Financial geography and the 'social reality of finance': aspatial or real space analyses of financial crises?

Abstract

This chapter argues that the emerging field of financial geography can provide the necessary terrain for interdisciplinary exchange between economists and geographers who want to work on what Dariusz W—jcik has termed ‘the social reality of finance.’ Closing the gap between those trained in these two disciplines will require some adjustments on both sides. Geographers, on their side, must see beyond the analytical conventions used in mainstream economics, and work with economists whose methods and topics place them firmly within the ‘heterodoxy’ of that discipline. Economists, in turn, must develop much clearer ideas about the boundaries and possibilities of spatial analysis in economics. We illustrate our argument by exploring several economic models of financial crises in developing countries. The modeling conventions that guide mainstream models rule out both social factors and ‘real space,’ just as they rule out the ‘real time’ approach used in Post-Keynesian economics. Bringing in ‘real time’ and ‘real space’ requires breaking with these conventions.