Theory and Explanation in Geography: An Author-Meets-Readers Session

Discussants: 

• Professor Céline Rozenblat
• Professor Christian Kull
• Dr Arthur Oldra

Published by Wiley in its RGS-IBG Book Series in September 2023, Theory and Explanation in Geography is one of the few provocative monographs in recent decades that engages deeply with epistemological debates on theory and method in Geography. This in-person event with the author invites readers and interested participants to examine critically the book’s main tenets and prospects for reflexive theory development as the key to the future of the discipline. The session provides an opportunity for the author to respond to comments and for the audience to engage in further discussions. 

After a brief introduction of the book by the author, the interactive discussion can potentially address wide-ranging issues, such as epistemology, styles and practices of theorizing in different critical approaches and “isms”, relational thought, processual thinking, mid-range explanatory theories, causal mechanism-based approach to theory and explanation, situated knowledges, “theorizing back”, and so on. The discussion will be relevant for colleagues and students in social and cultural geography, feminist and postcolonial geographies, critical geopolitics, environmental studies, urban geography, economic geography, and other topical interests within the geographical discipline and beyond.

Please click here to download the e-book from BCUL.

Henry Wai-chung Yeung is a leading academic expert in global production networks and the global economy. He is currently Distinguished Professor and Professor of Economic Geography at the Department of Geography, National University of Singapore. In January 2025, he will take up the Choh-Ming Li Professorship at the Department of Geography and Resource Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Manchester in 1995 under the supervision of Peter Dicken, who is renowned for his seminal book Global Shift: Mapping the Changing Contours of the World Economy (7 editions).

His research interests cover broadly theories and the geography of transnational corporations, East Asian firms, and developmental states. His most recent books are Theory and Explanation in Geography (2023), Interconnected Worlds: Global Electronics and Production Networks in East Asia (2022), Strategic Coupling: East Asian Industrial Transformation in the New Global Economy (2016), and Global Production Networks: Theorizing Economic Development in an Interconnected World (with Neil Coe, 2015). He is the recipient of the 2022 Sir Peter Hall Award for Lifetime Contribution by the Regional Studies Association in the UK, the 2018 Distinguished Scholarship Honors by the American Association of Geographers, and the 2017 Murchison Award by the Royal Geographical Society (with IBG), UK. 

« Trait d’urbain » is a seminar series organised by the « Urban matters » research collective for researchers to present and discuss their work in progress.

Free entry.

Related Event

Henry Wai-chung Yeung will give a public lecture entitled 'Rethinking Semiconductor Global Production Networks: From Geopolitics to Environmental Sustainability' on Thursday 28 November 2024. Please click here for the details.