Globalisation or ‘Glocalisation’? Networks, Territories and Rescaling
Journal of Economic Geography 11 (2011) pp. 319–331
Advance Access Published on 24 December 2010
doi:10.1093/jeg/lbq049
Geographical political economy
Eric Sheppard*
Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, MN 55455, USA.
*Corresponding author. Eric Sheppard. email 5shepp001@umn.edu4
The line of scholarship dominating Anglophone geographers’ approaches to studying economic geography since 1980 can be characterized as geographical political economy; an approach prioritizing commodity production over market exchange. Here the spatialities of capitalism co-evolve with its economic processes and economic, political, cultural and biophysical processes are co-implicated with one another.
Disequilibrium is normal and space/time an emergent feature. This approach is very different from geographical economics. Mutual engagement is desirable and most easily approached via the geographical sub-field of regional political economy. Regional political economy demonstrates that capitalism’s spatialities increase agents’ uncertainty and the likelihood of unintended consequences, that microfoundations are inadequate, and that capitalism is generative of economic inequality and uneven geographical development. The scope of geographical political economy is illustrated by the geography of commodity production.
Keywords: geography, political economy, uneven development, disequilibrium dynamics
JEL classifications: R00, O10
Date submitted: 22 June 2010 Date accepted: 23 November 2010
1. Introduction
Scholarship undertaken under the label of ‘economic geography’, and published and/or presented in Anglophone geographical journals and conferences, remains a remarkably vibrant and broad field. Ten years after co-editing The Companion to Economic
Geography, I am helping compile a New Companion; there is much new to report. At the same time, the kind of economic geography that dominates geographical venues remains distinct from that characteristic
Advance Access Published on 24 December 2010
doi:10.1093/jeg/lbq049
Geographical political economy
Eric Sheppard*
Department of Geography, University of Minnesota, MN 55455, USA.
*Corresponding author. Eric Sheppard. email 5shepp001@umn.edu4
The line of scholarship dominating Anglophone geographers’ approaches to studying economic geography since 1980 can be characterized as geographical political economy; an approach prioritizing commodity production over market exchange. Here the spatialities of capitalism co-evolve with its economic processes and economic, political, cultural and biophysical processes are co-implicated with one another.
Disequilibrium is normal and space/time an emergent feature. This approach is very different from geographical economics. Mutual engagement is desirable and most easily approached via the geographical sub-field of regional political economy. Regional political economy demonstrates that capitalism’s spatialities increase agents’ uncertainty and the likelihood of unintended consequences, that microfoundations are inadequate, and that capitalism is generative of economic inequality and uneven geographical development. The scope of geographical political economy is illustrated by the geography of commodity production.
Keywords: geography, political economy, uneven development, disequilibrium dynamics
JEL classifications: R00, O10
Date submitted: 22 June 2010 Date accepted: 23 November 2010
1. Introduction
Scholarship undertaken under the label of ‘economic geography’, and published and/or presented in Anglophone geographical journals and conferences, remains a remarkably vibrant and broad field. Ten years after co-editing The Companion to Economic
Geography, I am helping compile a New Companion; there is much new to report. At the same time, the kind of economic geography that dominates geographical venues remains distinct from that characteristic
References: Amin, A. (2002) Spatialities of globalization. Environment and Planning A, 34: 385–399. Amin, A., Thrift, N. (2005) What’s left? Just the future. Antipode, 37: 220–238. Barnes, T., Sheppard, E. (1992) Is there a place for the rational actor? A geographical critique of the rational choice paradigm Barnes, T., Sheppard, E. (2010) ‘‘Nothing includes everything’’. Towards engaged pluralism in Anglophone economic geography Barnett, C., Clarke, N., Cloke, P., Malpass, A. (2008) The elusive subjects of neoliberalism. Bathelt, H., Malmberg, A., Maskell, P. (2004) Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation Bergmann, L. (2011) A coevolutionary approach to the socionatural capitalist space economy. Bergmann, L., Sheppard, E., Plummer, P. (2009) Capitalism beyond harmonious equilibrium: mathematics as if human agency mattered Boschma, R. A., Martin, R. (2007) Constructing an evolutionary economic geography. Journal of Economic Geography, 7: 537–548. Brenner, N. (2004) New State Spaces: Urban Governance and the Rescaling of Statehood. Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Brenner, N., Peck, J., Theodore, N. (2010) Variegated neoliberalization: geographies, modalities, pathways Brenner, N., Theodore, N. (eds) (2002) Spaces of Neoliberalism: Urban Restructuring in North America and Western Europe Burns, R. (1786) To a Mouse. In R. Burns (ed.) Poems, Chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. Castree, N. (2003) Commodifying what nature? Progress in Human Geography, 27: 273–297. Cilliers, P. (1998) Complexity and Postmodernism. London: Routledge. Coe, N., Hess, M., Yeung, H. W.-c., Dicken, P., Henderson, J. (2004) ‘Globalizing’ regional development: a global production networks perspective Cook, I., Evans, J., Griffiths, H., Morris, R., Wrathnell, S. (2007) ‘It’s more than just what it is’: defetishizing commodities, expanding fields, mobilising change Derrida, J. (1994) Specters of Marx: the state of the debt, the work of mourning, & the new international Downloaded from joeg.oxfordjournals.org at University of Minnesota Libraries -- Wilson Library on April 6, 2011 be suspicious of engagement with the other, but conversations should start with those in an academic culture that incentivizes the opposite (Barnes and Sheppard, 2010). 329 Downloaded from joeg.oxfordjournals.org at University of Minnesota Libraries -- Wilson Library on April 6, 2011 Dicken, P., Kelly, P. F., Olds, K., Yeung, H. W.-c. (2001) Chains and networks, territories and scales: towards a relational framework for analysing the global economy Essletzbichler, J. (2009) Evolutionary economic geography, institutions, and political economy. Fowler, C. S. (2007) Taking geographical economics out of equilibrium: implications for theory and policy Fowler, C. S. (2010) Finding equilibrium: how important is general equilibrium to the results of geographical economics? Journal of Economic Geography (Advance Access published 23 March Garretsen, H., Martin, R. (2010) Rethinking (new) economic geography models: taking geography and history more seriously Gibson-Graham, J. K. (1996) The End of Capitalism (as we know it). Oxford, UK: Blackwell. Gibson-Graham, J. K. (2006) A Postcapitalist Politics. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press. Gibson-Graham, J. K., Resnick, S. A., Wolff, R. D. (2000) Class and its Others. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Gidwani, V. (2008) Capital, Interrupted: Agrarian development and the politics of work in India. Harcourt, G. C. (1972) Some Cambridge Controversies in the Theory of Capital. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Harvey, D. (1982) The Limits to Capital. Oxford: Basil Blackwell. Harvey, D. (1989) From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation of urban governance in late capitalism Herod, A. (2001) Labor Geographies: Workers and the landscapes of capitalism. New York: Guilford. Herod, A. (ed.) (1998) Organizing the Landscape. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press. Hess, M., Yeung, H. W.-c. (2006) Whither global production networks in economic geography? Past, present, and future Jessop, R., Sum, N.-l. (2006) Beyond the Regulation Approach: Putting capitalist economies in their place Koopmans, T. (1957) Three essays on the state of economic science. New York: McGraw Hill. Krugman, P. R. (1993) First nature, second nature, and metropolitan location. Journal of Regional Science, 33: 129–144. Larner, W. (2000) Neoliberalism: policy, ideology, governmentality. Studies in Political Economy, 63: 5–25. Lee, F. S. (1998) Post Keynesian Price Theory. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Lee, R. (2006) The ordinary economy: tangled up in values and geography. Transactions of the