Making Space for the Economy: Live Performances, Dead Objects, and Economic Geography

Abstract

The article explores the usefulness of the recent literature on markets and performativity for economic geography. The article is divided into two main sections. The first reviews work on performativity, the idea that our statements and representations actively produce reality rather than being mere faithful copies of it. Writers in science studies, in particular, have taken up this notion and used it to understand the making of economic markets. The second argues that economic geography usefully amends the work on performance and economic markets by adding a geographical perspective that plays out in at least four registers: the performance of spatial theory; the geographical performance of economic theory; the spatial performance of market constitution; and the political performance of spatial markets.