The Dictionary of Human Geography

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between culture and economy, but still con-

tinue to treat the two domains as separate

entities, arguing that logics governing the two

should not be conflated (Ray and Sayer,

1997). Indeed, many writers sympathetic

to these approaches insist on the continued

primacy ofpolitical economyover cultural

economy.

More recently, however, a second gener-

ation of cultural economy theorization has

emerged, one that sees only a singular plane

holding together hybrid inputs including

abstract rules, historical legacies, symbolic

and discursive narratives, social and cultural

habits, material arrangements, emotions and

aspirations (Callon, 1999; Du Gay and Pryke,

1999; Hetherington and Law, 1999). Still

struggling for an exact vocabulary and dis-

persed across the social sciences, this

approach sees economy as a cultural act and

culture as an economic act, so that meeting

material needs and making a profit or earning

a living can be seen as part and parcel of

seeking symbolic satisfaction, pleasure and

power. Accordingly, in explaining the eco-

nomics of production, for example, corporate

values, workplace cultures, conventions of

welfare and rituals of creativity can be shown

to shape competitive potential, along with

various rules of technological, organizational

and market ordering. Similarly, in the eco-

nomics ofmarkets, rules of value based on

price and other forms of rating can be shown

to weave in with consumer tastes, the seduc-

tions of organized spectacle and the market

power of some economic actors.

This variant of the cultural economy

approach is marked by a number of concep-

tual orientations with long histories in classical

economic thought (for a synthesis, see Amin

and Thrift, 2004). One concerns the absolute

centrality of passions in the economy, from the

libidinal energies and spectacle of consump-

tion and possession that drive ‘fast capitalism’,

through to the love of objects that now so

powers wants and needs. A second orienta-

tion, which can be traced back to Adam

Smith’s emphasis on the role of empathy in

making the market economy work, highlights

the pivotal significance of moral values, as

manifest in the market ethic itself and in the

social conventions that justify particular mores

of economic behaviour (hedonism, individual-

ism, fast food as bad/good food, trade versus

aid). Third, there is new work on the econom-

ics of knowledge that recognizes the centrality

of creativity based on unconscious neural

mobilizations, material cultures and

learning-by-doing in small communities of

practice. A fourth orientation is to explain

generalized trust in ways that supersede the

emphasis on interpersonal dynamics found in

earlier variants of cultural economy. For

example, Seabright (2004) has argued that

the option of intimacy among strangers in the

market economy, in which multitudes of eco-

nomic actors who do not know each other

constantly jostle, is lubricated by many cul-

tural institutions that have evolved over time,

including the facility of laughter. A fifth orien-

tation is to explain economicpowerless as a

force possessed or wielded by some actors and

institutions than as a diffuse and subtle form of

cultural enrolment, scripted in the standards,

rules and accounting measures that daily

produce disciplined subjects and regulate

economic life, or through particular narratives

of what counts as significant in business

journals, advertising scripts and stories of cor-

porate prowess. Finally, the cultural-economy

approach, following a long lineage of projec-

tion from particular situations (e.g. Marx’s

projections on capitalist futures based on the

British experience) explores the integrative

work done by readings of the economy (e.g.

Daniel Bell on the service economy or Manuel

Castells on the information economy).

This new body of thought, in summary,

rethinks the economy as a culturally infused

entity, based on the potentialities of passion,

moral sentiments, soft knowledge, instituted

trust, symptoms of normality and discursive

formsofpower.Theseareconsideredtodrive

economic life at all levels and manifestations.aa

Suggested reading

Amin and Thrift (2007).

cultural geography One of the most rapidly

growing and energeticsub-fields in Anglophone

geographyover the past 20 years. Many have

written of a cultural turn in geography

paralleling those in other social sciences.

Often the subject of controversy over its

approaches, claims and methods cultural

geography has seen the reinvigoration of some

topics and the development of whole new

topics of geographic enquiry. Indeed, it may

be that we can identify a recent ‘culturaliza-

tion’ of many branches of geography, rather

than simply a field of ‘cultural geography’ –

thus, it is not always clear if the field is defined

bycultureas the content of study, and what

its limits might be, or the approach used.

There is also a long history of the study of

the geography of cultures that has had an

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CULTURAL GEOGRAPHY