ABSTRACT
Fundamentally, at the heart of every economy in the world is some form of production. The task for the student of economic geography lies in unravelling the processes and forces that produce the spatial forms that production creates. Ultimately, it is a very simple process that involves the articulation of land, labour and raw materials but as production develops, increasing complexity is introduced. This comes with the development of a division of labour that is rapidly transformed into a spatial division of labour whereby the production process is constantly subdivided into smaller activities that are distributed geographically as a complex networked mosaic of production functions that span the globe. Factories, warehouses, shops and offices are distributed across geographical space, but not randomly. They are structured by loose connections of people co-operating together in firms, or within sectors, or as loose networks trying to increase the value of the capital employed in the production process. In more simple terms, each individual is trying to generate enough money to support his/her lifestyle ambitions. The task of unravelling the working of capitalist industrial production is formidable because it operates as a complex web of formal and informal relationships that overlap, are constantly being reformed, are interconnected in many unknown ways, and that stretch across physical, political and cultural boundaries. This complexity is constantly in flux as production processes and their geography are also constantly changing, so ongoing change or evolution, rather than stability, is the norm.
