Economic geography has become increasingly fragmented into a series of intellectual solitudes that has created isolation, producing monologues rather than conversation, and raising the question of how knowledge production should proceed. Inspired by science studies and feminism, we argue for an engaged pluralist approach to economic geography based on dialogue, translation, and the creation of ‘trading zones’. We envision a determinedly anti-monist and anti-reductionist discipline that recognizes and connects a diverse range of circulating local epistemologies: a politics of difference rather than of consensus or popularity. Our model is GIS that underwent significant shifts during the last decade by practicing engaged pluralism, and creating new forms of knowledge. Similar possibilities we suggest exist for economic geography.

Theorizing in economic geography has focused on core regions, industrial and non-industrial, old and new. Indeed, contemplation of the idea of globalization has reinforced this quest. This paper disputes this blinkered thinking that peripheralizes resource peripheries, and seeks to re-position and emphasize resource peripheries within economic geography's theoretical agenda, specifically that associated with the new 'institutional' approach. A truly 'global' economic geography cannot afford to ignore resource peripheries. In particular, we argue that characterizing resource peripheries, and making them distinct from cores, is the intersection of four sets of institutional values or dimensions which we summarize in terms of industrialism (economic dimension), environmentalism (environmental dimension), aboriginalism (cultural dimension) and imperialism (geopolitical dimension). This admittedly preliminary framework underlies our hypothesis that resource peripheries around the world have become deeply contested spaces, much more so than those found in cores.

The paper is concerned with understanding the geography of intellectual creativity and change using as a case study the quantitative revolution in geography. First, I review briefly the sea change occurring over the last 40 years in understanding intellectual production, and made most forcefully in the literature in the sociology of scientific knowledge. I highlight three elements: the nature and persistence of intellectual breaks and ruptures; the embodiedness and material embeddedness of the intellectual process; and the centrality of networks and alliances. Secondly, I take each of these three components of intellectual production, and work them through different theories of place to illuminate the role of the geographical within each. In particular, I argue that the geography of intellectual rupture is clarified by using Michel Foucault's notion of heterotopia, that the place of intellectual embodiment and embeddedness is elucidated by Kevin Hetherington and John Law's work on materiality, and that spaces of network and alliance are enhanced by the recent writings on place by Nigel Thrift. Finally, using these three features I present an interpretive analysis of the place of geography's quantitative revolution drawing upon 36 oral histories I conducted with firstand second-generation pioneers of that movement.

This paper examines one of the historical antecedents of Big Data, the social physics movement. Its origins are in the scientific revolution of the 17th century in Western Europe. But it is not named as such until the middle of the 19th century, and not formally institutionalized until another hundred years later when it is associated with work by George Zipf and John Stewart. Social physics is marked by the belief that large-scale statistical measurement of social variables reveals underlying relational patterns that can be explained by theories and laws found in natural science, and physics in particular. This larger epistemological position is known as monism, the idea that there is only one set of principles that applies to the explanation of both natural and social worlds. Social physics entered geography through the work of the mid-20th-century geographer William Warntz, who developed his own spatial version called ''macrogeography.'' It involved the computation of large data sets, made ever easier with the contemporaneous development of the computer, joined with the gravitational potential model. Our argument is that Warntz's concerns with numeracy, large data sets, machine-based computing power, relatively simple mathematical formulas drawn from natural science, and an isomorphism between natural and social worlds became grounds on which Big Data later staked its claim to knowledge; it is a past that has not yet passed.

Histories of American geographic thought and practice have sketched, but not critically explored, the relationship between war, intellectual change, and the production of spatial knowledge. This article sheds light on a crucial period, the middle decades of the twentieth century, when new modes of understanding and representing geography were being formulated at a variety of sites across the nation‐state, from Princeton to the University of Washington. In particular, there emerged an altered conception of region, not as a descriptive but as a theoretical unit. This intellectual transformation, driven by an invigorated scientific imperative, was closely wedded to broader geopolitical conditions of war and militarism—to the demands for synthetic regional intelligence and new collectives of research that could adequately address complex technical and social challenges consistent with global influence. Moving from the formative hub of the Office of Strategic Services to the more diffuse but no less powerful structures of Cold War funding, we chart the emergence of a new regional model, inextricably linked and concurrent with the solidification of a world of strategic regions open to the exertion of American power, but also part of a remarkable emergent technoscientific complex at home.

The paper makes the argument that what is forgotten in the celebration of big data is history. Big data is presented as if it were disconnected from the past, removed from issues or problems that went before. I argue in this short commentary that the past remains potent for big data and that proponents ignore it at their peril. Rather than being a brand new approach, big data brings a series of problematic assumptions and practices first criticised 40 years ago by opponents of geography’s quantitative revolution. Those assumptions, practices and criticisms are reviewed in the paper.

B A R N E S T. J . and HAYTER R. (1992) 'The little town that did': flexible accumulation and community response in Cheniainus, British Columbia, R q . Studies 26, 647-663. As a result of corporate restructuring within the forest products corporation of MacMillan Hloedel, the sawmill at Chemainus, British Columbia, closed down in 1983 resulting in over 650 workers being laid-off. When the new mill reopened over two years later, computerized sawmill technology had been installed, and just over 140 workers were employed. During the same period the town itself was transformed as a series of giant murals depicting local historical events were painted which, in turn, precipitated what has beconic a vcry successful tourist industry. The purpose of the papcr is to show that these two events arc linked, that they are the result of the same wider changes within the international economy, namely, thc advent of flexible accuniulation. More generally, drawing upon the works of David Harvey and Harold Innis we argue that different types of accumulation produce specific geographies. The changes occurring in Chernainus over the last forty years perfectly illustrate the geographical consequences inherent in the move from a Fordist regime to one based on flexibility. Single industry towns Forestry Restructuring Murals B A R N E S T. J . et H A Y T E R R . (1992) 'La petite v i k qui l'a fait': l'accumulation souple et la rtponsc de la communautC i Chemainus, dans le British Colunibia, R q . Studies 26, 647463. Suite i la rcstructuration d'entreprisc au sein de la socit-tt-MacMillan Bloedel, chantier de bois, la scieric situCe i Chemainus dans le British Columbia a fermC ses portes en 1983. I1 en a risulti 650 licencicments. A la rkouverture de la nouvelle scierie plus de deux am plus tard, Ies installations comportaient la nouvelle technologie i coniniande numtrique et un peu plus de 140 salaries avaient PtC embauchts. Sur la mCme piriode la ville ellemime a subi une transformation sous fornie d'une sPrie de gigantesqucs pcinturcs niurales illustrant des ivinements historiques locaux, cc qui a entrain6 P son tour I'essor du tourisnie. Cct article chcrchc i d h o n t r e r que ces deux Cvtnements sont lies I'un, I'autre, qu'ils remontent aux m&mes transformations au sein de I'iconomie internationale dont la portke est plus grande, P savoir la naissance de I'accumulation souple. Tout en se rCf6rant au travail de David Harvey et Harold Innis cet article raisonnc de faqon plus gtntrale que des giographies particuliPres remontent aux types d'accumulation diffkrcnts. Les transformations qui sc sont produits 1 Cheniainus au cows des quarante dernitres anndcs montrent parfaitement les retombies geographiques qui s'attachent au changement d'un systkme du type Fordiste P celui fondt sur la souplcssc. Ville mono-industrielle Sylviculture Restructuration Pcinturcs niurales B A R N E S T. J . und H A Y T E R R . (1992) 'Die Kleinstadt, die's geschafft hat': Flexible Akkumulation iind koniniunale Reaktion in Chemainus, Britisch Columbia, R q ....

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