Translating comparative economy into material practice

Abstract

Peck’s (2012) paper on ‘island life’ is replete with ingredients that reflect ‘gold standard’ thinking in economic geography, making it hard to take issue with the messages and observations it espouses. Nonetheless, this response raises a series of questions and concerns about how this important dialogue can be animated and translated into material practice. For example, what would a positive intellectual project around comparative economy look like, and what material difference could it potentially make? Likewise, who should be the actors that are involved in these projects and who should benefit from these collaborative projects beyond the academy? Also questioned is whether or not comparative economy and close critical scrutiny of the ‘market’ is the lynchpin to prompt greater interdisciplinary collaborations between economic geographers and economists, given the notion that this is a seemingly cyclical buoy that economic geographers have been around before.