Book Review of 'Economic Geography: A Contemporary Introduction' by Neil Coe, Philip Kelly and Henry Yeung (Oxford, UK; Malden, MA, USA; and Carlton 10 Victoria, Australia: Blackwell, 2007).

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Journal of Economic Geography (2008) pp. 1–3 doi:10.1093/jeg/lbn011
Book Review
5 Economic Geography: A
Contemporary Introduction
Neil Coe, Philip Kelly and Henry Yeung
Oxford, UK; Malden, MA, USA; and Carlton
10 Victoria, Australia: Blackwell, 2007.
xxvi þ 426 pp. ISBN-10 1405132191
Over the course of the last 15 years, as economic
geography has undergone successive phases of
15 self-conscious reinvention, renewal and change,
there has resulted a proliferation of readers,
companions, handbooks and compendiums of
economic geography, each seeking to document
and distil the current state(s) of the art within
20 the subdiscipline. Within this context, the
publication of yet another reader—in this case
by Neil Coe, Phil Kelly and Henry Yeung—
might at first seem like overkill, not least for
cash-strapped students and college libraries
25 already presented with a diverse array of possi-
bilities for purchase. However, in the midst of
this crowded marketplace, Coe et al.’s (2007)
contribution stands out as a fundamentally
and refreshingly different type of reader in its
30 approach, style and rationale. At its heart,
Economic Geography: A Contemporary Intro-
duction aims explicitly to introduce, engage and
motivate a first and second year undergraduate
audience (no doubt with positive knock-on
35 effects for postgraduate recruitment), whilst
also providing course lecturers with a valuable
and comprehensive teaching resource. Rather
than bombard students with yet more ‘cutting-
edge’ research material that goes straight over
40 their heads (they can find plenty of that
elsewhere), this volume instead introduces,
illustrates and guides students through a series
of core epistemic themes within economic geog-
raphy, grounded in everyday life by means of a
45 diverse range of novel and contemporary case
studies that extend beyond the conventional
intellectual domains of the sub-discipline
as traditionally demarcated. The result is an
impressive, innovative and straightforwardly
50accessible text that looks set to become essential
student reading for many years to come.
One of the major strengths of this eclectic
and theoretically open-minded book is its con-
cern to build bridges between a number of
55themes too often regarded as divergent or mutu-
ally exclusive, and thereby to offer a more
inclusive, multi-faceted and vibrant version
of economic geography. As part of this, the
authors combine critical normative insights
60from political-economy approaches to eco-
nomic geography—around structural mecha-
nisms of power, inequality, and wealth within
capitalist economies—with important insights
from new cultural economic geographies
65around the complex intertwining of ‘the eco-
nomic’ with ‘the social’, ‘the cultural’ and ‘the
relational’. In addition, the book also challenges
ongoing (yet arguably arbitrary) intellectual
divisions of labour between ‘development’ geog-
70raphers and ‘economic’ geographers. Accord-
ingly, it juxtaposes substantive case studies
around spatial inequalities of socioeconomic
development at a range of scales in the Global
South (Including Business Process Outsourc-
75ing in India and the Philippines, worker dormi-
tories in Indonesia, fair-trade coffee production
in South America, automotive clusters in Thai-
land and famine in Niger) and in the Global
North (Including Asian entrepreneurs in
80Ontario, pink collar ghettoes in North Amer-
ican suburbs, the geographies of hard disk drive
commodity chains and the mythical global
geography of HSBC—to name but a few!).
Within this framework, the book is split
85into four thematic sections: (i) Concep-
tual Foundations (space, place, scale and repre-
sentation as core elements of a geographical
approach to ‘the economy’ as a complex set
of lived social relations, contrasted with a
90mainstream Economics approach); (ii) Dynam-
ics of Economic Space (peopled uneven
growth and capitalist crisis; commodity chains
and ethical intervention; technology, proximity
and agglomeration; environment/economy);
95(iii) Actors in Economic Space (reconfigured
ß The Author (2008). Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

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states, transnational corporations, workers and
consumers) and (iv) Socializing Economic
Life (cultures of the firm, regional cultures;
gendered jobs and workplaces and ethnic
5 geographies of entrepreneurship, international
migration and remittances). As such, the
intention is not to offer an exhaustive account
of everything ever researched in economic
geography, but to focus on some of the most
10 valuable, active and productive debates of
recent decades.
Each of the 13 chapters opens with what
the authors call ‘the hook’: a contemporary
example or issue used to illustrate a funda-
15 mental question which economic geographers
and economists continue to grapple with,
albeit from different directions and with differ-
ent intellectual toolkits, conceptual preferences,
and sources of inspiration. Some of the novel
20 examples employed to frame the 13 major
research questions posed include the phenom-
enal rise of ebay and Paypal (‘Does technol-
ogy eradicate distance?’); Tesco’s Clubcard
loyalty scheme (‘is the customer always
25 right?’); Wal-Mart’s overseas procurement
practices (‘Where does your breakfast come
from?’) and Roman Abramovich, Chelsea FC
and the ‘New Russian’ billionaires (‘Why is
economic growth and development so
30 uneven?’). The discussion in each chapter is
then extended around a commonly perceived
myth surrounding the topic in question; how
such misapprehensions often rest upon a
geographical assumptions and simplifications;
35 and, hence, the value added of an economic
geographical explanation over a narrow (yet
invariably policy dominant) view from main-
stream economics. The latter is variously
critiqued at different points in the book as uni-
40 versalizing, reductionist, aspatial and ‘colour-
blind’. Alongside the wealth of photographs,
charts, figures and maps that pepper each
chapter, core concepts are developed along the
way using stand-alone text boxes, ranging from
45 old classics (e.g. Regulation Theory, Fordism,
Global Cities, New International Division of
Labour, theories of labour market segmenta-
tion, Neoliberalism) to more recent debates
(e.g. the creative class, community unionism,
50 questioning competitiveness, redundant mascu-
linities, cheap childcare). The result is that
jargon is kept to a minimum in the main
discussion sections, allowing for a highly read-
able and fluid set of arguments. In keeping
55with growing student preferences for online
reading, each chapter ends with several key
readings and relevant websites that students
might then follow up independently to gain a
more detailed understanding of the issues
60introduced. Usefully, the authors also offer
sample exam question at the end of each
chapter.
Inevitably it is not possible in such a short
review to do full justice to such a broad-
65ranging book, but for me several chapters
stood out as particularly excellent, all of which
work equally well as stand-alone pieces, or as
modules building on earlier parts of the book.
For a powerful introduction to what ‘we are
70all about’, Chapters 1 and 2 explore the core
components of what makes a geographical
approach to the economy distinctive (using the
case study of famine and differing conceptions
of its institutional causes), alongside the his-
75torical origins of problematic media and
policy notions of ‘the economy’ as an organic
all-powerful entity which is somehow ‘out
there’. Likewise, Chapter 12 is also very
effective, building on discussions around how
80we can ‘see’ gender in the workplace, how
different forms of gendered work are valued,
and the role of male workers in feminized
labour markets, to outline the basic building
blocks of a feminist economic geography
85that moves beyond an ‘adding on’ or ‘counting
in’ approach to imagine a fundamentally
different economy. Similarly, Chapter 11 also
works well, skipping cleverly from corporate
cultures, to corporate subcultures, to national
90business systems, to regional cultures, taking in
Toyota, Ford, BMW, Xerox and Microsoft
along the way. Chapter 10 on consumption
also stands out as a real gem—it also succeeds
in making Central Place Theory interesting!
95I could go on . . .
In sum, Coe, Kelly and Yeung have pro-
duced an exciting, comprehensive and acces-
sible introductory text to economic geography
which will excite, engage and capture the
100imagination of students, as well as making
the lives of their course lecturers so much
easier! Just ask any second year economic
geographer at Queen Mary—many of whom
are now enthusiastically endorsing the book to
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next year’s cohort as ‘like a David Waugh for
undergrads!’—this book is well worth its price
tag. Their only whinge is that the photographs
included would have had more impact in
5 colour, but given the additional cost of that
in relation to the intended undergraduate
audience, this is a compromise that was
worth making. We look forward to the
second—and third—editions.
10Al James
The City Centre, Department of Geography,
Queen Mary, University of London, Mile End,
London, E1 4NS, UK
Book Review . 3 of 3