Economic Geography

particular interest, became the question of how localities prosper in a world
where nation-states abrogate their powers to regulate their territorial economies,
and investment capital is globally mobile (Scott 1998). Geography was seen to
matter in two ways. Scale matters, as the nation-scale regulatory system of Fordism
experienced a hollowing-out; both supra-national and sub-national scales gained
in importance. Place also matters, as local political, economic and cultural condi-
tions were seen to be crucial to economic success, although an empirical focus
on success stories offered a distinctly one-sided picture. This approach has been
somewhat more optimistic about the prospects of ameliorated capitalism.
Methodologically, empirical work in political economy (with some exceptions)
has largely privileged intensive case study research, associating quantitative and
statistical methods with location theory, and with deductive, rather than dialectical
thinking.
Cultural turn
The cultural turn of the 1990s, like political economy, was catalyzed by 
frustrations with the limitations of its forebears, combined with resonances from
contemporary political and philosophical debate (about the limits of socialism,
and structuralism, respectively) (Barnes 1996; Lee and Wills 1997; Thrift 1996).
Initially, the cultural turn was associated with the recognition that the social and
cultural contexts – within which market mechanisms are embedded – are crucial
to the functionality of markets (providing legal sanction for private property,
enabling economic agents to trust one another, providing moral sanction against
illegal behavior, etc.), and require close analysis. Much more than context was at
stake, however. It was also argued that economic processes are shaped by shared
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Eric Sheppard

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discursive understandings that make certain kinds of actions normal and others
strange. How would the ideas of neoliberal globalization become so hegemonic,
for example, without the ability of various right wing think-tanks to win the
battle for the heart and minds of society? Furthermore, it came to be recognized
that the economy consists of more than capitalist economic processes; household
labor, subsistence production, LETS, the informal economy and worker cooper-
atives. These are undertaken in distinct places, and often are central to capitalism
(reproducing its labor; cheapening labor and other inputs).
With the cultural turn, the good life is conceptualized as exceeding wealth,
accumulation and development; the goals and behaviors of economic agents are
not reducible to economic logic. Proponents share political economy’s critique
of capitalism, seeing capitalist production and exchange as facilitating rather than
mitigating socially and geographically unequal livelihood possibilities. Yet they
argue that political economy over-emphasizes economic mechanisms and their
political consequences. Two aspects of geography are seen as important; place
and networks. Socially constructed place-based practices shape context and
cultural norms, some of which come to dominate by traveling beyond their local
origins. Under actor-network theory, the networks connecting human and non-
human actants create a distinct topological geography; a contingent relational
economic geography in which scale and relative location are of diminishing
importance. It is argued that unequal livelihood possibilities are best addressed
by revalidating geographical difference; distinct local cultural imaginaries of the
good life, and alternative economic practices.