Process, mechanism and the project of economic geography

Abstract

This response engages Yeung’s arguments about the value of critical realism (CR) in economic geography (EG), and how they can be further strengthened by better theorizing mechanism and process in relation to mid-level concepts like neoliberalization and path dependence. While there is much to value in the attention Yeung pays to how economic geographers conceptualize and study relational socio-spatial change, I argue that the lack of attention to how mid-level concepts relate to macro-level structures hampers the goal of more robust theorizing. Moreover, the association of CR with the reassertion of a disciplinary ‘core’ suggests a normative project that ignores or marginalizes diverse critical approaches in EG, which are framed as a sign of weaknesses rather than disciplinary strength.

What kind of theory for what kind of human geography?

“…This kind of causal theory should be explanatory in nature; its explanatory power depends on the identification and specification of mechanisms connecting cause and outcomes within particular historical–geographical contexts. In this sense, I agree with Strauss’ (2019: 257) view that my forum paper ‘is as much a normative project as an epistemological one’ (also Whiteside, 2019). In fact, I will argue all epistemological debates and positions, whether in their empiricist, positivist, realist, post-structuralist or feminist persuasions, are implicitly or explicitly normative because they seek to justify or even normalize the importance, and sometimes the dominance, of a particular approach to knowledge production.…”

“…Here, I respond to the critics by elaborating on the importance of causal mechanism in such an explanatory kind of theory. While critical realism provides a useful philosophical foundation for this mode of mechanism-based theorizing, I concur with MacLeavy (2019), Strauss (2019) and Whiteside (2019) that it cannot substitute for other non-realist ontologies in the multiple trajectories of geographical scholarship (though this was never my argument in the forum paper nor in my earlier epistemological work, e.g. Yeung, 1997, 2003, 2005).…”

“…Given this specific epistemological concern with reworking the mechanism–process conflation in those large strands of literature, it is not realist(ic) to expect my forum paper to deal with the much bigger ‘unresolvable problem’ of ontological incompatibilities in human geography identified in Whiteside (2019: 270) – the fundamental irreconcilability of this grounding in critical realism with ‘anti-realist ontologies’, such as postmodern, constructivist, non-human, behaviouralist or otherwise non-social centred philosophies of being. In her commentary, MacLeavy (2019) has also characterized my framework of mechanism and process as raising and examining ‘conventional ideas through measurement and causal modelling’ and contrasted it with ‘broadly defined geographies of economies informed by feminist, antiracist, postcolonial and queer perspectives’ that can illuminate contemporary inequality and injustice (see also Strauss, 2019). Clearly, all of these critical perspectives matter in geographical scholarship, but I wonder if their ultimate goals are concerned with causal explanation?…”

“…Objectivity is not necessary because the analytical specification of a causal mechanism from its underlying condition/process in context is always an interpretive procedure. As pointed out in Strauss’ (2019: 258) commentary, this ‘is not a neutral process; it is informed by the positionality of the researcher; the discipline or field in which they are working; the places, spaces and contexts that shape their work’. But just because there are limits to explanation (Knowles, 1990) and knowledge production is always situated and partial does not necessarily mean we cannot seek to specify causal mechanisms and possibly produce better explanatory theories through different iterative rounds of debates and dialogues, much like in this forum.…”

“…Yeung, 1997, 2003, 2005). Second and in response to Hassink (2019), Strauss (2019) and Whiteside (2019), I further discuss the relevance and usefulness of mid-range theories in the geographical analysis of uneven development. Finally, I end with a return to the ‘bigger’ picture of geographical political economy to argue for the kind of human geography that might benefit most from this kind of mechanism-based theorizing.…”