Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—Economic Geography, Manufacturing, and Ethical Action in the Anthropocene

Abstract

In a world beset by the problems of climate change and growing socioeconomic inequality, industrial manufacturing has been implicated as a key driver. In this article we take seriously Roepke’s call for geographic research to intervene in obvious problems and ask can manufacturing contribute to different pathways forward? We reflect on how studies have shifted from positioning manufacturing as a matter of fact (with an emphasis on exposing the exploitative operations of capitalist industrial restructuring) to a matter of concern (especially in advanced economies experiencing the apparent loss of manufacturing). Our intervention is to position manufacturing for the Anthropocene as a matter of care. To do this we pull together feminist insights into care as an embodied entanglement of ethical doings and material transformation, and applied insights into the building of just sustainabilities in place. This thinking frames our discussion of four diverse manufacturing enterprises in Australia (two capitalist firms, a cooperative, and a social enterprise). We make the case for economic geography to attend to ethical economic actions that make other worlds possible.