Retheorizing Economic Geography: From the Quantitative Revolution to the “Cultural Turn”
Bibliographic record
Abstract
In this article, I reflect upon and attempt to understand the changing theoretical nature of post–World War II Anglo-American economic geography. In particular, I contrast the kind of theorizing that first occurred in the discipline during the 1950s with the very different kind now carried out under what has been called the “cultural turn”or the “new economic geography.” I argue that, during this transition, not only did the use of specific theories alter, but the very idea and practice of theorization also changed. I characterize the phases of this movement by using the terms “epistemological” and “hermeneutic theorizing,” defined on the basis of works by pragmatist philosopher Richard Rorty and science studies writer Donna Haraway. I argue that “epistemological theorizing” best describes the first period of theorization in the discipline around the quantitative revolution of the late 1950s and early 1960s, and that it is bound by the quest for accurate (mirror) representation. In contrast, hermeneutic theorizing describes the kind of theorizing found in the new economic geography, marked by an interpretive mode of inquiry that is reflexive, open-ended, and catholic in its theoretical sources.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.007 | 0.012 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.004 | 0.057 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.010 | 0.014 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.005 |
| Research integrity | 0.002 | 0.006 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".