Dialogues in Human Geography, Volume 9, Issue 3, Page 256-261, November 2019.
This response engages Yeung’s arguments about the value of critical realism (CR) in economic geography (EG), and how they can be further strengthened by better theorizing mechanism and process in relation to mid-level concepts like neoliberalization and path dependence. While there is much to value in the attention Yeung pays to how economic geographers conceptualize and study relational socio-spatial change, I argue that the lack of attention to how mid-level concepts relate to macro-level structures hampers the goal of more robust theorizing. Moreover, the association of CR with the reassertion of a disciplinary ‘core’ suggests a normative project that ignores or marginalizes diverse critical approaches in EG, which are framed as a sign of weaknesses rather than disciplinary strength.