Rethinking Capitalism from a Geographical Perspective

Anglophone research in economic geography can be characterized by two separate, contested paradigms: Geographical economics (building on the work of the economists Krugman, Venables and Fujita), and geographical political economy (prevalent within geography). Elaborating on the latter, this paper explores what it means to think geographically about the (capitalist) economy. Focusing on geographies of commodity production as the driving force (even as markets are important emergent features in their own right), thinking geographically about the economy challenges many of the core claims of geographical economists. Beyond this, it raises deep questions about the capacity of globalizing capitalism, however it is governed, to overcome social and geographical inequality.