographers have long insisted that ‘geography matters’, although they have
been conspicuously unsuccessful at pinning down exactly how (e.g. Soja 1989).
One way to find out is to look at what geographers can actually do. Those
trained in the arts of post-cultural-turn economic geography are conspicuously
poorly endowed with the skills to do much that non-insiders (to the discipline or
the Empire) are likely to regard as self-evidently useful, like answer the questions

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The new imperial geography
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with which this chapter began. They are, however, marvellously qualified to talk
the talk of Priests or Artisans. The most influential reconstructions of economic
geography have turned it at one pole into a space for aesthetic-theological
contemplation, expressing wonderment at all things spatial and different, and at
another into a service industry mass-producing policy licenses and credentials.
The former inclines to excusing or obscuring Empire, the latter to training its
functionaries. Economic geography has made itself matter as an academic corollary
and component of the Empire of capital.
That would not be a criticism if you don’t mind about inequality or the longer-
term effects of the neo-liberal global extension of capitalism, don’t believe there’s
an ‘us’ worth talking about other than your preferred group, don’t think anything
can be done at any spatial scale other than to keep fingers crossed, or believe that
the Empire will eventually turn out for the best.
6
But if you think economic
geography should do more than play out orthodoxies, and should appeal to
evidence and intellectual coherence as resources for transcending prejudice, then
you will probably be looking forward eagerly to its next reinvention when
another new generation arrives before too long.
Notes
1. Biography: my work life has consisted of spells in office work in nationalised industry,
community development, rock music, and academia (economics, urban studies, geog-
raphy, planning). My current transformation into grumpy old man is related to regu-
lar confirmation of the fact that while the capitalist the music industry must produce
some popularly consumable use values if it is to realise any profits, the neo-liberal
academic ideology and credential factory need not.
2. The New Imperialism is the subject of major debates but with the prominent exception
of Harvey (2003) these have been from well beyond economic geography. Hardt and
Negri (2001) drawing largely on the same inspirations as the PCTEG, offer an account
which colours the Empire attractively green and red.
3. Networks became a fashionable topic in geography in the 1990s. The more 
sophisticated versions drew on Actor Network Theory (following Latour), which rede-
fined the word ‘act’ to shed its usual connotation of intentionality (Fine 2002).
Symmetry, ‘actants’ and power then turn up everywhere, but without any clear signif-
icance. The fashion for networks rendered Empire unthinkable just as it was being
most energetically built – through the construction of networks.
4. The other post-structuralist, but ontologically deeper, tradition in Foucault, Lacan and
Derrida that suggests that the main problem is taking this ‘you’ for granted, is out of
tune with this neo-liberal-friendly version, and has received much less attention in the
PCTEG, though see Massey 2004.
5. ‘As if, since the economic . . . does not as it was once supposed to do, determine . . .
in the last instance, it does not exist at all! (Hall 1996: 258)
6. Some combination of which seems to be the politics of the PCTEG.