A place to start?

Abstract

How do economic geographers determine where to begin their research projects, where to locate and delimit their case studies, where and how to “cut in” to problems? In the absence of self-evident or pregiven answers to these questions, the problem-cum-choice of where and how to start is inescapably tangled up with issues of preliminary conceptualization and indeed theorization, since cases are not so much found as made, being in various ways coproduced with different “theory-method packages.” There is (and can be) no singular or universal answer to these questions. Instead, this brief intervention outlines one rationale for getting “started,” founded as such rationales should be with reference a particular approach or mode of theorization. The approach here centers on the problematic of recombinant development, on the role of extended case-study designs, and on the still sparsely realized potential of conjunctural modes of analysis.