ABSTRACT
Introduction When David Keeble surveyed the literature on economic development in the mid-1960s he had little positive to report on the contributions of geography and geographers. Writing in Models in geography, Keeble complained of an ‘apparent and remarkable lack of interest among geographers in the study of the phenomenon of “economic development”’ (Keeble 1967, p. 243). Of the 251 major articles published between 1955 and 1964 inclusive in Economic Geography, ‘only ten were concerned in whole or part with problems of economic development’ (1967, p. 243). And writing in the Annals of the Association of American Geographers, ‘the percentage falls still further, to 2.5 per cent (or six articles out of 242)’ (quoted in Keeble 1967, p. 243). Worst still, these few contributions had little of interest to say. Only 3 of the 16 papers adopted a nomothetic approach to development; the rest displayed a tiresome concern for the local and the unique. The upshot is that Keeble’s survey is ‘perforce concerned primarily with the work of economists who, unfettered by an idiographic tradition, have at last moved to fill the wide intellectual void left open by geographers’ (1967, p. 246).
