Introducing Contemporary Economic Geographies: An Inspiring, Critical and Plural Collection

Summary

A collective agenda

What could economic geographies be? What should economic geographies be? Who might be included in this project, what might they contribute, and how can we ensure that this work is valued? These are not new questions, and yet they remain as pertinent as ever.

This collection adopts a fresh perspective to these debates, and to economic geographies more broadly, with a focus on plurality. We show how contemporary economic geographies are already plural, as they are critical and inspiring. However, this remains to be widely recognized and celebrated. Such pluralism is, we argue, essential. It includes building upon economic geographies that acknowledge the deeply ingrained racial, gendered and classed power differentials inherent within the economy across space, scale and time; and that propose ways to address these problems. It involves expanding upon the areas that are considered the ‘heartlands’ of economic geography (such as a focus on regional and national scales, agglomeration and clustering, financial processes and industrial sectors), and advancing the theoretical devices deployed to understand these worlds. Pluralism likewise extends to empirical and methodological imagination, in terms of how, where and with whom economic geographies engage, include and empower. This involves wider engagements across international fields of study, going beyond Anglocentric sites, writings and perspectives, and broadening methodological expertise to encourage innovation and creativity.

Working towards more plural economic geographies also means tackling and addressing long-standing concerns about the overbearing heteronormativity of who ‘does’ and who is ‘recognized’ within the subdiscipline (Christopherson, 1989; McDowell, 1992). By this we refer to historical over-representation of White, male, Western, middle-class, able-bodied, older scholars, which is both an aesthetic problem and an epistemic one, and which requires constant maintenance. We are not asking for space to be made or given. This is not the economic geography we seek to expand. To our mind, there is no singular ‘project’, no ‘one’ economic geography, no particular set of gatekeepers. Rather it is a collective agenda, with varied voices, positions and approaches, and this collection celebrates this in all its diversity.