期刊名称：Economic Sociology : the European Electronic Newsletter
印刷版ISSN：1871-3351
出版年度：2008
卷号：9
期号：3
出版社：Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
摘要：This short article is an introduction and a brief overview of
economic geography. In addition, the article aims to find
out what sociologists can learn from geographers. There
are two roots of economic geography. The first is econom-
ics and the second is geography (e.g., Peet 2002; Barnes
2001), and the relation between the economists and the
geographers can either be described in terms of rivalry, or
in terms of a dialogue (Duranton/ Storper 2006). Econom-
ics studies production, distribution, consumption and ex-
change. Geography studies man’s habitat and spatialities,
and the similarities and differences between spaces. It also
studies the circulation of people, things and ideas between
areas. A simple and easy-to-grasp-definition of economic
geography is, “an inquiry into similarities, differences, and
linkages within and between areas in the production, ex-
change, transfer, and consumption of goods and services”
(Thoman 1968: 123). One basic idea of economic geogra-
phy is to find a model that integrates opposing notions as
convergence/divergence and centrifugal/centripetal forces,
and to find out how they are related. Geographic ques-
tions can deal with describing distributions in space, for
example, to explain how they are coming about or to show
the consequences certain distributions have for other phe-
nomena. The pivotal notion is space, and research ques-
tions revolve around how spatiality affects and intertwines
with economic activities. Thus, as already Torsten Häger-
strand pointed out, most geographers are not interested in
the relation between man and the surface of the earth,
which the prefix geo- denotes. This refers to the domain of
physical geography which is of no interest here. It is the
relation between humans who are positioned differently in
space that is of interest (Hägerstrand 1967: 6). He reminds
us how essential space is for any social scientist:
