Theoretical Discussions and Some Research Tasks and Applied Problems in Economic Geography

Two economic geographers, commenting on Anuchin's latest book on the theory of geography, urge a halt to the fruitless debate over a “unified geography” and call for a more practical orientation of geographic research. Dwelling on a wide range of issues, from geography education to the content of geography journals, the authors hold that the man-nature relationship is no longer adequate as a conceptual framework for geography and that economic geography, in particular, must take into account political and social processes that fall within the province of political science and economics. A gap is found to have developed between political science, on the one hand, and economic geography, on the other, and the authors hold that such a gap might be filled by a discipline concerned with the spatial organization of economic processes. A legitimate role is seen here for a regional economics, or choreconomics. In the authors' view, geography would gain not only from a more pronounced economics-oriented economic geography, but also from a more practically oriented physical geography.