ABSTRACT
This chapter is concerned with the different theorizations of power in play within economic geography and, more explicitly, with the difference that space makes to our understanding of power relations. Power has long been central to economic concerns within geography, although with the growing interest in the work of Foucault, Lefebvre and others it has increasingly come to the fore. More often than not, however, it is under-theorized, with little attention paid either to the different modes of power – domination is different from authority, which is different from coercion, which is different from seduction, and so forth – or the different conceptions of power – as a capacity or as a practice, for example. It is not uncommon in accounts, for instance, to find domination acting as a kind of shorthand for all kinds of power relations, or for those very same power relations to appear as resources one moment only to dissolve into practices or even discourses at the next. Equally important, for our purposes, geographers have rarely thought through sufficiently what it is about space, or more precisely about spatiality, which adds something to our understanding of how power ‘works’ – for example, in the ways that distance affects its reach or capability, or how the ‘stretching’ of power relationships over space often involves a combination of different modes of power rather than an endless play of domination.
