capitalist markets. This vision of a harmonious
self-regulating capitalist economy, grounded in
self-interested practices of economy, and gov-
erned by rules of perfect competition, came
to dominate social thought.
After 1945, as the formal end ofcolonial-
ismcreated a world largely divided up into
autonomous nation-states, each with
acknowledgedsovereigntyover their econ-
omies (controllingborders, managing eco-
nomic activities within the border), the idea
of the national economy became common-
place. Indeed, much of the statistical know-
ledge produced about the economic aspects
of society appears in reams of national statis-
tics, produced using universally agreed prac-
tices of measurement (such as the Gross
National Product; grounded in mainstream
Anglophone economic theory), and collected
and published by supra-national agencies.
Timothy Mitchell (2002d) dates ‘the making
of the economy’ to thispost-colonialera;
this is certainly when the discourse globalized.
economic geographyhas at times aligned
itself with such arguments – for example, dur-
ing the 1960s – but even then serious reserva-
tions were expressed about the adequacy of
this discourse. Earlier eras ofcommercial
geographyandregional geographycreated
an awareness of different, non-capitalist and
non-individualist practices of economy in dif-
ferent places, that are perfectly adequate to the
social and biophysical context in which they
operate. For example, slash and burn and
shifting cultivation remain highly func-
tional for subsistence-based societies in deli-
cate ecological environments (seesubsistence
agriculture), now being destroyed by the
clear-cutting of forest ecosystems to undertake
cash-crop monoculture.
spatial scienceoffered a nascent critique of
capitalism’s self-sufficiency and social optim-
ality, even under the extreme assumptions pre-
supposed by neo-classical economics. It was
shown that while neo-classical theory works
well on the head of a pin, it breaks down in
the real world of a geographically extensive
space economy. Perfect competition turns
into monopolistic competition, the level play-
ing field disappears and prices no longer
approximate marginal utilities.
Marxian political economy, gaining popu-
larity in economic geography during the
1970s and 1980s, offered much deeper criti-
cisms: thatcapitalismentails exploitation of
labour andnature, generates social and polit-
ical conflict anduneven development, and is
incapable of resolving these problems
internally (seemarxism). The space economy
poses difficulties and complexities for Marxist
theory too, but these only exacerbate capital-
ism’s internal contradictions. Capitalism thus
cannotbe disembedded from its non-economic
context, as it depends on state intervention,
biophysical processes with their own logic, social
and legal norms, andcivil societyfor its own
reproduction (see also cultural ecology).
post-structuralism has pushed economic
geography away from analyses that begin with
even political economic processes, towards a
view in which these are co-implicated with
cultural, gendered and biophysical processes,
and non-capitalist economic practices.
Geographical economy is inseparable from
and constituted through societal and biophys-
ical processes, and is variegated rather than
simply capitalist. There is no single economy
applicable to all places, with advanced capit-
alism constituting a ubiquitous best practice
for all, but room for geographically differenti-
ated possibilities and imaginaries. esSuggested reading
Dumont (1977); Gibson-Graham (1996);
Hirschman (1977); Sheppard and Barnes (2000).ecosystem The concept of the ecosystem
was proposed by the British ecologist A.G.
Tansley in 1935, to describe the interaction
of living things and their non-living surround-
ings, with which they interact. Tansley’s paper
attacked the notion that the plant community
was an ‘organic unity’, and vegetation succes-
sion a process of development to a ‘climax’
state (Sheail, 1987). Tansley suggested that
climate, soils, plants andanimalsinteracted
together as parts of asystem, nested within a
host of other physical systems (Sheail, 1995).
The ecosystem concept allowed a reduc-
tionist approach to the analysis of forests,
fields,wetlandsand other environments in
terms of flows of energy and matter. It allowed
metaphors from engineering, cybernetics and
control theory to be applied to such environ-
ments, such as system, feedback, equilibrium,
balance and control. Ecosystems are not
dimensionally defined: they can be defined at
anyscalefrom pond, to ocean or biosphere.
Classic studies, such as those of Odum on
the energetics of Silver Springs in Florida
(in 1956), involved small naturally bounded
systems. Much of the claim ofecologyas an
experimentalsciencecan be traced back to
the power of the ecosystem approach.
The ecosystem, and the wider science of
ecology, provided a framework for the analysisGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_E Final Proof page 185 1.4.2009 3:17pmECOSYSTEM