After the ‘Great Half-Century’: Post-Crisis Economic Geography in Retrospect and Prospect

Abstract

This review assesses the evolution of economic geography over the past two decades, picking up where Scott’s (2000) intellectual history of the field’s “great-half century” ends. It is part retrospective and prospective; as such, it aims beyond a historical review to outline some ideas about important factors that drove the recent developments of economic geography. Specifically, I identify three main themes: i) the “Methodenstreit” over the New Economic Geography and the alleged intellectual imperialism of geographical economics; ii) the search for engaged pluralism amid concerns of a dominance of Anglo-American economic geography; and—perhaps most strikingly—iii) the rapid (re)emergence of subfields after the Great Financial Crisis, such as the geography of money and finance and political economic geography, both with a particular focus on spatial disparities and inequality. Focusing on new developments in the geography of money and finance, I also illustrate how the three themes (economic imperialism, pluralism, and financialisation) have shaped the discipline’s most recent intellectual history. The review concludes by outlining elements of a vision for a pluralist post-crisis economic geography.