ABSTRACT
The challenge for development geography as a profession is in view to apply the new knowledge generated about the First World growth processes for use in the Second and Third World. This chapter examines two critical perspectives in human geography – eurocentrism and economism – that help define and delimit the sub-disciplines of economic geography and development studies. It demonstrates the implications of the division through an analysis of institutional and social capital theories that, in turn, permeate policy discourses. The chapter shows how the uncritical transfer of ideas from 'core' to 'periphery' reflects deeper ideological movements under the current regime of reformist neo-liberalism. It focuses on questions of embeddedness and clustering which are generally thought to enhance firm and place competitiveness. In particular, that embeddedness and inter-firm collaboration can be a means of coping with the intense economic strains of poverty rather than a more proactive strategy of regional competitiveness.
