Economic Geography

Citation

Coe, N. M., Kelly, P. F., & Yeung, H. W. C. (2020). Economic Geography: A Contemporary Introduction (3rd ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

Chapter Summary

The book has fifteen chapters in five parts and 576 pages. Each chapter title is a question, and each chapter is divided into numbered sections, with an introduction at the start and a summary at the end. According to the publisher, the chapters include learning objectives, text boxes, essay questions, summaries and further reading. The sample chapter shows how the pattern works: a short statement of aims opens the chapter, and sample essay questions and resources for further learning close it. The five parts are Conceptual Foundations (Chapters 1–4), Key Economic Actors (Chapters 5–8), Governing the Economy (Chapters 9–11), Social and Cultural Dimensions (Chapters 12–14) and a Conclusion (Chapter 15).

Chapter 1: Geography: How do we think spatially?

The chapter introduces four geographical lenses (spatial patterns, the distinctiveness of place, connections across space, and territorial power) through a single case study, bottled water. Its sections move through the controversies around the product, then location and patterns, the uniqueness of place, networks, and territory, and a box on scale. The authors say the four lenses inform every later chapter.

Chapter 2: The Economy: What does it mean?

Asks what counts as "the economy", gives a short history of the idea, outlines basic economic processes and then explains how economic geography differs from economics.

Chapter 3: Dynamics of Capitalism: Why is economic growth so uneven?

Treats uneven development, the fundamentals of the capitalist system, the spaces and scales of uneven development, and whether places and regions can chart their own futures.

Chapter 4: Networks: How is the world economy interconnected?

Covers production networks that connect distant places, the logistics revolution that brings commodities together, and where a network ends, including waste returning as commodity.

Chapter 5: Transnational Corporations: How do they keep it all together?

Examines how transnational corporations are organised, through intra-firm and inter-firm relationships, and the risks of a global presence.

Chapter 6: Labour: Are migrant workers the new normal?

Considers migrant workers by type, their places of settlement and origin, how they are organised, and the migration industry.

Chapter 7: Consumers: Who decides what we buy?

Treats consumption as a sociocultural process, with sections on retailing, uneven geographies of consumption, and travel and tourism.

Chapter 8: Finance: How has capital become so powerful?

Explains how the real economy is financed, deregulation and the rise of global finance, financialization, and alternatives to the dominant model.

Chapter 9: States: Who runs the economy?

Reviews the claim that neoliberal globalization ends the state, the state as architect of the national economy, varieties of capitalism and graduated sovereignty.

Chapter 10: International Institutions: How do they govern and foster global development?

Covers how the global economy is governed and how development in the Global South is fostered, including community-based development.

Chapter 11: Environment: Does global climate change change everything?

Sets out the causes, impacts and costs of climate change, the regulation of emissions and the geographies of the green economy.

Chapter 12: Clusters: Why does proximity matter?

Starts from industrial location theory and builds to agglomeration economies, regional cultures of production and the idea that clusters may be temporary.

Chapter 13: Identities: Are economies gendered and racialized?

Looks at gender and race in the labour market and workplace, ethnic clusters and networks, and intersecting identities.

Chapter 14: Alternatives: Can we create diverse economies?

Looks beyond a capitalist-centred view of the economy to alternative markets, enterprises, working and property, and the limits of diverse economies.

Chapter 15: Economic Geography: Intellectual journeys and future horizons

Reviews how the field has changed and how the world it studies has changed.

Key Concepts

Chapters 1–4: Foundations

• Place, networks and territory: three of the four spatial lenses introduced in Chapter 1, alongside patterns of location.
• Scale: the level, from local to global, at which economic processes are examined, with its own box in Chapter 1.
• Uneven development: the unequal distribution of economic growth across places and regions.
• Production networks: the chains of firms and activities that connect distant places in making a commodity.

Chapters 5–11: Actors and Governance

• Intra-firm and inter-firm relationships: the two ways transnational corporations organise their activities.
• Financialization: the growing role of financial markets and motives in economic life.
• Varieties of capitalism and graduated sovereignty: ways of comparing state-economy relations.
• Green economy: economic activity oriented to climate and environmental goals.

Chapters 12–15: Society, Alternatives and the Field

• Agglomeration economies and untraded interdependencies: the benefits and local relationships that bind firms in clusters.
• Intersecting identities: the combined effects of gender, race and other identities on economic life.
• Diverse economies: economic practices outside the capitalist mainstream, including alternative markets, enterprises, working and property.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A consistent organising idea. Chapter 1 sets out four ways of thinking spatially and states that they inform each chapter, so the book reads as a single argument rather than a collection of topics.
• A worked example in the opening chapter. The bottled-water case, developed over the whole of Chapter 1, makes the abstract ideas concrete before the chapters on actors begin.
• Questions and actors rather than schools of thought. Chapter titles are questions, and Parts II and III follow the main actors: corporations, workers, consumers, finance, states and international institutions. This suits students who think about problems more readily than theories.
• Teaching apparatus. The publisher lists learning objectives, case studies, text boxes, essay questions, summaries and further reading, and the sample chapter ends with sample essay questions and a resource list.
• Substantial updating. The third edition adds chapters on international development and governance, climate change and alternative economies, and new material on labour migration, global production networks and evolutionary economic geography. Reviewer comments reproduced by Wiley praise the structuring of chapters around major topics (Nancy Ettlinger, Ohio State University) and the international range of case studies (Adam Tickell, University of Sussex).

Limitations

• Length. At 576 pages, with most chapters running to thirty to forty pages, the book is more than most one-term courses can use. Instructors will need to choose among Parts II to IV.
• Little formal location theory. Industrial location theory appears as a section within Chapter 12 on clusters, and the contents list has no chapter on quantitative methods or spatial economic modelling.
• Dated case-study figures. The bottled-water statistics and company data in the sample chapter run to about 2017, so readers should check such figures against current sources.

Where It Fits in the Course

Within this course list, Coe, Kelly and Yeung is one of two broad introductions to economic geography. MacKinnon and Cumbers's An Introduction to Economic Geography covers similar ground from three themes (globalisation, uneven development and place); the Chapter 1 sample lists it among further introductions to the field, so the authors themselves point readers to it. Aoyama, Murphy and Hanson's Key Concepts in Economic Geography is a concise set of essays on central concepts and works as a quick reference.

Peter Dicken's Global Shift is a detailed account of how transnational corporations, states, labour, consumers and civil society interact through global production networks, which overlaps with Chapters 4 to 7 and 9, and it suits a second course. Combes, Mayer and Thisse's Economic Geography: The Integration of Regions and Nations is a graduate-level book for economists that fills the gap in formal models, and Jean-Paul Rodrigue's The Geography of Transport Systems develops the transport and logistics theme that Chapter 4 touches.

How to Use This Book

The publisher presents the book for students new to the field, for those needing a solid foundation, and for a broader readership interested in the economy, and it states no prerequisites; Chapter 2 introduces the idea of the economy itself, so no prior economics appears to be assumed.

• Core: Part I (Chapters 1–4) in order, since the four lenses and the ideas of uneven development and networks recur throughout.
• Choose the actors that match the course: Chapters 5–11 can be read in almost any order. Take Chapters 5, 8 and 9 for a course on globalisation and governance, Chapters 6, 7 and 13 for a course on work and consumption, and Chapters 10 and 11 for development and environment.
• Optional: Chapter 12 if the course covers industrial districts and regional development, Chapter 14 for alternatives to the market economy.
• Finish with Chapter 15, which looks back over the field.
• Practise: use the sample essay questions at the end of each chapter, and take the Chapter 1 method (patterns, place, networks, territory) to a commodity of your own choosing.