Towards an environmental economic geography

Abstract

The field of economic geography,1 a tightly focused and specialized project when I first encountered it as an undergraduate at Bristol University during the height of the ‘quantitative revolution’, now sprawls across several disciplines to embrace multiple theoretical, philosophical and empirical approaches. Yet, to me, at its heart has always been the goal of accounting for and redressing unequal livelihood possibilities. Explaining and redressing persistent inequalities, from place to place, in the ability of humans to pursue and attain the livelihoods that we envision for ourselves must be central to emancipatory social science. When I began, our measure of livelihood chances was straightforwardly economic and immediate (and, we would now say, developmentalist); real household incomes. It is well known that these demonstrate remarkably persistent patterns of spatial inequality from the neighborhood to the global scale, which outlive the varied modes of production envisioned to date as ways to materially underwrite society. Over time, we have become much more cautious about the adequacy of income as a measure of livelihood possibilities. Geographers now realize that unequal livelihood possibilities have to do with far more than our ability to consume. They reflect both the plethora of lifestyle choices and conceptions of the good life inhabiting the earth’s surface, as well as our own conceptions of moral community – of those whose livelihood possibilities should be of concern. Economic geography has diversified accordingly.