The Politics of Local Economic Development and Geography

THE POLITICS OF LOCAL ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT In human geography, the interest in the politics of local economic development and the emergence of a literature on the topic date from approximately the early to mid-‘eighties. This was initially an American interest but it was then taken up in Britain. There have been studies in countries other than the United States and the United Kingdom and there is a continuing tension between particularity and claims of a more universal character. Work in this area has certainly contributed to widening horizons in economic and political geography but has yet to register adequately some of the more recent and influential trends in human geography as a whole. These would include both political ecology and what has come to be known as ‘the cultural turn.’ Most of the research into the politics of local economic development has been largely from a standpoint in political economy, and that understood in terms of its more left-leaning variants.