Geography Reference
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neo-Darwinian approaches. For many, the challenge is to give economic interpretation
to the basic ideas of modern evolutionary biology - especially to the notions of variety,
selection, i tness, retention, mutation and adaptation. For others, the notions from com-
plexity science - such as self-organisation, co-evolution, emergence, far-from equilibrium
dynamics, and criticality - provide a suitable conceptual framework. For yet others, it is
the combination of these two perspectives that is most promising.
The upshot is that evolutionary economics of ers a rich palette of ideas and concepts
for geographers to draw on to help them explain the evolution of the economic land-
scape. Here of course is the second dii culty. As is the case with any school of economic
thought, evolutionary economics is largely aspatial in outlook and formulation, whereas
geographers are interested in applying and adapting concepts from evolutionary econom-
ics to spatial contexts and processes. As numerous authors have warned, the abduction
of metaphors and concepts from one i eld into another can be problematic (see Wimmer
and Kössler, 2006). Just as the use of physical and mechanical analogies and metaphors
in mainstream economics is contentious, so the use of biological analogies and concepts
in evolutionary economics - and evolutionary economic geography - is not uncontrover-
sial. How far and in what ways the notions taken from traditional and modern evolution-
ary biology can be translated into meaningful economic equivalents is itself a topic of
lively discussion and debate (see, for example, Foster, 2000). Applying a paradigm from
one science to another is a risky venture. For example, using biological analogies blindly
or slavishly, without due care for inappropriate ontological transfers, will of course
hardly constitute a theory of economic evolution (see Mokyr, 2005). However, according
to Mokyr, Metcalfe and others, the argument is not so much that the economy is in some
ways 'similar' to biological systems, but that Darwinian models and related concepts (of
selection, variety, novelty, etc.) transcend biology, and that, indeed, evolutionary biology
is just a special case of a much wider and broader set of models that try to explain how
certain kinds of system evolve over time. Thus, despite the risks and inherent dangers
involved, importing metaphors, concepts and methodologies from other disciplinary
i elds remains one of the major sources of theoretical and empirical innovation, not only
providing new perspectives but also in the process stimulating conceptual advance and
creating new intellectual contact points and avenues for cross-disciplinary cooperation.
Such potential benei ts are undoubtedly a major factor stimulating evolutionary
approaches to economic geography. However, it is not simply a case of applying such
concepts and their theoretical and methodological frameworks to economic geography,
though this in itself is a challenging enough task. For an evolutionary economic geogra-
phy cannot simply be derivative in its ambitions. The goal is twofold: not only to utilise
the concepts and ideas from evolutionary economics (and evolutionary thinking more
broadly) to help interpret and explain how the economic landscape changes over histori-
cal time, but also to reveal how situating the economy in space adds to our understand-
ing of the processes that drive economic evolution, that is to say, to demonstrate how
geography matters in determining the nature and trajectory of evolution of the economic
system
. The contributions to this topic are all motivated by this dual ambition.
What then are the aims, the distinguishing features, of an evolutionary approach to
economic geography? Put broadly, we can say that the basic concern of evolutionary
economic geography is with
the processes by which the economic landscape - the spatial
organisation of economic production, circulation, exchange, distribution and consumption -
