Abstract deadline: 30 September 2025
Manuscript deadline: 31 March 2026
Theorizing Back for Evolutionary Economic Geography?
After its launch by Boschma and Frenken (2006), and drawing from generalized Darwinism, path dependence and complexity theory, an increasing number of economic geographers adopted evolutionary economic geography (EEG) as their main paradigm and theoretical framework (Kogler et al., 2023). This group of largely norther European scholars carried out ample empirical research refining and expanding its key concepts, such as path dependence, path creation, related variety, unrelated variety, regional diversification and more. Today, it is not only the most popular paradigm in economic geography, but has also increasingly been combined with other paradigms and conceptual/theoretical perspectives and areas of research within economic geography (Breul et al., 2021; Chu et al., 2024; Mlilo et al., 2024), such as tourism geography, institutional geography, transition studies, global production networks, and regional innovation systems. Like with other paradigms, EEG has broadened over time (Kogler et al., 2023; Chu et al., 2025), which can lead to either extension (positive, natural) or stretching (negative, fuzzy, weakening core). These processes take place both concerning the theories, concepts and methodologies, the empirical topics, but also geographically, that is paradigms diffuse over time.
Early EEG theorists were based in the Netherlands and the UK; later authors based in Scandinavia, as well as in other European countries started to contribute to the paradigm’s development (Chu et al., 2025). Recently, scholars based in countries such as China (He and Zhu, 2019), Australia (Beer et al., 2023; Searle et al., 2018), Brazil (Freitas et al., 2024; Mascarini et al., 2023) and countries in Africa (Mlilo et al., 2024), started to contribute, although still to a relatively limited extent. In that sense, EEG is a typical example of theoretical development in economic geography remaining heavily skewed toward Western perspectives, as has been emphasized by Yeung (2025), Hassink et al. (2019) and Zhu and He (2022). A recent special issue on EEG published in the Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society has been prominently silent on EEG beyond the Western context (Kogler et al., 2023), and also in the introductory paper, Kogler et al. (2023) did not see it as an explicit aim for future EEG work. We therefore see a considerable gap that in our view needs to be filled with the help of this special issue in Area, Development and Policy, that is to specifically engage with more diverse perspectives and applications of EEG, to ultimately contribute to the ever more diverse and fragmented development outcomes and change process we experience globally.
Despite growing contributions that aim to provide more diverse “processes of inclusive regional path development in the South” (Galbraith et al., 2025, 13; Mlilo et al., 2024), mainstream EEG theories and methods still largely draw on empirical insights from European and North American contexts, which results in certain geographical limitations and theoretical biases. In this sense, EEG exemplifies what Slater (2004, 195) terms a case for “theorizing back”—a process by which research grounded in the context of the Global South and developing and emerging economies challenges and reconfigures dominant Anglo-American frameworks. Slater emphasizes that the act of “worlding”—the epistemological construction of the world—is deeply shaped by Western-centric logics (Slater, 1992, 319), which is still relevant within today’s economic geography. Adding more empirical studies from the Global South and developing and emerging economies allows for “theorizing back,” thereby revealing the historical specificity and limits of Western universalism and opening pathways for self-reflexive transformation within Western academic traditions. Building on Slater’s concerns, Yeung (2023, 317) argues for “theorizing back” as “either making original theory that emanates from research on sites outside Anglo-American countries or remaking key economic-geographic concepts”, where the discipline has learned a lot from South East Asian conceptualization (Yeung, 2023).
Whether from Slater’s call for “learning from the South” (Slater, 2004, 197) or Yeung’s emphasis on “new insights from East Asia” (Yeung, 2023, 317), we encourage contributions from the Global South and developing and emerging economies to contribute to widening the scope of what EEG can contribute as well as carve out its boundaries. We invite contributions that address, but are not limited to:
- Theorization in EEG in an inductive way from more diverse, rural, or Southern contexts;
- Identifying mechanisms of path dependence, new path creation and inter-path relations in regions in the Global South and developing and emerging economies;
- The role of the state in economic evolution: top-down path creation in centralized governance systems and unstable democracies;
- The role of informal institutions, local knowledge and agency, institutional embeddedness and institutional co-evolution;
- Emergence and upgrading paths of Southern firms in global and regional value chains and their institutional conditions;
- Understanding multi-scalar relations and processes of path lock-in/unlocking;
- Decentering and decolonizing EEG theoretical frameworks and methodologies;
- Cross-paradigm dialogues between EEG and development studies/geographical political economy.
References
Boschma, R. A., & Frenken, K. (2006). Why is economic geography not an evolutionary science? Towards an evolutionary economic geography. Journal of Economic Geography, 6(3), 273-302.
Beer, A., Barnes, T., & Horne, S. (2023). Place-based industrial strategy and economic trajectory: Advancing agency-based approaches. Regional Studies, 57(6), 984-997.
Breul, M.; Hulke, C.; Kalvelage, L. (2021). Path Formation and Reformation: Studying the Variegated Consequences of Path Creation for Regional Development. Economic Geography, 97(3), 213–234.
Chu, H., Hassink, R., & Yılmaz, Ş. (2024). Fragmented or engaged pluralism in economic geography? Progress in Human Geography, 48(3), 247-274.
Chu, H., Dai, X., & Hassink, R. (2025). Does Paradigm Stretching Weaken Evolutionary Economic Geography? Presentation at RSA Annual Conference, Porto, May, 2025.
Freitas, E., Britto, G., & Amaral, P. (2024). Related industries, economic complexity, and regional diversification: An application for Brazilian microregions. Papers in Regional Science, 103(1), 100011.
Galbraith, E., Hulke, C., & Revilla Diez, J. (2025). Constrained opportunities for path development: how misaligned agencies and structures shape Southern regional value chains. Regional Studies, 1–15.
Hassink, R., Gong, H., & Marques, P. (2019). Moving beyond Anglo-American economic geography. International Journal of Urban Sciences, 23(2), 149-169.
He, C., & Zhu, S. (2019). Evolutionary Economic Geography in China. Cham: Springer.
Kogler, D. F., Evenhuis, E., Giuliani, E., Martin, R., Uyarra, E., & Boschma, R. (2023). Re-imagining evolutionary economic geography. Cambridge Journal of Regions, Economy and Society, 16(3), 373-390.
Mascarini, S., Garcia, R., dos Santos, E. G., Costa, A. R., & Araujo, V. (2023). Regional heterogeneity and the effects of the related and unrelated varieties on innovation. Regional Science Policy & Practice, 15(9), 2026-2046.
Mlilo, M., Bollig, M., & Revilla Diez, J. (2024). Nation-state influence on tourism path creation in Southern Africa. Regional Studies, 59(1).
Searle, G., Sigler, T., & Martinus, K. (2018). Firm evolution and cluster specialization: A social network analysis of resource industry change in two Australian cities. Regional studies, regional science, 5(1), 369-387.
Slater, D. (1992). On the Borders of Social Theory: Learning from other Regions. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 10(3), 307–327. https://doi.org/10.1068/d100307
Slater, D. (1993). The Geopolitical Imagination and the Enframing of Development Theory. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 18(4), 419. https://doi.org/10.2307/622559
Slater, D. (2004). Geopolitics and the Post-colonial. Oxford: Blackwell.
Yeung, H. W.-C. (2023). Theory and explanation in geography. John Wiley & Sons.
Yeung, H. W. C. (2025). Decentering Anglo-American geography: Theory development and ‘theorizing back’ from an Asian perspective. Asian Geographer 42.
Zhu, S., & He, C. (2022). What can evolutionary economic geography learn from global value chain and global production network research on developing and emerging economies? Area Development and Policy, 7(2), 162-176.
Submission Instructions
Abstracts of around 350 words should be sent by email to Professor Robert Hassink, hassink@geographie.uni-kiel.de, by 30 September 2025. The abstracts should identify the topic, research question and research methodology.
The submission deadline for full papers is 31 March 2026. All papers will go through the journal’s peer-review process.
Acceptance of the abstract does not imply acceptance of the paper.