A Comparison Of Researching Traditions Concerning Economic Geography

Economic geography is concerned with the study of economic regional system in terms of the formation process, structural features, development orientation and optimal control. As an interdisciplinary study across geography and economics as well as a marginal discipline bordering nature, economy and technique, economic geography study, being regional and integrated by nature, has come into three distinctive conventions including regional study, human-geography relation study as well as location and spatial analysis.The international study of economic geography has been reoriented to multiple perspectives such as "institutional turn", "culture turn", "evolution turn", "relationship turn","measurement turn", "ecology turn" study and so on, thus channeling the study into the ecological and humanistic areas. However, inappropriate humanistic inclination will reduce the study of economic geography to humanistic geography. Similarly, being "geography turn", the mainstream Western economics is invading the conventional geography study area with its newly-emerged spatial analysis tendency while inheriting the economic tradition of the model balance analysis by using the dynamic analysis of spatial clustering and regional growth clustering. While learning the theories and methods of regional economics encompassing new economic geography study, the economic geographers overemphasize the mathematical model analysis and try to move the development of economic geography onto a formal and scientific way, thus almost mixing the study of economics with economic geography.As a branch of geography study which is clearly-targeted, strongly-integrated and capable of learning, economic geography differs from both humanistic geography and regional economics. Therefore, economic geography study is to be developed with inappropriate inclination toward neither "humanistic" nor "economic" aspects.In view of the above and based on a discussion of both the geography tradition of the economic geography studies and the spatial analysis tradition of economics, the paper presents a comparative study of the two disciplines of economic geography and regional economics in terms of their historical backgrounds, natures, thinking methods, theory systems, research objects as well as research methods, which finally suggests that the two disciplines are equally advantageous and irreplaceable. Then the paper goes on to summarize the development course of economic geography in China, analyze the six predicaments facing us, and finally put forward development strategies for China's economic geography.The paper consists of seven parts including the preface, five chapters and the conclusion.The preface has a preliminary discussion of economic geography from its status quo, development crisis, crisis thinking and development approach. The part also includes an introduction of the logical structure, research content, research method and approach of the paper.Chapter One first defines "geography" as a discipline and summarizes its geographical conventions encompassing regional study, human-geography relation study as well as location and spatial analysis. The chapter then explores the performance of each convention in a chronological order, namely, in ancient times, modern times and contemporary age. Finally, the chapter discusses in details the six "turn" and five new areas of the mainstream economic geography.Chapter Two systematically follows the historical development course of spatial analysis of the mainstream western economics in the order of pre-classicist, classicist, modern and contemporary era, and then focuses on the theory origin, major models and present research progress of new economic geography study.Chapter Three aims at exploring the nature of the discipline. It first sorts out that the difference between economic geography studies with its geography convention and economics with its spatial analysis convention makes the difference between the two disciplines of economic geography and regional economics. Then the chapter illustrates the three foundations for the two disciplines to coexist and studies their difference from six aspects.Chapter Four discusses the method to divide the history of economic geography in China, explores the production and development of economic thinking along the ancient, modern and contemporary times, and finally comments on the achievement in each phase.Chapter Five illustrates the six problems facing the development of China's economic geography, namely weak philosophical foundation, disorder in branch and bound system, insufficient theory generalization and creation, insufficient research of methodology, obvious disparity with western countries in research orientation and high education crisis of the discipline. Then the chapter puts forward five possible ideas for the development of China's economic geography and specific development countermeasures corresponding to the six problems.The conclusion generalizes the paper and points out its contributions and limitations.