Emerging Themes in Economic Geography: Outcomes of the Economic Geography 2010 Workshop

Background Economic Geography sponsored a workshop to brainstorm collectively the emerging research themes in economic geography. We gathered a small group of midcareer scholars from 19 institutions in 7 countries on April 12–13, 2010, in Washington, D.C., to address what we considered a collective concern: that our discipline could use a significant boost in theoretical and thematic developments at this particular juncture. The workshop was intended to be one of the journal’s many contributions to disciplinary activities and ongoing efforts to keep the discipline vibrant for the next generation.The workshop aimed to achieve multiple goals. First, this was an attempt to develop a sense of collective responsibility for the discipline’s future. Economic geography is no longer monological and singularly centered, as Peck and Olds (2007) observed in their assessment of the Summer Institute of Economic Geography. Indeed, prior to the workshop, quite a few participants reported that they did not have a particular identity affiliation to the discipline but instead enjoyed multiple disciplinary affiliations through joint appointments or appointments in multidisciplinary departments. The increasingly specialized and fragmented nature of the discipline and the resulting “disappearing of the middle” translate into fewer scholars who are dedicated to the discipline, which, in turn, endangers the survival of the discipline. As Johnston (2002, 425) stated, “eternal vigilance is necessary to survival” of a discipline, and mobilization, as in the language of Latour, is a first step in disciplinary change (Johnston 2006).Thus, as editors with a disciplinary name that crowns the journal, we thought that the time was ripe for a deliberate intellectual mobilization.ecge_1114 111..126