Geography And Economy

CLARENDON LECTURES IN GEOGRAPHY AND ENVIRONMENTAL STUDIES General Editor Gordon Clark This page intentionally left blank Geography and Economy Three Lectures ALLEN J. SCOTT CLARENDON PRESS
O X F O R D 3 Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2 6dp Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellent in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York ß Allen J. Scott 2006 The moral rights of the author have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 2006 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose the same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Scott, Allen John. Geography and economy: three lectures/Allen J. Scott. p.cm ISBN 0–19–928430–X (alk. paper) 1. Economic geography. I. Title. HF 1025.S362 2006 330.9––dc22 2005025981 Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Biddles Ltd., King’s Lynn ISBN 0-19-928430-X 978-0-19-928430-6 1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2 PROEM The three chapters that follow form the basis of the Clarendon Lectures in Geography and Environmental Studies that I was privileged to present at the School of Geography and the Environment, Oxford University, over the period 4–6 May, 2005. Since I have never before been involved in a public lecture series quite as ambitious as this one, I was at the outset puzzled about what the subject of these addresses should be, and in what style I should present them. Should they focus on cutting-edge research results? Should they be pedagogic, like glorified undergraduate lectures? Should they somehow represent my own attempt to come to terms with the debates that continually rage throughout the field of economic geography? In the end, I have settled for a compromise solution that attempts to combine something of all three approaches while at the same time allowing myself the luxury of trying to re-express and update a number of theoretical ideas that have preoccupied me over the last couple of decades. Geography and Economy is not a book that attempts to explore the entire terrain opened up by the ambitious programmatic promise that its title may seem to signify. I have sought, rather, to focus the argument on what I take to be some burning theoretical and practical questions at the p