'By our metaphors you shall know us': The 'fix' of geographical political economy. (December 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Bok, Rachel
• Is Part Of: Progress in human geography. Volume 43:Number 6(2019)
• Page Start: 1087
• Page End: 1108
• Publication Date: 2019-12
• Subjects: capitalism -- economic geography -- fix -- geographical political economy -- geography -- metaphor -- spatial fix; Human geography -- Periodicals; 304.2
• DOI: 10.1177/0309132518804352
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0309-1325

Abstract

This paper traces the transformative travels of the metaphor of the 'fix' across the unbounded terrain of geographical political economy. It argues for taking the fix seriously as a root metaphor of the field, a signifier of its history and theory-cultures. Critically excavating the entwined genealogies of the metaphor and the field, it illuminates several historically successive and thematic moments of 'fix thinking', including: the spatial fix (1980s); institutional and spatio-temporal fixes of regulationist-theoretical approaches (1990s); and the scalar fix of state rescaling theory (2000s). It reviews these stages and their broader intellectual and political implications for critical geographical scholarship.