ABSTRACT
Any examination of the professional geographical literature of recent years reveals an apparent and remarkable lack of interest among geographers in the study of the phenomenon of ‘economic development’ (Ginsburg, 1960, p. ix; Mountjoy, 1963, p. 13; Steel, 1964, p. 13; Lacoste, 1962, p. 248). For example, of the 251 major articles (excluding editorials and reviews) published between 1955 and 1964 inclusive in what is probably the most relevant professional geographical journal, Economic Geography, only ten were explicitly concerned in whole or part with problems of economic development. With the more general journal of the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, the percentage falls still further, to 2.5 per cent (i.e. six articles out of 242). This state of affairs is remarkable in view both of traditional geographical concern with countries now categorized as ‘underdeveloped’, and of the enormous surge of interest in problems of economic development which has occurred in other, often fairly closely allied, disciplines (e.g. history, sociology, politics and economics) since the Second World War (Goldsmith, 1959, p. 25; Meier and Baldwin, 1957, p. 1; Pen, 1965, p. 190; Gerschenkron, 1962, pp. 5–6; Meynaud, 1963, pp. 9–10).
