The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography presents students and researchers with a comprehensive overview of the field, put together by a prestigious editorial team, with contributions from an international cast of prominent scholars.

• Offers a fully revised, expanded, and up-to-date overview, following the successful and highly regarded Companion to Economic Geography published by Blackwell a decade earlier, providing a comprehensive assessment of the field
• Takes a prospective as well as retrospective look at the field, reviewing recent developments, recurrent challenges, and emerging agendas
• Incorporates diverse perspectives (in terms of specialty, demography and geography) of up and coming scholars, going beyond a focus on Anglo-American research
• Encourages authors and researchers to engage with and contextualize their situated perspectives
• Explores areas of overlap, dialogues, and (potential) engagement between economic geography and cognate disciplines

List of Illustrations xi

Notes on Contributors xii

Acknowledgements xviii

The Long Decade: Economic Geography, Unbound 1
Eric Sheppard, Trevor J. Barnes, and Jamie Peck

Section I Trajectories 25

Editors’ Introduction: Trajectories 27
Eric Sheppard, Trevor J. Barnes, and Jamie Peck

1 Diverse Economies: Performative Practices for “Other Worlds” 33
J.K. Gibson-Graham

2 Geography in Economy: Reflections on a Field 47
Richard Walker

3 Release the Hounds! The Marvelous Case of Political Economy 61
Geoff Mann

4 The Industrial Corporation and Capitalism’s Time–Space Fix 74
Phillip O’Neill

5 Theory, Practice, and Crisis: Changing Economic Geographies of Money and Finance 91
Sarah Hall

6 The “Matter of Nature” in Economic Geography 104
Karen Bakker

7 East Asian Capitalisms and Economic Geographies 118
Henry Wai-chung Yeung

8 Contesting Power/Knowledge in Economic Geography: Learning from Latin America and the Caribbean 132
Marion Werner

Section II Spatialities 147

(a) Accumulation and Value 147

Editors’ Introduction: Accumulation and Value 149
Eric Sheppard, Jamie Peck, and Trevor J. Barnes

9 The Geographies of Production 157
Neil M. Coe and Martin Hess

10 The Global Economy 170
Jim Glassman

11 Evolutionary Economic Geographies 183
Jürgen Essletzbichler

12 Geographies of Marketization 199
Christian Berndt and Marc Boeckler

13 Economies of Bodily Commodification 213
Bronwyn Parry

14 Lives of Things 226
Ian Cook and Tara Woodyer

15 Crisis in Space: Ruminations on the Unevenness of Financialization and its Geographical Implications 242
Ewald Engelen

16 The Insurmountable Diversity of Economies 258
Adrian Smith

17 Waste/Value 275
Vinay Gidwani

(b) Regulation and Governance 289

Editors’ Introduction: Regulation and Governance 291
Jamie Peck, Trevor J. Barnes, and Eric Sheppard

18 The Virtual Economy 298
Matthew Zook

19 Economic Geographies of Global Governance: Rules, Rationalities, and “Relational Comparisons” 313
Katharine N. Rankin

20 The Geographies of Alter-globalization 330
Joel Wainwright

21 Reinventing the State: Neoliberalism, State Transformation, and Economic Governance 344
Danny MacKinnon

22 New Subjects 358
Wendy Larner

23 Renaturing the Economy 372
Morgan Robertson

24 Bringing Politics Back In: Reading the Firm-Territory Nexus Politically 385
Jinn-yuh Hsu

(c) Embodiment and Identity 399

Editors’ Introduction: Embodiment and Identity 401
Trevor J. Barnes, Eric Sheppard, and Jamie Peck

25 Economic Geographies of Race and Ethnicity: Explorations in Continuity and Change 407
Beverley Mullings

26 Gender, Difference, and Contestation: Economic Geography through the Lens of Transnational Migration 420
Rachel Silvey

27 Labor, Movement: Migration, Mobility, and Geographies of Work 431
Philip F. Kelly

28 Making Consumers and Consumption 444
Juliana Mansvelt

29 The Rise of a New Knowledge/Creative Economy: Prospects and Challenges for Economic Development, Class Inequality, and Work 458
Deborah Leslie and Norma M. Rantisi

30 The Corporation as Disciplinary Institution 472
Joshua Barkan

31 Social Movements and the Geographies of Economic Activities in South Korea 486
Bae-Gyoon Park

32 Subalternities that Matter in Times of Crisis 501
Sharad Chari

Section III Borders 515

Editors’ Introduction: Borders 517
Trevor J. Barnes, Jamie Peck, and Eric Sheppard

33 The Genuine and the Counterfeit: Qualitative Methods in Economic Geography and Anthropology 524
Elizabeth Dunn and Erica Schoenberger

34 The Cultural Turn and the Conjunctural Economy: Economic Geography, Anthropology, and Cultural Studies 537
John Pickles

35 Worlds Apart? Economic Geography and Questions of “Development” 552
Susan M. Roberts

36 Putting Politics into Economic Geography 567
John Agnew

37 Inheritance or Exchange? Pluralism and the Relationships between Economic Geography and Economics 581
Peter Sunley

38 Sociological Institutionalism and the Socially Constructed Economy 594
Matt Vidal and Jamie Peck

39 Political Ecology/Economy 612
James McCarthy

Index 626

“The editors have done an outstanding job of representing, through the collection of chapters in the Companion, economic geography in all its guises, with chapters being authored by both more and less senior figures (albeit as the editors admit with a bias toward the Euro-American world in terms of where the scholars practice) . . . indeed, through the efforts of the editors to assemble a broad array of contributors, and in turn the endeavors of these contributors to capture the vibrancy, relevance, and importance of scholarship in their areas, the Companion manages to effectively portray a subdiscipline that economic geographers will recognize and many outsiders will (one hopes) be intrigued and excited by.” (Economic Geography, 7 October 2013)

“This most recent Companion to Economic Geography is an impressive reminder of the diverse, restless nature of economic geography in meeting its mandate to describe, explain and shape the remarkable (and changing) geographic diversity of the global economy and its integration.” (Regional Studies, 1 July 2013)

“The Companionis an excellent and timely contribution that simultaneously maps the past, present, and possible futures of economic geography. The Companionis an important text for all geographers, not just those willing to call themselves ‘economic’." (Geographical Research, 1 May 2013)

Trevor J. Barnes has been at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, since 1983, and is currently Professor and Distinguished University Scholar. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Politics and Practice in Economic Geography, Reading Economic Geography, A Companion to Economic Geography, and Logics of Dislocation.

Jamie Peck is Canada Research Chair in Urban & Regional Political Economy and Professor of Geography at the University of British Columbia. He is the author or editor of nine books, including Constructions of Neoliberal Reason, Politics and Practice in Economic Geography, Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers, and Reading Economic Geography.

Eric Sheppard is Regents Professor of Geography and Associate Director of the Interdisciplinary Center for the Study of Global Change, at the University of Minnesota. He is the author or editor of eight books, including A World of Difference, Politics and Practice in Economic Geography, Contesting Neoliberalism: Urban Frontiers, and A Companion to Economic Geography.

This comprehensive overview of the field is the successor to the successful and highly regarded Companion to Economic Geography published by Blackwell more than a decade ago.

In a clear and accessible format, leading authors provide a guide to research across the relevant topics of economic geography since the original companion was published, focusing on developments of the past ten years and drawing on the expertise of a new generation of scholars.

In three sections, the book examines the evolution of economic geography, reviews recent work, and explores areas of overlap between economic geography and cognate disciplines.

It addresses the growing diversity of the field, its increasingly international make-up, and the major areas of debate, including economic questions about what societies produce and consume; political questions about how governance shapes production and consumption; and social and cultural questions about how identities shape economic processes.

The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography presents students and researchers with a comprehensive overview of the state of the field, from a prestigious editorial team, with contributions from an international cast of prominent scholars.

‘This vital, innovative, and provocative collection is a stunning achievement, challenging conventional views and extending the boundaries of ‘the economic’ in exciting ways. It will surely become required reading for all geographers, and not just those of us who call ourselves economic geographers.’
—Linda McDowell, University of Oxford.