Rethinking the Conceptual Foundations of Evolutionary Economic Geography: Introduction to a Debate

摘要

As the recently published Handbook of Evolutionary Economic Geography (Boschma and Martin, 2010) attests, the whole field of evolutionary economic geography is witnessing exciting times of renewal and rethinking of its conceptual foundations. Set against this broader picture of pervasive transformation, the narrower focus of this symposium is on the recent rethinking of regional path dependence proposed by one key contributor to the field, Cambridge economic geographer Ron Martin. His Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography, 'Rethinking Regional Path Dependence: Beyond Lock-in to Evolution', delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Association of American Geographers in Las Vegas (2009) has recently been published in Economic Geography (Martin, 2010) and is seen by many as a turning point in the history of evolutionary economic geography.