Economic Geography

Section I
Economic geography 
Roots and legacy

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1
The economic geography
project
Eric Sheppard
Genuine refutation must penetrate the power of the opponent and meet him
[sic] on the ground of his strength; the case is not won by attacking him some-
where else and defeating him where he is not. 
(Adorno 1982: 5)
The definition of what is at stake in the scientific struggle is one of the things
at stake in the scientific struggle. 
(Bourdieu 2004: 23)
The field of economic geography,
1
a tightly focused and specialized project when
I first encountered it as an undergraduate at Bristol University during the height
of the ‘quantitative revolution’, now sprawls across several disciplines to embrace
multiple theoretical, philosophical and empirical approaches. Yet, to me, at its
heart has always been the goal of accounting for and redressing unequal liveli-
hood possibilities. Explaining and redressing persistent inequalities, from 
place to place, in the ability of humans to pursue and attain the livelihoods that 
we envision for ourselves must be central to emancipatory social science. When 
I began, our measure of livelihood chances was straightforwardly economic and
immediate (and, we would now say, developmentalist); real household incomes.
It is well known that these demonstrate remarkably persistent patterns of spatial
inequality from the neighborhood to the global scale, which outlive the varied
modes of production envisioned to date as ways to materially underwrite society.
Over time, we have become much more cautious about the adequacy of income
as a measure of livelihood possibilities. Geographers now realize that unequal
livelihood possibilities have to do with far more than our ability to consume.
They reflect both the plethora of lifestyle choices and conceptions of the good
life inhabiting the earth’s surface, as well as our own conceptions of moral
community – of those whose livelihood possibilities should be of concern.
Economic geography has diversified accordingly.
Notwithstanding this diversification, attempts to account for geographical
inequality continue to revolve around a single big question: Do capitalist economic

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processes (production, distribution, exchange and consumption) mitigate
geographical inequalities in livelihood possibilities? This is central because of the
manifest influence of capitalism over livelihood possibilities throughout the one
hundred year career of economic geography. In seeking to tackle this question,
economic geography has faced three further questions:
1
(How) does geography matter to the spatial dynamics of capitalism? Answers
shape arguments about whether (and how) geography can contribute to our
understanding of spatial inequality.
2
What is the ‘economic’ and what is ‘geography’, in economic geography?
Answers shape how the big question is posed, and answered.
3
What is to be done, to redress spatial inequalities?
In the next section, I briefly caricature the remarkable diversification of theory,
philosophy and method, amongst those identifying themselves as undertaking
economic geography, and the diversity of answers to the above questions that has
emerged. For the project of economic geography that we all contribute to, diver-
sity can be both a strength and a weakness. In the concluding section I argue that
it has been progressively more debilitating than stimulating, indicating broad
schisms threatening our ability to effectively articulate a common project, but
that this can and must be reversed.