Economic geography, past, present and future – Edited by Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen and Helen Lawton Smith

Growth and Change Vol. 40 No. 2 (June 2009), pp. 357–385 BOOK REVIEWS ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY: PAST, PRESENT AND FUTURE Edited by Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen and Helen Lawton Smith, London and New York: Routledge. 2006. 260 pp. r170.00 (hardcover). ISBN10: 0-415-36784-0. A Pete Seeger peace song, perhaps most memorably recorded by The Byrds in the 1960s, began: “To everything (turn, turn, turn); There is a season (turn, turn, turn); And a time for every purpose, under heaven.” If Turn Turn Turn unfortunately has not proven to be especially prescient about global peace, it could well be the disciplinary anthem for economic geography. Since the 1960s, economic geography has turned itself inside out, heralded by the idiographic to nomothetic paradigm shift that first featured neoclassical and quantitative “revolutions” that were quickly followed by behavioral, enterprise, and Marxist claims for the soul of the subject. Recently, in rapid succession, economic geography’s internal dynamics have been expressed as institutional, political economy, cultural, regulationist, and relational turns. In addition, “post” and “neo” approaches to economic geography, as well as various forms of philosophizing and references to a “critical geography,” can be added to the mix. Moreover, given its theoretically derivative nature and penchant for eclecticism, economic geography’s turns inevitably crisscross. Institutional approaches, for example, are evident throughout economic geography’s kaleidoscope, from neoclassical to Marxist. In Economic Geography, Sharmistha Bagchi-Sen and Helen Lawton Smith bring together diverse contributions from the sub-discipline’s leading exponents on all this turning, some of whom began their research careers in the intellectual ferment of the 1950s and 1960s. The contributions are diverse in two broad senses. First, as the editors anticipate, the book provides considerable insights into the various, if not all, approaches to economic geography over the past 50 years. Second, the chapters themselves vary considerably in length and style, ranging from short polemics to well-developed, synthetic studies. At the editor’s request, the chapters also incorporate personalized (autobiographical) themes that add insight and interest to the book’s broader goals of understanding the diverse evolution and its potentials, including with respect to policy. Overall, the book is organized in three parts that begin with generalized reflections on “the roots and legacy” of economic geography as prelude to more focused discussions, basically of present and future practice. However, the basis of the distinctions between the last two parts are unclear and many chapters throughout the book go back to roots while the Part 1 contributors are forward thinking. grow_479 357..385 358 GROWTH AND CHANGE, JUNE 2009 If turning is economic geography’s Zeitgeist of recent decades, for new generations of students this history is increasingly blurred, not helped by lack of consensus on the nature, rationale, or even nomenclature of the turns. Economic Geography is timely because, without expressing any particular preferences (except that pre-nomothetic economic geography was bad), it puts on the table, implicitly and explicitly, questions about the turnings of economic geography. The chapters are well written and accessible (relatively free of “rarified” jargon) and the book will help contemporary students of economic geography understand their subject. The very rationale for the book—kudos to the editors—indicates a willingness to (begin to) respectfully engage and recognize alternative views. As Economic Geography reveals, economic geography’s turnings reflect a passionate, engaged and fascinating sub-discipline that collectively embraces a diversity of research questions, policy issues, methods, theoretical perspectives and philosophical stances. Economic geography’s turns further reflect commitments to understanding contemporary issues, to ask big, relevant questions and to think “outside the box.” I recall Christopher Freeman, the famous evolutionary economist writing somewhere that, on attendance at university after World War II, he was disappointed (and surprised) by his introduction to economic geography by its descriptive emphasis and failure to deal with important policy issues. That situation has changed. Indeed, Economic Geography includes authors such as Eric Sheppard, David Walker, and Bjørn Asheim, all of whom were attracted to economic geography from other disciplinary starting points by its excitement and relevance, and Anne Markusen is an economist. As Allen Scott (p. 58) says, economic geography’s “perceived idiographic torpor” is long gone. Within Economic Geography’s engagement of its subject’s turns there is the sense of a search for common ground. This empathetic search or respect is evident throughout the book but, for me, Allen Scott deserves special mention. His career trajectory has not so much ignored but absorbed and transcended economic geography’s turns. Beginning as a regional scientist, fully armed with neoclassical economic theory and quantitative methods, as his chapter reveals, his research integrates ideas and methods from various sources into coherent, original investigations of the economic geography of industrialization (or more generally the geographic evolution of capitalist economies). In his view, theory and evidence are equally privileged, closely connected and inform each other, while economic geography cannot ignore economics, including neoclassical economics. In the latter context, for example, Scott’s constructive criticism of BOOK REVIEWS 359 Krugman’s (neoclassical) economic geography, too often casually dismissed on seemingly ideological grounds, is itself a revealing contribution within a fascinating chapter. However, there is a dark side to turning and many social sciences focus on contemporary diverse problems without the frequency of pleas for new directions that occurs in economic geography. Notably, economics has radical traditions but its massive neoclassical bulwark has emphasized continuity in thinking and methodological apparatus (Watts, p. 201). This continuity has surely contributed to its profound public policy impacts (whether deemed desirable or not) and to the education of armies of (undergraduate) apostles according to well-established principles who readily self-identify with, and empower, their discipline in all walks of life. In contrast, economic geography’s turning raises questions of faddism, ambiguity, fragmentation and failure to accumulate wisdom, as well as hints of narcissism and moral superiority. Although comments are offered, these questions, with their implications for research, teaching and public policy, are not directly addressed in Economic Geography. Policy implications are an important theme in Economic Geography, forthrightly addressed by Amy Glasmeier. Interestingly, the benefits of economic geography research to resolving applied problems, directly and indirectly, by the hiring of post-graduate in decision-making positions, is particularly stressed in the admirable chapters by Bill Beyers and Doug Watts, whose careers have kept faith with neoclassical and quantitative traditions. Other authors express dismay about economic geography’s lack of policy impacts, although the evidence underlying this claim is blurred, and perhaps fails to appreciate the range of local/regional contributions economic geographers make. A neglected question is whether economic geography’s turning helps and/or hinders its policy messages. This question needs to incorporate the implications of economic geography’s turns for the teaching of students (undergraduate and graduate). Doesn’t constant turning undermine the coherence of lessons learned by our students and thereby economic geography’s wider identity? In this regard, Susan Hanson’s (p. 31) suggestion “to spend far more of our time” thinking about students, who are our future and potentially carry our message to all kinds of places, is well taken. If economic geography’s turnings capture spontaneity, diversity and flexibility of thinking there are treacherous connotations, a dark side. Contemporary economic geographers have expressed much self-congratulation while rubbishing idiographic traditions, possibly to an unnecessary, even counter-productive degree. The idiographs have become straw men. Economic geography now 360 GROWTH AND CHANGE, JUNE 2009 needs to turn on its turns. Are the turns good and/or bad? Whose interests are served, and not served, by the turns? Can economic geography turn without its fragmentation and the creation of solitudes? What are the policy implications of turning? What about the implications for teaching economic geography to undergraduates (or don’t we care about them anymore)? And does economic geography need a grand meta-theory of global economic evolution and differentiation? The editors (and authors) of Economic Geography are to be congratulated for their efforts in beginning to come to grips with the subject’s remarkable propensity to turn. I encourage the editors to organize a follow-up effort that directly addresses the implications of turn, turn, turn as economic geography’s anthem. Roger Hayter Department of Geography Simon Fraser University Email: hayter@sfu.ca © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. THE DIGITAL ECONOMY: BUSINESS ORGANISATION, PRODUCTION PROCESSES AND REGIONAL DEVELOPMENTS Edited by Edward J. Malecki and Bruno Moriset, London: Routledge. 2008. 274 pp. r43.95 (paperback). ISBN 978-0-415-39696-7. grow_480 360..388 The first books on the geography of the new information economy began to emerge during the 1980s, with a focus on corporate ICT networks and the new geography of telecommunication networks. However, despite a number of research monographs and relatively focused texts in the late 1980s and early 1990s there has been a shortage of comprehensive texts examining not just the growth of ICT and telecoms networks but also the emergence of the Internet as a fundamental infrastructure of the new knowledge economy. Some writers have focused on cities and ICT networks, while others have emphasized the role of ICTs in particular global industries such as finance, but there has been a need for a text that provided an overview of ICTs and economic geographies. Edward Malecki and Bruno Moriset have addressed this need head-on with a book that brings together a huge literature and unites digital networks, e-business, offshoring and teleworking, local digital ecosystems, and the digital divide. As such then it offers an ideal text for a specialist course on the geographies of ICTs but also provides valuable material