Abstract
This short article is an introduction and a brief overview of economic geography. In addition, the article aims to find out what sociologists can learn from geographers. There are two roots of economic geography. The first is economics and the second is geography (e.g., Peet 2002; Barnes 2001), and the relation between the economists and the geographers can either be described in terms of rivalry, or in terms of a dialogue (Duranton/ Storper 2006). Economics studies production, distribution, consumption and exchange. Geography studies man’s habitat and spatialities, and the similarities and differences between spaces. It also studies the circulation of people, things and ideas between areas. A simple and easy-to-grasp-definition of economic geography is, “an inquiry into similarities, differences, and linkages within and between areas in the production, exchange, transfer, and consumption of goods and services” (Thoman 1968: 123). One basic idea of economic geography is to find a model that integrates opposing notions as convergence/divergence and centrifugal/centripetal forces, and to find out how they are related. Geographic questions can deal with describing distributions in space, for example, to explain how they are coming about or to show the consequences certain distributions have for other phenomena. The pivotal notion is space, and research questions revolve around how spatiality affects and intertwines with economic activities. Thus, as already Torsten Hagerstrand pointed out, most geographers are not interested in the relation between man and the surface of the earth, which the prefix geodenotes. This refers to the domain of physical geography which is of no interest here. It is the relation between humans who are positioned differently in space that is of interest (Hagerstrand 1967: 6). He reminds us how essential space is for any social scientist:
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