Here, there, everywhere

Abstract

The dominant discourses of Anglo-American economic geography universalised certain particulars in ways that rendered as archetypal some things that were perhaps better treated as marginal, or at least locally specific. Simultaneously, those dominant discourses rendered as marginal, unimportant or absent, things that are central to economic geographies in a range of places. This commentary reflects on key elements of the foundations for a distinctive Antipodean contribution to wider debates in human geography and the value of such debate to other marginalised discourses in the discipline.

Defending Antipodean economic geography

“…While doubts may have arisen by some commentators about our geographical focus, we still feel the ambiguity of the Antipodes position in terms of its neither here nor there position is a useful empirical vehicle to further nuance such debates. Indeed, as is demonstrated in Howitt's (2013) commentary, our focus on the Antipodes has arguably 'valorised' and brought to light some very real and long-standing issues that Antipodean geographers have had to grapple with by virtue of their geographical position. But of course our contribution does not seek to be definitive nor complete and both Howitt (2013) and Dombroski (2013) are right to point out to some notable absences in our writings including the lack of references made to indigenous economic geographical knowledges and post-carbon economic geographies in an anthropogenic era.…”