Development and debates in the theoretical construction of economic geography
西方经济地理学理论建构的发展与论争

With a historical and realistic perspective this paper investigates and summarizes the changing nature and characteristics of economic geography as a sub-discipline in geography in terms of theoretical construction. For economic geographers, location, space and place of economic activities are the fundamental objects of enquiry and also the basic points of departure for the understanding of social-economic activities. The theoretical construction in economic geographies has always been centered on how to define location, space and place, and how to conceptualize their relationships with the economy, politics, society, nature and the environment, especially the agent-structure tensions inherent in those relationships. Two sets of factors, technology, institutes and culture, as well as relations, scale and regulation, are particularly important intermediates for economic geographers to develop theories and approaches, and are also the core subjects of heated debates on the recent institutional, cultural, relational and scalar turns in economic geography. Today the field of economic geography has moved beyond the impact of neoclassical eco- nomics, and has become more diversified and multifaceted. The development in Western economic geography has important implications for the theoretical construction of economic geography in China, which should undertake a triple transition of diversification, internationalization and theorization.