Introduction: Explanation, critique and critics of geoeconomics

Felix Mallin, James D Sidaway, Han Cheng and Chih Yuan Woon
Additional contact information
Felix Mallin: Department of Geosciences, University of Fribourg, Fribourg, Switzerland
James D Sidaway: Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Han Cheng: Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore, Singapore
Chih Yuan Woon: Department of Geography, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Environment and Planning A, 2025, vol. 57, issue 1, 93-98

Abstract: Geoeconomics, strategist Edward Luttwak affirmed in 1990, represented the waning of a geopolitical era and the ascent of a ‘logic of conflict with the methods of commerce’. In the decades since, numerous variations on his argument have enjoyed wide resonance. Geoeconomics became a term of reference for power contests from the realms of commercial warfare and infrastructure expansionism to the sculpting of new military and economic blocs. Nonetheless, ahistorical references to geoeconomics have proliferated at the expense of critical attention to past conjunctures when geoeconomics circulated. As a result, the ideological framings and impacts of the discourse of geoeconomics and its wider relationship to geopolitics have been neglected. In this introduction, we set the backdrop to and provide a brief overview of the essays that follow. Collectively and from different vantage points, these essays discuss the analytical purchase and some limitations of advancing ‘critical geoeconomics’. Contributions combine timely reassessments of contemporary and past iterations of geoeconomics and explore the potential for positing an anti-geoeconomics in light of resurrected nationalist-imperialist phantoms.

Keywords: Geostrategy; hegemony; deglobalisation; geopolitics; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0308518X241280007 (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:sae:envira:v:57:y:2025:i:1:p:93-98

DOI: 10.1177/0308518X241280007

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Environment and Planning A
Bibliographic data for series maintained by SAGE Publications ().