Economic geography: the great half-century

TLDR: This paper examined the intellectual history of economic geography over the last 50 years, focusing on three major episodes of research activity: spatial analysis and regional science movement of the 1960s; the turn to political economic (especially Marxian) approaches in the 1970s; and the intensification of interest in regional global interactions since about the mid-1980s.

Abstract: The paper examines the intellectual history of economic geography over the last 50 years. Three major episodes of research activity are considered: (a) the spatial analysis and regional science movement of the 1960s; (b) the turn to political economic (especially Marxian) approaches in the 1970s; and (c) the intensification of interest in regional‐global interactions since about the mid-1980s. Two minor interludes are also briefly examined; these are represented by behavioural geography and the so-called localities debate. It is suggested that the course of economic geography over the last half-century can best be understood by reference to the sociology of knowledge, i.e., a contextualised but reasoned description of those contextualised but reasoned descriptions that constitute scholarly practice.