ABSTRACT
Rather than engage the entire field of economic geography over the last quarter century, I would like to reflect on my own pathway through the discipline. I hope this won’t be seen as an indulgence, but as a way of putting flesh and blood on an epoch. But how to track a career? We all construct and edit continuously the narrative of our lives, seeking some semblance of order and justification for our motley existence. My course has zigzagged through several areas that, while not exactly a random walk, nonetheless presents some difficulties in drawing a neat trajectory line. The work of a life may not be wholly coherent, but still manifests certain principles of being a geographer and social scientist. An evident difficulty is that I am not simply an economic geographer. Still, there has been a long-standing commitment to political economy that has shaped everything along the way.
