Generalized Darwinism, group selection and evolutionary economic geography

Abstract

Abstract The paper contributes to the development of evolutionary economic geography in the following ways. First, it summarizes the conceptual building blocks of Generalized Darwinism (GD) and argues that an evolutionary theory based on GD encompasses and complements those based on the principle of emergence and path-dependence. Second, the paper discusses the notion of group selection considered important for rejecting methodological reductionism and developing a multi-level evolutionary theory that opens new opportunities for the application of GD in economic geography. Third, the paper shows how the meta-theoretical framework can be used to organize existing work in evolutionary economic geography, identify conceptual and empirical blind spots in current research, but also contribute to theory formulation and bridge currently disconnected subfields in economic geography more generally.