paper nothing explains everything

7/31/2019 PAPER Nothing Explains Everything

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DOI: 10.1177/0309132509343728

Nothing includes everything:towards engaged pluralism in Anglophoneeconomic geography

Trevor J. Barnes 1* and Eric Sheppard 2

1Department of Geography, 1984 West Mall, University of British Columbia,Vancouver, BC V6T 1Z2, Canada2Department of Geography, 414 Social Sciences Building, 267 19th AvenueSouth, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN 55455, USA

Abstract: Economic geography has become increasingly fragmented into a series of intellectualsolitudes that has created isolation, producing monologues rather than conversation, and raising thequestion 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-reductionistdiscipline that recognizes and connects a diverse range of circulating local epistemologies: a politicsof difference rather than of consensus or popularity. Our model is GIS that underwent signicantshifts during the last decade by practicing engaged pluralism, and creating new forms of knowledge.Similar possibilities we suggest exist for economic geography.

Key words: economic geography, feminism, GIS, pluralism, pragmatism, science studies,trading zones.

*Author for correspondence. Email: [email protected]

I IntroductionThe American pragmatist philosopher,William James, provided the rst systematicphilosophical treatment of pluralism in May1908 at his Manchester College, Oxford,Hibbert lectures. He said there:

pluralism, or the doctrine that it is many means [that] things are with one another in manyways, but nothing includes everything, ordominates over everything. The word andtrails along after every sentence. Something

always escapes. Ever not quite has to besaid of the best attempts made anywherein the universe at attaining all-inclusiveness.(James, 1912: 321)

The more than 500-strong crowd thatlistened to James (including some well-knownphilosophers) was none too impressed. But

James was none too impressed either. It wasa case of him believing that his lecture was asuccess but the audience a disappointment(Kaufman, 1963: 414; Simon, 1998: 35758).

Progress in Human Geography 34(2) (2010) pp. 193214

The Author(s), 2009. Reprints and permissions:http://www.sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav


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194 Progress in Human Geography 34(2)

This should not have been surprising. Jamess pluralism, the idea that no singlevocabulary connected different parts of the world, or ensured nal coherence, cutagainst the grain of the dominant Enlighten-ment philosophy that many of the audienceheld. Enlightenment philosophy, accordingto Richard Bernstein (1992: 8), was basedon nding a single (monist) principle that rec-onciled all difference, otherness, opposition,and contradiction. But for James monismproduced only inexibility, sclerosis, dogma,and much worse. 1 That is why the worldneeded pluralism.

The 150-year or so academic history of economic geography has tended towardspluralism, notwithstanding moments, such

as during the quantitative revolution of the1960s and radical political economy of the1970s, when some economic geographersenergetically asserted monism. 2 The periodsince the early 1980s has been particularlytumultuous, with a series of differentapproaches coming and going in quick suc-cession. None has stuck, however, makingthe discipline appear as pluralist as ever,with difference, otherness, opposition,and contradiction breaking out all over.Yet this has not meant that Jamess visionhas been vindicated. The contemporaryAmerican pragmatist philosopher RichardBernstein (1988) argues that pluralism comesin various shapes and sizes. Of the ve kindshe identifies, Bernstein argues that onlyone is congruent with Jamess original pos-ition characterized by promotion of openconversation and a tolerant community:

engaged pluralism . The other four, Bernsteincontends, are anathema to Jamess originalconception, limiting discussion, deepeningold ruts, creating hostile divisions. These are:

fragmenting pluralism , where centrifugalforces become so strong that we are only ableto communicate with the small group thatalready shares our biases; abby pluralism ,where use of other perspectives is a glibsuperficial poaching; polemical pluralism ,where the approach becomes [an]ideological weapon to advance ones own

orientation; and defensive pluralism , wherelip service is given to alternatives but one[is] already convinced that there is nothingimportant to be learned from them(Bernstein, 1988: 15).

In this paper, we argue that while Anglo-phone economic geography is ostensiblypluralist, with the word and trailing alongafter many of its sentences, it is not realizingthe potential of the position. For its pluralismtypically falls within the four unsuitable kindsthat Bernstein identies, especially the rst,

fragmenting pluralism . Fragmenting pluralismis insidious because it creates not so mucha monistic world as a world of separatemonisms, many solitudes. The effect, wesuggest, and clear in some of the disciplines

recent debates that we later review, isdivision, scattering, and Balkanization. Incontrast, Bernstein (1988: 15), following

James, wants an engaged pluralism that in-volves resolving that however much we arecommitted to our styles of thinking, we arewilling to listen to others without denying orsuppressing the otherness of the other. Thisdoes not mean unanimous agreement, witheveryone living happily ever after. But it doesmean a particular response to conict anddifference, a dialogical one. Here the task isto grasp the others position in the strongestpossible light not as an adversary, but as aconversational partner (Bernstein, 1988: 17).The result may well still be disagreement anddifference, but it potentially produces a seriesof benefits that we illustrate throughoutthe paper: (1) enhanced experimentation,creativity, and innovativeness; (2) the in-vention of new enabling vocabularies; (3)novel theories; (4) new models of academicdebate and discourse; and (5) following JohnDewey, the practice of hope (Fishmanand McCarthy, 2007). Engaged pluralism,allowing navigation between the Scyllaof multiple solitudes and the Charybdis of monism, should be the type of pluralism thateconomic geography seeks.

We use should deliberately. Our argument isself-consciously normative, concerned withasserting what the discipline ought to be.


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Trevor J. Barnes and Eric Sheppard: Engaged pluralism in Anglophone economic geography 195

Afrming a normative position is part andparcel of any critical project. Bernstein asks,critique in the name of what? What is it thatwe are implicitly or explicitly afrming whenwe engage in critique? (Bernstein, 1992: 317).Our afrmation is engaged pluralism. Thatdoes not imply invoking universal or monistprinciples as justification, or setting downa disciplining manifesto. While we will putforward a series of arguments for our nor-mative position, there is no nal, conclusive

justification: after all, we can never fullyanticipate those contingencies which willrupture our afrmations (Bernstein, 1992:318). The best we can do, the only thing wecan do, is to keep on talking; that is, to engagein continual and open deliberation. 3

In making the argument for engagedpluralism, and its exercise in economic geo-graphy, the paper is divided into four sections.First, we conceptually elaborate our positionby drawing on two bodies of work that use-fully amend and develop Bernsteins (and

Ja mes s) engaged plural ism: writ ings inscience studies, and feminism. From sciencestudies we use Peter Galisons work ontrading zones, sites at which researcherswith very different beliefs plurally engage

one another. From feminism, we draw onthe insight that the different perspectives tobe engaged are often unequally empoweredfrom the outset, and that strategies must bedevised to circumscribe such power asym-metries to enable engaged deliberation.Second, we review the recent history of eco-nomic geography, concluding that while ithangs together in more ways than one, andis therefore pluralist, it tends to Bernsteinssubtype of fragmented pluralism . Indeed,

the fragmentation is becoming more pro-nounced, with little evidence of the amelio-rative formation of trading zones andstrategies of engaged pluralism. Third, whileone might argue that engaged pluralism ischimerical anyway, unrealizable, we contendthat recent debates in GIS suggest other-wise. Initially the bastion of a technocratic,positivist geography, GIS was challenged

almost two decades ago by a critical socialtheoretical view. While the ensuing de-bates initially produced signicant discord,subsequent give and take on both sideshas created trading zones and deliberativeengagements that catalyzed new under-standings and possibilities. The partial suc-cess experienced within GIS, we suggest,points to the possibilities of engaged pluralismas a model for economic geography. Finally,we reect on what might be necessary foreconomic geography to embrace that newmodel, and in particular the constitution of itsown plurality. Just as Jamess 1908 Oxfordaudience was hardly a representative cross-section of the globe, the membership of Anglophone economic geography historically

has been dominated by a narrow range of participants (males of northern Europeanheritage). While there has been the odd signof improvement recently, increasing thesocial and geographical diversity of affilia-tion remains critical. 4

II Pluralism, trading zones anddeliberative democracy

1 Science and the Stanford philosophers

Jamess notion of pluralism was initially takenup in political and cultural studies, especiallythose concerned with race (Menand, 2001:Chapter 14). The idea was also applied to theworld of material objects, to the universe. For

James, the world consists of independentthings. Each thing relates to other things, butthe relations depend on where you start. Theuniverse is plural: it hangs together, but inmore ways than one (Menand, 2001: 377).

This view did not go down well with the

Hegelian Oxford philosophers and theirnotion of ultimate reconciliation ( Aufhebung ;Bernstein, 1992), however. Nor did it godown well later with the rise of positivist-based philosophies (found first in interwarEurope and then after the second worldwar in North America) that championeda unied world and a unied science (bestrepresented by Otto Neuraths Unity of


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Science movement; Reisch, 2005). The sub-sequent dominance of positivist (logicalempiricist) conceptions of science blocked

Jamesian notions of scientific pluralism inNorth America after the second world war.But Thomas Kuhns (1962) paradigm-shiftingwork, The structure of scientic revolutions ,and from the early 1970s the developmentof science studies, loosened the grip of scien-tific positivism, creating space to recoup

Jamess pluralism.One of the groups seeking to occupy that

space was a set of philosophers and historiansof science at Stanford University. NancyCartwright, John Dupr, Peter Galison,and Ian Hacking argued, in accordance with

James, that the universe was fundamentally

fractured, with no possibility of reduction to acommon set of reconciling principles. Ratherthan unied and indivisible, nature was fun-damentally diverse and internally separable.For Cartwright (1999: 1), ours is a dappledworld, a world rich in different things, with dif-ferent natures, behaving in different ways.For Hacking (1983: 219), God did not writea Book of Nature [but] a Borgesian library,each book of which is as brief as possible,yet each book of which is inconsistent with

every other. For Dupr (1983: 321), scienceis a loosely connected collection of more orless independent theories designed to meetparticular theoretical and practical interests.

For this group, then, science was hope-lessly ssured, its lines of breakage reectingnatures own cracks. Nevertheless, as theStanford philosophers showed, despite theuniverses crevices science remained enor-mously creative, which stemmed in partfrom a willingness of scientists to cross spe-

cialities, to talk to others in different elds,and to engage in intra- and interdisciplinaryconversation. To use the language of Galison(1998), scientists were successful becausethey developed trading zones; that is, theycreated opportunities to exchange ideas, con-cepts, techniques, even machines, forgingfresh lexicons, and knowledge. Their success

derived from practicing engaged pluralism.Not that these participants would have saidso. Likely they would claim they were goodmonists, practicing the scientific methodon a unied nature. But ever since ThomasKuhn (1962), and later writings in sciencestudies, belief in a singular scientic methodand slavish adherence to it by scientists cannotbe sustained either logically or historically.Scientists may say that nature is unied, andthat their brilliant accomplishments are aconsequence of monism, but scrutiny of theirpractices reveals a different story. Such a dis-crepancy emerges clearly in Peter Galisonshistory of twentieth-century particle physics.

2 Peter Galison and trading zones

Galisons history focuses, on the one hand,on microphysics detector machines and, onthe other hand, on three different groups of physicists who worked on them: theorists,experimentalists, and instrumentationists.Galisons (1998) argument is that in spiteof the entrenched tripartite divide amongthe physicists the eld did not descend intodysfunctional fragmented pluralism. It heldtogether, and in doing so it produced onoccasion (literally) earth-shattering results.

This was possible because different par-ticipants engaged one another in a tradingzone, an intermediate domain in which pro-cedures [were] co-ordinated locally evenwhen broader meanings clash[ed] (Galison,1998: 46). 5 The three different groups of physicists represented distinct cultures of inquiry, with diverse languages, interests,and objectives, yet they bargained and tradedwith one another to realize practical ends.Differences among them were not eradi-

cated. They were acknowledged but put toone side to allow hesitant, provisional, andlocal cooperation. In Stephen Whites (2000:Chapter 1) terms, each of the three groupswas characterized by a weak ontology.While there were strong views internallywithin each group about the nature of sub-atomic particles and their representation,


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they were not so strong as to prevent groupmembers from suspending their beliefs, atleast temporarily, to enable cooperation withothers who held different (but equally weak ontological) convictions.

For Galison (1998: 47), the key to co-operation was the establishment of locallanguages pidgin or Creole. Their emer-gence permitted interaction and tradeamong the different physicist subcultures.Notwithstanding differences in ontology,participants constructed pidgin languages,making possible communication and ex-change. As a local construction, pidgin wasimprovised, subject to change, and reectedthe historical and sociological circumstancesof its manufacture.

For our purposes, Galisons work is inter-esting because it is such a clear case of engagedpluralism, including strategies of accom-plishment. He shows that engaged pluralismis not just an abstract ideal, but is realizable onthe ground by adopting open attitudes, andexible practices. Twentieth-century physicsis divided, much like economic geography,dened by different intellectual subcultureswith individually autonomous and jointlyincompatible valuations and understandings

(Baird and Cohen, 1999: 232). Yet, despite itsdeep differences, engaged pluralism wasforged by establishing valuable trading zones,allowing the solution of practical problems.This has not often been the case in economicgeography, as we will suggest. Nevertheless,Galisons exemplication of engaged plural-ism leaves several questions unanswered.As we will take up below, he seems to think that trade is mutually benecial by denition(that there is no unequal exchange); and also

that it just happens (Adam Smiths naturalpropensity to truck and barter). Further, thephysics that he describes does not entail thebreadth of competing epistemologies andontologies that characterizes Anglophoneeconomic geography. For these reasons, itis necessary to supplement his work, whichwe do by drawing upon feminist theory.

3 Pluralism and feminist theoryPluralism is not very popular with critical orfeminist geographers, who associate it withmainstream political science accounts of thestate and democracy. Smith (2005: 896),for example, derisively dubs pluralism theintellectual hearth of liberalism. Given theimportance of critical and feminist geo-graphy for geography, and our own politicalsympathies, we need to address this objection.Notwithstanding Smiths claim, our argu-ment is that engaged pluralism is not the sameas liberal individualism. Rather, we argue,engaged pluralism makes arguments thatparallel those found in feminist philosophy of science and political theory (and inuentialin critical geography).

The seemingly close association betweenpluralism and liberal individualism derivesfrom mainstream political theories of plural-ism. These theories suggest that a statesactions reect the pluralist will of the people.In a democracy, with everyone presumed topossess an equal voice, elected politicians willbe those whose views best correspond to theplurality expressed at the ballot box. This isthe political counterpart to the voluntaristindividualism of neoclassical theory (Barnes

and Sheppard, 1992) in which the marketbest allocates goods according to individualspreferences (and also behind the proble-matic claim that markets and democracy arenatural partners).

Within mainstream political sciencean alternative to ballot-box pluralism hasemerged over the last two decades: deliber-ative democracy. Here, through a processof deliberation, members of society with dif-ferent preferences and world-views agree,

for example, about policy initiatives. Partici-pants are persuaded (or not) to alter their judgments, preferences, and views, seekinga consensus in which all participants agree ona common strategy of action (Drysek, 2002).In a liberal constitutional deliberative dem-ocracy, individuals with different prefer-ences engage in deliberation rather than


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voting. Deliberative democracy clearlyhas affinities with engaged pluralism. Theformer, however, explicitly assumes that:(1) deliberation involves equal individualswith given preferences; and (2) there areconstraints on the forms of persuasionallowed (excluded, for example, are rhetoric,humour, emotion, storytelling, and gossip)(Drysek, 2004). 6 The key question for us iswhether consensus arises within deliberativedemocracy because of genuine universalagreement, or only because certain voices andviews are marginalized and not taken intoaccount . If marginalization occurs, thendeliberative democratic consensus is anti-thetical to the engaged pluralism to whichwe aspire. But if consensus can be achieved

without marginalization then deliberativedemocracy could offer the progressive pos-sibilities we seek.

This issue is important if we return toGalisons work. His trading zones modelstarts from similar assumptions to thoseunderlying deliberative democracy, withequal partners engaged in a dispassionateprocess of setting the terms of trade. ButGalison ignores the likelihood of unequalexchange, never asking whether theorists,

experimentalists, and instrumentalistsare equally inuential in shaping the natureof what can be coordinated ie, whether amore powerful group is tailoring trade toits advantage. Yet trade typically does notoccur on a level playing eld (anthropologicalmyths notwithstanding) because of powerdifferences among different participants. 7 Similarly, pidgin languages are often largelyshaped by the more powerful party (Nettleand Romaine, 2002). Consequently, social

power differentials, with their concomitanteffects on truth and consensus (for differentaccounts of this, see Habermas 1984 [1981];Latour, 1987), compromise the ability to par-ticipate within a trading zone, and the even-handedness of exchange.

While Galisons version of engaged plur-alism is weakened because of its neglect of power differentials, we do not think that

weakness is inherent in the larger position.Rather, it is a failure of Galisons particularmodel and its starting assumptions. This isclear when parallels are drawn between en-gaged pluralism and arguments in feministphilosophy of science about positionality andsituated knowledge that recognize, identify,and redress power differentials. 8

The link between engaged pluralism andfeminist arguments is Jamess pluralist rec-ognition that how the world hangs togetherdepends upon where you start. In feministphilosophy of science the starting point isthe differentially empowered situatedness,standpoint, or positionality of the investi-gator. Specifically, Sandra Harding andDonna Haraway argue that the situatedness

of western scientic knowledge is highly gen-dered, reecting the social characteristics of those (primarily white males) who carry it out.The exclusion of women from the practiceof science distorts collective understanding,with science the poorer for marginalizingfeminist perspectives (Haraway, 1988; 1991;Harding, 1991; 2003). Third wave feminismfurther complicates this bipolar model of situated knowledge by asserting the import-ance of other lines of difference both social

and geographical and their intersectionality(Mohanty, 2003). Nevertheless, the essentialpoint remains: difference is an inescapableand unavoidable aspect of pluralism, and theperipheralization or exclusion of potentialvoices from science distorts the knowledgethat is produced.

Helen Longino (2002) has delineatednormative conditions that she believes allowfor difference and the production of know-ledge while minimizing marginalization and

its effects. She draws on feminism, thephilosophy of science, science studies, and(implicitly) pluralism. For her, pluralist dif-ference in academic knowledge is the norm.Specic constellations of factors (eg, social,psychological, material, geographical) con-tinually divide academic inquirers, differ-entiating their knowledge (Longino, 2002:184). The task is to engage the resulting


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plurality of knowledge without peripheral-izing any of the groups that produce it. Shethinks this is best achieved by: (1) establishingpublicly recognized forums for criticisms of evidence, methods, assumptions and reason-ing; (2) recognizing that criticism must betaken seriously, with claims adjusted in theface of adequate criticism; (3) acknowledgingthe existence of publicly recognizedstandards for evaluating knowledge claims;and (4) maintaining equality of intellectualauthority among all participants. Longinoargues, against Habermas and mainstreamdeliberative democracy, that the end resultof interaction in these forums need not andoften should not be consensus. Rather, it is,and should be, ceaseless even-handed de-

bate among different approaches. Underthese conditions, Longino believes, reliableknowledge is possible.

While feminist philosophers of scienceaddress the structural exclusion of key voices,and the consequent distortion of know-ledge, they do not fully address how the veryterms of engagement can still marginalizesuch voices even after speakers gain a place atthe table. Feminist political scientists havetaken this up, however. Concerned that the

norms governing communication tend toexclude the marginalized, Iris Marion Young(2000: 49) insists that a pluralist approachto deliberative democracy transforms mereexclusion and opposition to the other intoengaged antagonism within accepted rules. 9 Such deliberation must be constructed so asto empower those currently marginalized,and enable them to veto decisions if theirvoices are not adequately heard. 10

Chantal Mouffe (1999; 2000) goes further,

arguing for agonistic pluralism. In her view, theclaim that consensus (or, in science, truth andobjectivity) can be arrived at through deli-beration once power differences are removed(Habermass ideal speech situation) is afantasy. This is because what counts as con-sensus, and even difference, is itself an effectof pre-existing power relations. The ques-tion is not how to arrive at a consensus

without exclusion, since this would imply theeradication of the political [C]reation of aunity in a context of conict and diversity is always concerned with the creation of an us by the determination of a them(Mouffe, 2000: 15). Agonistic pluralism forMouffe is a passionate, no-holds-barred,engaged pluralism among adversaries(dened as legitimate foes with whom weshare common ground, and in contrast toenemies who are to be destroyed; Mouffe,2000: 15). Arguing against those, like thedeliberative democracy theorists, who wouldreduce pluralist debate to reasoned verbalexchange, Mouffe contends that underagonistic pluralism the prime task is not toeliminate passions from the sphere of the

public but to mobilize those passions towardsdemocratic designs (Mouffe, 2000: 16). 11

In sum, the feminists we reviewed takeon, and work through, issues of power andsocial marginalization in the production of knowledge. This is missing from Jamess andGalisons accounts of pluralism (althoughBernsteins version is better). Feministtheory is important because it sets out thesocial limits of engaged pluralism, and tellsus (normatively) what social conditions

must hold in order for engaged pluralism tobe realized. It makes clear that once socialinequality and prejudice reach certain thres-holds engaged pluralism is unattainable. Yetthis does not imply that engaged pluralismshould be abandoned; rather, the challenge isto change the social conditions underlying it.

III Economic geography

1 The past

From the beginning economic geographyhas been a discipline with a centre that didnot hold. The comparison with economicsis instructive, a discipline that from its mar-ginalist revolution in the 1870s was denedby an implacable centre. More than 10years before the rst English-language eco-nomic geography text was written, GeorgeChisholms (1889) encyclopedic Handbook


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of commercial geography , Stanley Jevons,Carl Menger, and Lon Walras had alreadydelineated economics monist agenda. It wasdefined by the study of rational economicchoice and the price-based optimal alloc-ation of resources using a body of analyticallyrigorous and mathematically reconditetheory and techniques (for a brilliant his-torical account, see Mirowski, 1989; 2002;Barnes, 2000, discusses Chisholm and hisAmerican counterpart, J. Russell Smith).The economists agenda still prevails almosta century and half later, while the economicgeographers was barely an agenda tobegin with, and certainly little residue of Chisholms project remains in the disciplinescurrent incarnation. 12 Unlike the economists,

economic geographers never settled on acanonical methodology, set of techniques,list of venerated luminaries, disciplinary prob-lematic, or denitive denitions.

This did not prevent some economic geo-graphers from periodically attempting toimpose disciplinary order, or monism. TheAmerican geographer Richard Hartshorne(1939) tried to do so in his tome The nature of

geography. Claiming there is no boundarybetween economic and regional geography,

Hartshorne (1939: 408) justified his ideo-graphic regionalist position for economicgeography on the basis of the disciplinesGermanic past. That past proscribed whateconomic geographers could do, and justas importantly what they could not if theywanted to retain the disciplinary name (NeilSmith, 1989: 92, damningly writes thatHartshornes Nature committed geographyto a museum-like existence). Perhaps themost successful attempt at imposing monism,

however, was spatial science. Even here,though, there were plenty of non-believersand evidence of epistemological spillage(Scott, 2000; Barnes, 2003).

Spatial sciences monism derived froma rival philosophy to Jamess pragmatism,scientic positivism (Barnes, 2008: 154748).Bertrand Russell, for example, argued thatbecause pragmatism was not anchored in

science it had no means of securing reality.Under pragmatism ironclads and Maximguns [would] be the ultimate arbiters of metaphysical truth, Russell (1910: 12324)wrote. There was only one truth, revealedby a singular scientic method. This becamethe message of spatial science, at least fromits more committed supporters. Allen Scott(1998), for example, one of its early prac-titioners having attended NorthwesternUniversity as a graduate student in the early1960s, said in an interview in which he wasasked to reect on that period:

I remember being in a frame of mind whereI thought that anything and everything usefulto be said in academic, scientic terms wasgoing to be said mathematically. That therewas the whole other world that alwaysinterested me of humanistic values, of art,music, and literature. But that was anotherworld; that was not the world of scholarshipas I saw it. That was the world of onespersonal cultivation and enjoyment. But thescientic world was the work of eventuallymathematizing every statement we couldmake about the earthly condition I knew that positivism would be the light thatwould guide us ever onwards. (Scott, 1998) 13

William Bunge was an equally enthusiasticbeliever, and evangelist for spatial sciencesmonotheism. Geography is a strict science,he asserted on the rst page of his Theoretical

geography (Bunge, 1966: x), a foundationalvolume for the movement. Even thoughBunge subsequently lost faith in America,turning to radical geography and later leavingthe country, he maintained his faith inscience: I believe in science; in the powersof rational thought in the midst of seeming

chaos; in our ability through reason to achievea just, humane, and natural order for all, theonly stable order. Science not policemen,created what order man has achieved(Bunge, 1971: 137).

Bunge and Scott were at the extreme endof the spatial science movement, but Barnes(2004) suggests, on the basis of oral historiesconducted with a number of pioneer spatial


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scientists, they were representative of alarger faith. Spatial science was upheld as themeans to the Truth, its methods revealingthe underlying economic geographical reality.It was a monist vision. But it could not besustained. It was not true to the variegatedhistory of economic geography as a disciplinewhich had never been constrained by a singlemethod or approach. It was not true to thehistorical moment of an increasingly pluralist1960s in the west, the decade (ironically)in which spatial science burgeoned in theUnited States. And it was not true to its ownscientific logic as assorted contradictions,inconsistencies, and aporias later revealed as demonstrated often by those who haddefended that very same logic only a few

years earlier (Olsson, 1980). Monistic spatialscientific economic geography began tounravel.

2 The presentIt was not just spatial science that unravelledfrom the 1970s, but the larger discipline.Over the next three decades economic geo-graphy passed through a period of twistsand turns of substantive focus and suddenchanges in theoretical mood (Scott, 2000:

18) as it variously took up Marxism, thelocality project, critical realism, feminism,regulationism, institutionalism, culture,poststructuralism, relationalism, GeneralDarwinism, and even a reconstructed (or insome critics eyes unreconstructed) spatialscience. It is in this sense that economicgeography has never been more pluralist.But, as is implicit in James and explicit inBernstein, pluralism is not useful unlessthere is engagement among its parties. We

believe that this has been largely absent fromcontemporary economic geography.Admittedly, many of the supporters of thesevarious positions have talked of the desir-ability of engagement, to reach out, to forgeconnections, but the reality often has beenunsatisfactory forms of pluralism of the kindthat Bernstein identied (Grabher, 2009: 120,uses the term decentred). Too often, there

was only lip service paid to pluralism, orglib supercial poaching, which in the endproduced only a fragmented rather than anengaged pluralism.

A key postspatial science volume thatopened up the potential for engaged plural-ism in economic geography was DoreenMasseys (1984) Spatial divisions of labour .From our perspective, its importance waswidening the kinds of objects and ideas thatwere legitimate for economic geographicalstudy (providing the possibility for a focuson what Lee, 2006, later called the ordinaryeconomy). After Masseys book, economicgeography seemed no longer so closed andairless, its broader mandate encouraging bothnew kinds of participants and approaches

(Barnes et al ., 2007). But the space thatshe set out for engaged pluralism was rarelyoccupied over the subsequent 25 years. Themany different approaches proposed (suchas those enumerated above) often estab-lished themselves by claims of exclusivity,making clear not only what they werefor but also what (and whom) they wereagainst. The result was a combination of periodic outbreaks of conict and rancour,and stretches of deathly silences as people

stayed behind their stockades, keeping theirheads down, doing their own thing withtheir own tribe. Such bouts of conict andrancour are well known and include theMarxist attack on the locality project (Smith,1987), the feminist critique of Marxism (orat least David Harveys version; Deutsche,1991; Massey, 1991), the poststructural dis-paragement of regulationsm (Gibson-Graham, 1996), and the institutionalist take-down of the new economic geography of

Krugman (Martin, 1999). Perhaps even moredamaging, however, were the silences whenbacks were turned.

For reasons of brevity, we cannot pro-vide a blow-by-blow disciplinary appraisalof the last quarter-centurys history (Scott,2000 and 2006, provides useful reviews,although in line with our argument his his-tory comes with blind spots given his


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scepticism of poststructuralism). Instead,we examine two debates that we believereveal something about the problems of, butalso the possibilities for, engaged pluralismin economic geography: the debate aroundthe catalytic interventions of Ash Aminand Nigel Thrift (2001; 2005; 2007); and therecent discussion of evolutionary economicgeography touted as possibly yet anothersubdisciplinary turn (Grabher, 2009).

3 The Amin-Thrift debatesAmin and Thrifts 2001 paper What kind of economic theory for what kind of economicgeography? produced 11 responses; and their2005 paper Whats left? Just the futuregarnered reactions from Smith (2005),

Harvey (2006), and Hudson (2006), as wellas a reply by Amin and Thrift (2007). Werecognize that focusing on these sometimesacrimonious debates opens us to the charge of prejudicing our conclusion by reviewing onlyworks that illustrate the fragmentation thatwe claim is present. Our responses are that:(1) the debates, especially the first, weresignificant for the discipline, especially inthe UK; (2) they illustrate well the full arrayof pluralist positions within the discipline;

and (3) they exemplify the kinds and levelsof opposition required to be overcome if conversation as engaged pluralism is to berealized.

In their first intervention, Amin andThrift (2001: 4) contend that a turning pointis being reached. How economic geographyturns out, they suggest, depends upon thedirection the discipline takes and the kind of economic theory that is practised (pp. 45).Either it can side with the heterodox eco-

nomics that ekes out an existence at theedges of mainstream economics (Lee, 2007)and draw young researchers back into eco-nomic geography, as they see the placeof a different kind of economic theory ina post-disciplinary social science (Aminand Thrift, 2001: 8); or it can side withformal economics, with which certain partsof economic geography still yearn for a

rapprochement (p. 5). But, and it is a big but,formal economics is a potentially dangerousbeast, and we would be fooling ourselves if we believe that we can lie down with the lionand become anything more than prey (p. 8).The upshot is that Amin and Thrifts worldis indissolvably cleaved in two: the goodpluralist world of heterodox economics, andthe bad monist world of formal economics.And the monist world is so bad that eco-nomic geography could not survive in it. Theyoffer no choice, eschewing engaged plural-ism, dismissing from the beginning any con-tact with mainstream economics.

The 11 responses that followed also claimedopenness and made declarations of pluralism(including ones we wrote). But frequently,

as with Amin and Thrifts own paper, thepluralism was qualified. Every perspectiveshould get their chance, except (fill inthe blank). All theoretical perspectives areequal, except some are more equal thanothers. For example, Martin and Sunley(2001: 152) welcome a multiperspectival eco-nomic geography, but they then excludewhat they term cultural essentialism,their name for Amin and Thrifts approach,criticizing it as intolerant, deploying vague

theory and thin empirics, and characterizedas a loose assemblage of ill-defined con-cepts, fuzzy metaphors, or mere neologisms(Martin and Sunley, 2001: 153). Again, whileHenry Yeung calls for a politics of engage-ment, he immediately limits that engagementby saying that the central problem of thediscipline is too much distraction from otherbranches of the social sciences (Yeung,2001: 172, 169). The point is clear. Despitethe rhetoric of openness, there remains

guardedness about what should be allowed.Boundaries are erected even when pushdoes not come to shove, precipitating a frag-mented rather than engaged pluralism.

If Amin and Thrifts rst intervention wasabout excluding and dismissing formal eco-nomics from economic geography, the secondone assayed doing something similar to trad-itional Marxism. Again, on the surface their


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proposal appeared to favour pluralism. Theywrite of their desire to map a pluralist andforward-looking position whose groundingprinciple is the promotion of emergencethrough the process of disagreement (Aminand Thrift, 2005: 221). At the end of theirpaper, though, as in their previous article,they draw up a dualism (encapsulated in atwo-column table). There is theorization of capitalism that they do not like and associatedwith Marxism, capitalism as system, setagainst the theorization they do like, cap-italism as systemic promiscuity (p. 237).

While Neil Smiths (2005: 899) com-mentary on their paper concludes by sayinglet one hundred owers bloom, he is notkeen on Amin and Thrifts particular blossom,

subjecting their position to a withering cri-tique. Indeed, for him pluralism is theproblem, the justicatory mulch of todaysneoliberalism (p. 896). So much for allowingmany owers to bloom. There is a similarequivocation in Ray Hudsons (2006) re-sponse. While seemingly open-minded in hisdiscussion of economic geography I arguefor a pluri-theoretical approach (Hudson,2006: 387) in the end the only theoriesthat he thinks are worth discussing are on

some form of Marxism. Even here, not allMarxist theory is appropriate. AnalyticalMarxism, for example, leads to the omissionof consideration of a range of qualitativeinuences and processes and in this way conceded too much to the critics (p. 385).Such seesawing between a purportedpluralism and the assertion of a single ap-proach, Marxism, runs throughout the essay.So, on the one hand, this is a complex worldand as a result we need a variety of theor-

etical perspectives in seeking to understandit. On the other hand, in the last instancethe class structural power of capital willassert itself as decisive (p. 388).

The most recent iteration (Harvey, 2006;Amin and Thrift, 2007) demonstrates howsuch exchanges easily get locked intopolemical pluralism, particularly when op-portunities to shape national disciplinary

cultures are at stake. Again, while bothessays have moments when they invoke theimportance of different views, neither showsany inclination to take the critiques of theother seriously enough to question their ownposition.

This is one example, but it illustrates thefragmented pluralism that often charac-terizes the contemporary discipline, leavenedat times by defensive pluralism, and out-and-out monism. Lip service is paid to thebenets of an engaged pluralism, but then,to use Smiths (2005: 892) metaphor, theportcullis comes down, separating those onthe inside who are legitimate conversationpartners from those remaining outside whoare not: depending upon who it is, variously

orthodox economists, Marxists, or theheterarchical Left.

4 An evolutionary turn?The debate over an evolutionary turn isdifferent in that it points to the possibilitiesof an engaged pluralism. Even here thereremain conversational holdouts and, apartfrom some opening statements asserting awillingness to talk, little of substance has yetbeen achieved. It is still early days, however.

Yet this case provides insight into not onlythe processes that create and sustain discip-linary fragmentation, but also strategies thatmight be deployed to reverse it (and going toLonginos suggestions discussed above).

Evolutionary economics has a muddledhistory and nature. It has been linked to:(1) political economy; 14 (2) a third-way alter-native to Marxism, institutional economics,associated with the late nineteenth- andearly twentieth-century maverick American

economist, Thorstein Veblen; and (3) a latetwentieth-century bastardized version of neoclassicism, Douglas Norths new institu-tionalism. Given this varied intellectual pro-venance, evolutionary economics seem-ingly has the potential to be the epitomeof engaged pluralism. So far it has not, butMacKinnon et al . (2009a; 2009b) argue thatthis time has come.


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Evolutionary economics applies Darwiniannotions of variety, selection, inheritance,retention, and adaptation to institutionaleconomic change (Hodgson, 2009). Ineconomic geography, evolution was usedduring the 1950s and 1960s to understandthe rm (Robert McNees the geography of enterprise, 1960). In the 1990s the emphasiswas on regional development and bound toissues of an appropriate institutional struc-ture (institutional thickness), and problemsof regional technological path-dependenceand lock-in (institutional economists fromVeblen onwards stressed the close relationbetween technological form and surroundinginstitutional structure; Barnes, 1997). Overthe past ve years, evolutionary economicgeography became increasingly analyticaland formalized, drawing especially onthe works of economists such as RichardNelson, Sidney Winter, Stan Metcalfe, andGiovanni Dosi. 15

There are two points to make about theevolutionary turn. First, even this latest guisecontains an impulse by some to separate,to draw a line around the body of this work and cut off conversation with at least somepotential partners. For example, in a recenteditorial introducing the evolutionaryturn, Boschma and Martin (2007: 539) saythat while Marxist economic geographersmight well claim that their approach isstrongly evolutionary in nature, theywould be wrong. The Marxist approachreduces to either teleological imputation orunexplained episodic shifts (Boschmaand Martin, 2007: 539), both of which areanathema to an evolutionary economicgeography that represents a different way(p. 539). Their strategy, as MacKinnon et al .(2009a: 144) note, is to distance evolu-tionary economic geography from the legacyof Marxian political economy. Boschma andFrenken (2009) also draw a line separatingevolutionary from institutional economicgeography, decribing them as orthogonal

to one another (Boschma and Frenken,2009: 152). 16 The rhetorical implication isseparation, partition, and isolation (see alsocomments by MacKinnon et al ., 2009b:17778). Such divisions present evolutionaryeconomic geography as self-sustaining andautonomous but at the cost of setting up usagainst them.

Second, however, other economic geo-graphers argue that evolutionary economicgeography is a potential site for precisely thekind of engaged pluralism we propose (par-ticularly MacKinnon et al ., 2009a; 2009b).Whereas Boschma, Franken, and Martinwant to solidify the form of evolutionaryeconomic geography by setting up a sub-disciplinary stockade, MacKinnon et al . en-courage cross-subdisciplinary exchange andtrade: rather than the construction of somekind of theoretically separate evolutionaryeconomic geography, their focus is evolutionin economic geography, not an evolutionaryeconomic geography Evolutionary eco-nomic geography is an evolving and pluralistproject (MacKinnon et al ., 2009a: 129). Theygo on to discuss, in effect, what we earliercalled pidgin (although they do not use theword) terms that effect trade by actingas a bridge between, in this case, differentsubdisciplines. MacKinnon et al . (2009a:14044) single out path-dependence andlock-in as such terms: concepts that areimportant because they are used in theor-etical contexts that range from Krugmansnew economic geography to Storper andWalkers Marxist analysis of capitalismsinconstant geography, from Martin andSunleys (2006: 411) institutionalist pathas process to Grabhers (1993) network account of lock-in. Although these particularindividuals have yet to engage in such trade,MacKinnon et al . argue that the possibilityexists, allowing the pluralist potential of the eld to be realized. In pointing to thatpotential, they follow some of Longinos pre-cepts: the use of publicly recognized forums


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for criticism, maintenance of equality of intel-lectual authority, and judgment based oncommon standards of evaluation.

In sum, our larger argument was thatwhile economic geography from its beginningpossessed the potential to realize pluralistengagement it was a promise rarely fullled.Instead, the reality was a fragmented plural-ism interspersed with a few (unsuccessful)attempts at monism. Clearly, as our last ex-ample showed, there is some sentiment for adifferent model, engaged pluralism. But is itfeasible? To address this question we turn toa eld that shows the challenges involved inachieving engaged pluralism, and also thebenefits from its accomplishment: GIS. In1990, Anglophone GIS scholarship was frac-tured, along lines that were just as sharplydrawn as in economic geography. But, ratherthan keeping the portcullis closed, the diverseparticipants researching GIS found ways towedge it open, making space for the pas-sage of conversation. In Galisons terms theydeveloped trading zones (Bernsteins engagedpluralism; Longinos conditions for pluralistknowledge production), enabling them tocope with the world by manufacturing newknowledge. Economic geography did not

have to turn out the way it did and, as wewill argue in the concluding section, it canlearn from GIS.

IV GIS and critical geography 17

1 The pastThe rapid growth in the 1970s and 1980s of geographical information systems (GIS) as anarea of research, application, student interestand influence within geography caused a

stir. Notably, it led to ambitious, high-proleclaims that GIS was making possible a newintegrated and scientic geography (Dobson,1983; Openshaw, 1991). Published at a timewhen human geographers were moving sub-stantially away from spatial science, suchclaims catalyzed a series of responses fromcritical human geographers (reviewed inPickles, 1995; 1999). 18 These criticisms

focused on both epistemological and prac-tical implications of the spreading inuenceof GIS within geography. GIS was seen as aTrojan horse for the reassertion of broadlypositivist approaches within human geo-graphy because of its quantitative and em-pirical nature and of the leading role playedin GIS by protagonists of the quantitativerevolution. These critics argued that GISwas in danger of overpowering postpositivistapproaches, thereby circumscribing geo-graphys ability to make sense of the world.Social theorists saw this kind of scientic ap-proach as reifying the status quo , reinforcingan empiricist epistemology that ruled out theinvestigation of alternative possible worldsother than that one in which we live. They

also noted that certain conceptions of space(particularly, geometric and relative space)and certain forms of reasoning (particularly,Boolean logic) are embedded within GIS,making it unable adequately to representboth non-European conceptions of space andthe communicative rationality of everydaylife. Finally, increased use of GIS in societywas seen as likely to enhance current socialand geographical inequalities because of theemerging digital divide. As a consequence,

critics argued that GIS facilitated practicesby those with access to the technology of surveillance, social engineering, opinion for-mation and warfare (Pickles, 1991; Smith,1992; Lake, 1993). In short, GIS in the 1990swas attacked for many of the same reasons,and from a similarly broad gamut of criticalepistemologies and political commitments,as was spatial science in the 1980s.

These attacks provoked equally sharpresponses from GIS specialists, who found

the critiques simplistic, unduly pessimisticand even paranoid, and indicating a lack of understanding of and experience with GIS,and/or a lack of patience or aptitude forthe rigors of science. They also resentedthe implication that GIS specialists are un-concerned with social issues and unaware of the social implications of science. Accordingly,between 1983 and 1993 there was little


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communication between what had becometwo cultural solitudes: those critical of andthose specializing in GIS (Pickles, 1999). Inshort, polemical and fragmenting pluralismprevailed, separating pro- and anti-positivistcamps.

This intellectual divide was challenged atFriday Harbor in 1993, when the NationalCenter for Geographic Information andAnalysis (NCGIA) sponsored a conferencethat brought together prominent researchersfrom both camps (Poiker and Sheppard,1995). Notwithstanding early tensions, cari-catures cracked as participants came toknow and appreciate the breadth of skills andinterests of those from what they had seenas the other side. A common desire to learnfrom one another emerged among thosepresent, stimulating development of a GISand society research agenda, formulatedat a second meeting in Annandale, MN,in February 1995. This was one of severalforums within which an active researchprogram in GIS and society emerged, withcollaboration taking a variety of forms: jointresearch by GIS specialists and social the-orists; jointly organized sessions at GIS andgeography conferences; the invitation bymembers of the opposite camp to par-ticipate in predominantly GIS or social theoryinitiatives; and new conferences. The spacefor engagement between previously polar-ized elds of research created by these initi-atives, in turn, attracted new participants.Young scholars, in particular, no longer feltcompelled to identify themselves as either ageographic information scientist or a socialtheorist, and creatively acquired substantialexpertise in both areas.

By the end of the 1990s, this constructiveengagement, an emergent engaged plural-ism, meant that overlapping cultures of respect were replacing separate cultures of indifference (notwithstanding the continuingreluctance of some influential criticalgeographers and GIS specialists to engageone another).

2 The presentRecently, there has been a substantial shift inthe discursive frame within which researchtranscending the GIS social theory divide isset: from GIS and society to critical GIS(Schuurman, 1999; Harvey et al ., 2005). It isby now broadly accepted, and not only amongthose participating in these exchanges, thatGIS is not inherently positivist. Researchinto geographic information systems andtechnologies research need not be quanti-tative, logico-deductive, or empiricist. Manykinds of qualitative information and situatedperspectives (images, narratives, sketchmaps) can be incorporated within a con-ventional GIS without being incorporatedinto its Boolean logical structure, and GIScan be much more than its current practices.An emergent area of research here is neo-geography: the study of the cultural map-ping practices, in all realms of everyday life,and catalyzed by the digital mapping tech-nologies and social networking practicesassociated with Web 2.0. Notwithstandingthe tendency of standard GIS tools to repre-sent the world via the god-trick of seeingeverything from nowhere (Haraway,1991) and other difculties in capturing keyelements of feminist theory, GIS can betweaked in ways that allow it to representsituated and embodied perspectives on theworld, and empower women (Kwan, 2002).Schuurman (2001) highlights the emergencealso of considerable epistemological andontological reflection in mainstream GIS,particularly along lines of experiential realism(cf. Couclelis, 1999).

Critical GIS has also attracted a widevariety of scholars who do not approach itfrom a critical theory background. Beginningwith the 2002 Association of American Geo-graphers meeting, critical GIS sessions haveprovided a vehicle to explore a range of issues,from those central to the GIS and societyresearch agenda (such as public participationGIS), to technical papers seeking to addressrepresentational limitations of GIS, to ways


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of combining GIS with qualitative methods, topostpositivist epistemologies and ontologies.A new generation trained in new coursesthat promote engagement between GIS andcritical geography has become vocal. It seeksto break down divides between the twoformerly antagonistic epistemic communities(cf. Schuurman, 2000). A further marker of engaged pluralism is the willingness amongparticipants to rethink the very meaningof the terms and communities that are atstake: critical and GIS (Schuurman, 2001;Sheppard, 2005; Wilson and Poore, 2009).

3 AssessmentOf course, the emergence of a trading zonebetween GIS and critical human geographyhas been neither as easy nor as smooth asthe above narrative might suggest. As notedabove, Galisons notion of trading zonestends to gloss over questions of power andimplementation. First, this trading zone didnot happen organically, but was catalyzedby an institutional intervention with its ownagenda, itself a result of pressure brought onNCGIA to diversify its conception of GIS andbroaden its relation to geography. Despitesuch catalysis, many leading (generally male)gures on both sides have refused to enterthe trading zone because their identity is soinvested in belonging to one side or the other.Second, persistent inequalities of inuencealso mean that there is unequal exchange,which reproduces tensions, with traditionalGIScience holding the distinct upper hand.This is hardly surprising given the centralityof mainstream GIS to war-making, policingand surveillance, capital accumulation, andpolitical campaigning. Thus the relabelingof GIS as Geographic Information Sciencetriggered concerns about what it meant toinvoke science in this context (Pickles, 1997;Wright et al. , 1997). International GIS con-ferences held annually since 2004 have hadvery limited participation from those whosee themselves as engaging between criticalgeography and GIS. The diversity within

critical GIS sessions at the 2002 AAGmeeting, noted above, declined by the 2004AAG meeting where sessions focused morenarrowly on qualitative methods and GIS(broadening again at the 2008 meeting).Critical GIS is not central in the canonicalUS GIS program (at UC Santa Barbara), northe influential critical human geographyprograms at Berkeley and UBC (although itis present, eg, at Ohio State, SUNY Buffalo,UCLA, and the Universities of Washingtonand Minnesota). There is also geographicalunevenness: engaged pluralism betweenGIS and critical geography has been morecommon in North America than elsewhere inthe rst world, and rarer still among scholarslocated in the global south.

Ceaseless debate also means ceaselesspower struggles, with epistemologies andpolitics both at stake. Without doubt, thegeneration of scholars that was weaned onthese interactions will nd themselves em-broiled in other debates and divisions thatchallenge engaged pluralist ideals and regressinto other less desirable forms of pluralismand even monisms. It is always possible thattrading zones will wilt again. Yet this is ex-actly what ceaseless pluralist engagementshould be about: passionate argument amongrecognized adversaries (albeit not enemies),with all voices empowered, intellectualhegemony always up for grabs, and new dif-ferences emerging.

V ConclusionIn this paper we argued that economic geo-graphy can and should engage more activelyacross its manifold paradigms and fashions(thereby becoming an exemplar for the widerdiscipline). Such engagement is necessary toavoid not only monism (as in economics), butalso a fragmented pluralism of ships passingin the night. Engaged pluralism can be com-patible with the values and epistemologicalcommitments of science studies and feministphilosophy of science, but trading zonessatisfying the norms of engaged pluralism do


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not just happen. Inclusive trading zones needto be actively established. Moreover, with-out lively intervention unequal exchange islikely, and requiring the counter of agonisticengagement stressed by Mouffe. In effect, ourchallenge to economic geographers (indeedto all geographers of whatever stripe) is toinitiate exchange, to trade their various localepistemologies and theories with those of others, and in the process to create newknowledge. The larger result, as in the caseof GIS, can be a more vibrant, interestingdiscipline, capable of generating complex,shifting understandings that reect and shapeequally complex and dynamic materialities.Less we be misunderstood, we are not sug-gesting that engaged pluralism is the only

effective form of knowledge production;intense local exchange and trading systemswithin epistemological paradigms will remainvital. But knowledge production that is dom-inated only by localized exchanges fails totake advantage of economic geographyspluralist potential.

Realizing this potential will not be easy.The conditions of possibility for engagedpluralism are shaped by broader cultural andinstitutional contexts which are less than

favourable. The commodification of uni-versities, and the competitive individualismit reinforces, easily undermines the kind of mutual and passionate engagement thatwe advocate (Sheppard, 2006). A focus onthe university as a site of expertise can alsomitigate engaged pluralism because of anemphasis on narrow, technical forms of inquiry, and belief in self-correctness (weknow we are right; Collins and Evans, 2007).Moreoever, there are the internal obstacles

within a discipline. Inquiry is sometimestaken over by the ad hominem , by internalsociological questions of who sits at the dis-ciplinary centre. In our view, the intensityof the debates around the two Amin andThrift articles partly reects the current pre-dominance of this latter tendency. It will takesubstantial collective will, and a retilting of intellectual culture, to change.

It will also be important to pay attentionto and reveal the networks through whichparticular positions and issues come todominate economic geographers debatesin and across particular times and spaces.Bringing networks out of hiding meansattending to and seeking to intervene in thework of translation by which such networksare formed (Braun and Disch, 2002: 510).

The ocean is a great deal larger than weoften recognize. We have restricted our-selves, at least implicitly, to considering onlythose already sitting around the table. Yetmany others are left out altogether, and theymust be engaged if economic geography isto ourish and the transferability of its con-cepts assessed. Young (2000: 23) argues that

all those affected [must be] included in theprocess of discussion and decision-making,but that is hardly the case to date. At issueare those groups systematically left out of apredominantly white, Anglophone, and malesubdiscipline. Additionally, there must notonly be greater social inclusiveness, but geo-graphical as well (Sheppard, 2006). We needto interrogate the conditions under which our(pluralist grouping of) local epistemologiestravel and are exported elsewhere, and, just

as importantly, to appreciate the possibilityof importing and engaging with others localepistemologies/situated knowledges.

Finally, relatedly, are the difficulties of learning to listen and appreciating differ-ence. Partly this a problem of language,which in geography frequently means thatothers must learn English if they are to beheard (see contrasting views by Desbiens andRuddick, 2006, and Rodrguez-Pose, 2006).Partly, also, it is the entrenched character

of national geographical traditions that canform a thick crust of convention, provingdauntingly impervious. This was evident in aconference session in which this very paperwas presented. Given at the Second GlobalConference in Economic Geography in Beijingin June 2007, a conference of over 350 par-ticipants from more than 30 countries, wehoped the paper would provoke engaged


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pluralism. Instead the various commentators,who included a Russian, an Australian, aNetherlander, a Japanese, an Englishman,and us, respectively Canadian (Barnes) andAmerican (Sheppard), produced a stilted andconstrained conversation, and much talk atcross purposes. It became even less like aconversation when yet more voices wereadded during the discussion period: closer toBabel than dialogue (cf. Liu, 2009).

We are thus not minimizing the difcul-ties of achieving engaged pluralism. Thereare no easy solutions, no foolproof strategies.But to avoid the dangers of fragmentedpluralism, and to gain the benets of engagedpluralism, we must try harder and fail better.From just the story we told, it is clear that

success is not going to be epiphanic, all atonce, a Billy Graham moment on the bigstage. If engaged pluralism does occur, it willbe hesitant, provisional, won yard by yard,realized bit by bit by small acts. In thatlight, while the Second Global Conference inEconomic Geography might have failed inits large set pieces in the cavernous lecturetheatre, it seemed more successful in smaller,ordinary spaces: in the tea room, at the lunchtable, at the bar, at the buffet counter at the

banquet, in the many family restaurantsthat surrounded the convention centre. Inthem we observed hesitant signs of con-nection as people from different origins atfirst cautiously and later more confidentlyengaged one another. Engagement did notmean agreement, let alone convergence, butit implied a willingness to listen and to takeseriously other peoples ideas. These were, of course, limited steps, but they were also glim-mers of hope for the possibility of engaged

pluralism. Kevin Hetherington (1997) invokesFoucaults idea of a heterotopia, a placewhere differences coincide and ricochetproductively off one another, to describe theinformal spaces of Pariss Palais Royale thathelped transform the Ancien Rgime intorevolutionary France. We do not claim thatthe spaces around Beijings InternationalConvention Center were the sites of a similar

revolution in economic geography, but theyshowed at least that one might be possible. Itis another version of the audacity of hope.

AcknowledgementsWe would like to thank participants at the2005 AAG meeting, the 2006 IBG/RGSmeeting, and the 2007 World EconomicGeography conference for their questions andcomments during and after sessions in whichwe presented this paper. We also want tothank Tyler Pearce, Mary Thomas, and JoelWainwright, as well as three referees andan anonymous second editor from Progressin Human Geography for their comments . We are especially grateful to Roger Leefor his many detailed suggestions that im-

proved the paper and for his enthusiasmand encouragement. Needless to say, anyremaining errors are our responsibility alone.

Notes1. By monism we mean a belief that all variety is

reduced to a single entity or notion, the attribute of oneness (Schaffer, 2007). Menand (2001) arguesthat Jamess work, and American pragmatist philo-sophy in general, emerged as a reaction to the USCivil War, itself the product of dogmatic adherenceto monist principles. Jamess writings and thoseof the pragmatists were an attempt to repair theresulting damage, to offer a different model of dem-ocracy, culture and ideas based not on anothermonism but in part upon pluralism.

2. There are no extended histories of economicgeography per se, but Barnes (2000; 2003; 2004)provides a set of potted histories that discuss dif-ferent forms of economic geography during varioushistorical phases of the discipline.

3. Such an attitude is classically pragmatist. Life underradical contingency means that we never knowhow things will turn out. Everything that canhappen by chance, sometime or other will happenby chance, as Charles Peirce (1982, volume 4: 544)put it. We must always be prepared to change ourview, to experiment, to adopt new ways, to bereceptive to novelty. We must be open-minded,pluralist and pragmatic (Barnes, 2008).

4. It might appear paradoxical for Anglophone humangeographers to argue, as we do, for the necessity tomake room for non-Anglophone voices in economicgeography, and even more paradoxical to do so ina paper that focuses exclusively on the Anglophoneliterature. Partly this reflects our own limited


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knowledge of the non-Anglophone literature,notwithstanding our desire and effort to broaden.While regrettable, we do not think that such aconstraint is crucial for the particular argument wewant to make here. Our argument is directed atthe specicity of an Anglophone literature that wecontend is overly introspective, containing barriers

to engaged pluralism. That said, we recognize thatthere is an enormous amount to learn from non-Anglophones about both economic geography andengaged pluralism, and we look forward to comingto know this work.

5. One of the referees, using Imre Lakatos (1978)vocabulary, asked whether those associated witha progressive research program would ever tradewith those associated with a degenerative researchprogram. The implication of the referee was that adying research program would have nothing to offerby way of trade. Lakatos made clear, however, thatresearch programs were irrefutable, with alwayssome life in them. Our contention is that life canbe rekindled by trade, even transforming a de-generative research program into a progressiveone. One example perhaps is when Paul Krugman(2000) took ideas from the degenerating program of regional science, and mixed them with a set of ideasfrom the new trade theory in economics. Regionalscience took on a new lease of life, and Paul Krugmanreceived the 2008 Nobel prize in economics.

6. In fact, participants in pluralist debate, whetherover the nature of the world or health care, areneither equal nor sovereign individuals. For thisreason Laclau and Mouffe (1985) conceptualizea radical form of democracy, a radical pluralism,which does not seek resolution through bridgingdifference. Difference is not given in advance butis a political effect (Braun and Disch, 2002: 508),and consensus is not to be expected.

7. Galison uses the metaphor of silent trade.Gudeman (2001: 95) explains: According to thestory, one person leaves objects in a clearing for astranger who places a counter-offering and leaves;the rst individual returns and takes the offering orleaves it for more; the other person then returns,and the negotiation continues until an acceptablerate of exchange is reached. According to thestory, trading is a natural impulse of humans that

takes place without shared language or law. Closeanalysis of stories of silent trade told to Europeantravelers, however, has shown the metaphor tohave no known basis in real behaviour. Rather,such stories were told to Europeans to misleadthem about gold trading routes in North Africa(de Moraes Faria, 1974; Smith, 2003).

8. Pluralism is clearly also at stake in feminist theory,although feminists have rarely made an explicitconnection to pragmatist philosophy (Duran, 1993;

Mottier, 2004). Vronique Mottier (p. 323) putsit thus: There is a natural afnity between keyelements of pragmatism and feminist thought. Bothprivilege social and political practice over abstracttheory, they evaluate theory from the point of view of its concrete effects on marginalized groups,including women, and both share a common

emphasis upon the development of theory fromsubjects grounded experience. Nevertheless,the history of relations between pragmatism andfeminism is largely one of a failed rendezvous.

9. Neither Young nor Longino show any inclination toconnect their thinking to pragmatism, but both seethemselves as offering pragmatic accounts (Young,1994; Longino, 2003).

10. Dryseks (2002) engaged pluralist critique of deliberative democracy is very similar.

11. Although rarely discussed, passions are often pre-sent, especially in academic exchanges, and oftencontributing to fragmented pluralism. Passion, forexample, was always on the surface of Bill Bungeswork that we discuss briey in the next section,most famously in his brilliant but tortured book, Fitzgerald (Bunge, 1971). Peter Gould (1999) wouldsometimes let his oppositional passions loose, forexample, as he did against poststructuralism in hisessay Cathartic geography (Sometimes you feelthat things are just not right and your sense of fairness wells to the surface; Gould, 1999: 79).The point is less to eradicate passion (impossibleanyway), than to ensure it does not overwhelm,making conversation with those holding differentviews impossible (as it sometimes did for Gould).We owe this larger point to Roger Lee. Mouffe alsomakes a second relevant argument: that practicesshould be emphasized over arguments underagonistic pluralism.

12. The difference between economics and economicgeography might be conceived, following theStanford philosophers, and John Dupr in par-ticular, as between a unity of science view (theeconomists) and a disunity of science view (theeconomic geographers). It is the difference betweenconceptualizing the economy as a self-contained,integrated whole, the elements and operationsof which are presumed reducible to a handful of formal explanatory principles (economics), and

conceptualizing the economy geographically asfractured and disparate, weakly linked bits andpieces requiring separate theories, concepts, andunderstandings (economic geography). The latterview has been presented by Roger Lee (2006: 414)as the ordinary economy, and dened as all thecontradictions, ethical dilemmas and multiplevalues that inform the quotidian business of makinga living. For Lee (2006: 422, 427), the result iseconomic geographies are inherently diverse


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[and] never monistic. To take economic geo-graphies seriously, Lee (2006: 429) writes, impliesan analytical acceptance rather than a constrainedand formalized reduction Such a reductionleaves analysis open to being precisely wrongrather than roughly right.

13. Along with several others in the discipline, Scott

later rejected positivism. We interpret that rejectionas his recognition of the disunied character of theeconomy, that it is too heterogenous and diverseto be reduced to a single set of equations. By thelate 1980s, the equations that he earlier developedin the 1960s and 1970s for linear programmingand commodity production were nowhere to befound as he grappled with a complex economy thatnow included a variegated city and state (Scott,1988a; 1988b).

14. Marx was an admirer of Darwin and sent him acopy of the rst volume of Capital . But while Marxread Darwin, Darwin did not read Marx. The pages

in the copy of Capital that Marx gave to Darwinremained uncut.

15. A good review of evolutionary economic geo-graphy is found in Essletzbichler and Rigby (2007).The papers collected in the September 2007 specialissue of the Journal of Economic Geography conveywell the current form of evolutionary economicgeography.

16. To be orthogonal, two linear vectors must beindependent.

17. The interested reader can nd a more completeaccount in Sheppard (2005).

18. Here, critical refers to the broad palette of post-

positivist epistemologies, and related politicalcommitments, that have come to dominateAnglophone economic, and human, geographysince the early 1980s (Blomley, 2006; 2007; 2008;Sheppard, 2006).

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