Economic and Social Geography

Code:

GEOGR077

Acronym:

GES

Keywords
Classification	Keyword
OFICIAL	Geography

Instance: 2024/2025 - 1S

Active?	Yes
E-learning page:	https://moodle.up.pt/
Responsible unit:	Department of Geography
Course/CS Responsible:	Bachelor in Geography

Cycles of Study/Courses

Acronym	No. of Students	Study Plan	Curricular Years	Credits UCN	Credits ECTS	Contact hours	Total Time
GEOGR	91	study plan	2	-	6	41	162

Teaching language

Suitable for English-speaking students

Objectives

To understand the object and scope of Economic and Social Geography in the framework of Human Geography and the complementarities between the (sub) discipline and other social sciences.

To know the main theoretical paradigms of Economic and Social Geography and the main milestones of its evolution.

To know the main concepts and models of Economic and Social Geography.

To understand the social relevance of Economic and Social Geography.

To Know and understand the institutional or relational approaches of Economic and Social Geography at present.

To know the relevance of Economic and Social Geography in public policies for economic growth and regional development.

Critically analysing regional disparities in Europe or in other contexts.

To acquire skills of geographical analysis and socio-economic characterization of regions, replicable in a variety of possible functions in the labour market, in areas that need to work with spatial information.

To facilitate the internationalisation of students by enhancing their knowledge of the most recent international research in the field of Economic and Social Geography.

To explore intercultural communication skills within the classroom, expecting to have a significant number of international students from diverse backgrounds.

To foster more focus and continuous work in the students.

Learning outcomes and competences

At the end of the semester, students who successfully complete the course unit will be able to

Mobilise the most relevant fundamental knowledge and basic concepts, in Economic and Social Geography, to solve problems and analyse diverse contexts.

Read, understand and critically reproduce studies in the field of Economic and Social Geography, especially those published in international journals of recognized value or international publishers with good scientific reputation.

Discuss current relevant topics in the context of Economic and Social Geography.

Participate actively in working groups, particularly in the empirical component of field work and collection, processing and analysis of primary or secondary information.

Develop elementary assignments of characterization of European regions; know the sources and have autonomy in establishing a consistent plan of work.

Understand, explain and critically analyse European policies related to the social and economic development of the regions.

Contribute to the development of prospective and future scenarios for the peripheral regions of southern Europe.

Write clearly, concisely, accurately and well-structured essays, reports and studies.

To have positive, conscious and informed social behaviours with regard to human rights, migration and social inclusion.

Act in a responsible manner and in alignment with sustainable development goals.

To be more autonomous, entrepreneurial and have their own initiative to organise their work and presentations.

Working method

Presencial

Pre-requirements (prior knowledge) and co-requirements (common knowledge)

Solid knowledge of the foundations of Human Geography and techniques and methods in Geography, acquired in the curricular units of the first year of the Licenciatura. Good knowledge of English language to be able to access the compulsory and other bibliography. Have the ability to communicate in English, for assignments' presentations and discussions with colleagues. Basic knowledge in databases. Be familiar with data collection in EUROSTAT.
Ability to work independently, to be proactive, to work with others, to communicate in an intercultural way and to respect others and their differences. Personal positive competences, awareness of human rights in all their dimensions and of the objectives of sustainable development.

Program

Economic and Social Geography - Syllabus

Geographers are, by and large, a gloomy lot. They never seem to be more at home than  then they are wading about in horrors like injustice, poverty, inequality, sexism, oppression, and imperialism. Allen J. Scott 2012 Book Review. Economic Geography 88(1):97–100


1. Economic and Social Geography in the context of Human Geography. Object and scope. To describe and understand economic and social processes in specific territorial contexts in order to provide inputs for planning and strategies for action by different actors and institutions in cities, communities, regions or at national level, from a relational or institutional perspective.

2. Boundaries, overlaps and complementarities between Economic and Social Geography and other sciences: Economics, Political Economy, Sociology, Regional and Urban Development and other emerging transdisciplinary areas.

3.Concepts, theories and models
3.1 Foundational Concepts. Prodution factors, labour (human capital), capital, rent and technology. Institutions (and State/ Regulation). Distribution, transport costs, accessibility and cirulation. Product, market, consumption. Economic growth and socio-economic development. Social capital or Regional capital. Social filter.

3.2 Theories and Models. Brief historical overview of paradigm shifts in Economic and Social Geography. Early models of location theory, transaction costs and location decision theory; Marxist approaches and their relevance to the present day, Marx's circuit of capital and David Harvey's The Limits to Capital (Harvey, D. 1982); Spatial Divisions of Labor (Massey, D. 1984); industrial districts (Markusen, A. 1998) and other explanatory models of clusters; The holy trinity, Territory, Technology and Organisation (Storper, M. 1997); untraded interdependencies; global value chains; globalisation and regionally differentiated behaviour in business cycles. Product life cycle, business cycle theory and approaches based on technological change and transition, economic growth and regional development.

3.3. The agglomeration (concentration) of economic activity and regional disparities: the overarching question of Economic and Social Geography. Some approaches. Proximity, Clusters and knowledge: local buzz, global pipelines and the process of knowledge creation. (Bathelt et al 2004). "Path dependency", "Lock-in" and "Sheltered Regions" proposals of integrated approaches to understand the regional question. Peripheral regions, the Geography of Discontent and "The revenge of the places that don't matter (and what to do about it)" (Rodriguez-Posé, A. 2018).

4. Geography of Innovation: concept and examples of approaches beyond technologial innovation in corporations. Geography (economy and society) of knowledge and human capital theory. The Geography (Economy) of Talent and migration flows of talents. Critical study of examples in the European Union.

5. Economic Geography of sustenaibility; green transition and digital transition impact on economic structures. Circular Economy.

6. Platform economy or platform capitalism; critical analisis and challenges with traditional approaches.

Mandatory literature

Manfred M. Fischer; Handbook of regional science. ISBN: 978-3-662-60722-0
Aoyama, Y., Murphy, J. T., & Hanson, S. ; Key Concepts in Economic Geography, London, SAGE Publications Ltd., 2011. ISBN: 9781847878953
Coe, M.; Kelly, F.; Yeung, W. (2019); Economic Geography: a contemporary introduction. Wiley. 3rd Edition. Wiley-Blackwell.
Meusburger, Peter; Glückler, Johannes; Meskioui, Martina el (ED.) (2013) ; Knowledge and Economy. Dordecht: Springer.
Madalena Pires da Fonseca; Regional upgrading in southern Europe. ISBN: 978-3-319-49817-1
Neil M. Coe; Economic geography. ISBN: 978-1-119-38955-2
Fonseca, Madalena (2017) ; Southern Europe at a Glance: Regional Disparities and Human Capital. In Fonseca, M & Fratesi, U. Regional Upgrading in Southern Europe. Spatial Disparities and Human Capital. Springer International Publishing. Advances in Spatial Scie
David Harvey; The limits to capital. ISBN: 0-631-13662-2
Bathelt, H., Coe, N. M., Kerr, W. R. and Robert-Nicoud, F. (2017); Economic geography IMPULSES, Journal of Economic Geography, 17: 927–933.
Coe, Neil M., Yeung, Henry Wai-chung (2019); Global production networks: mapping recent conceptual developments, Journal of Economic Geography, Volume 19, Issue 4, July 2019, Pages 775–801, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lbz018
M Storper; Industrialization economic development and the regional question in the third world. ISBN: 0-85086-149-7
Iammarino, Simona; Rodriguez-Pose, Andrés; Storper, Michael (2019) ; Regional inequality in Europe: evidence, theory and policy implications. Journal of Economic Geography, Volume 19, Issue 2, March 2019, Pages 273–298, https://doi.org/10.1093/jeg/lby021
Markusen, Ann (1996); Sticky Places in Slippery Space: A Typology of Industrial Districts. Economic Geography, 72(3), 293-313. doi:10.2307/144402
Massey, Doreen (1984) ; Spatial Division of Labor: Social Structures and the Geography of Production. Ney York: Methuen.
Portugal (2017); Relatório nacional sobre a implementação da Agenda 2030 para o Desenvolvimento Sustentável, por ocasião da Apresentação Nacional Voluntária no Fórum Político de Alto Nível das Nações Unidas. PORTUGAL. Lisboa: Ministério dos Negócios Estrangeiro
Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2011) ; Economists as geographers and geographers as something else: On the changing conception of distance in geography and economics, Journal of Economic Geography, 11: 347–356.
Storper, Michael (1997) ; The Regional World: Territorial Development in a Global Economy. New York: Guilford Press.
Rodríguez-Pose, A. (2018); Threat or opportunity? On the ‘cross-corridor diaspora’ of British economic geographers. Environment and Planning A: Economy and Space 50(7), 1500–1502.
Andrew Sayer; Realism and social science. ISBN: 0-7619-6124-0
Trevor J. Barnes; Economic geography. ISBN: 978-1-118-87432-5
Andrew Sayer; The new social economy. ISBN: 1-55786-280-X
Glukle Johannes; Knowledge for governance. ISBN: 978-3-030-47149-1

Complementary Bibliography

Louça, Francisco; Mortágua, Mariana; Manual de Economia Política, Bertrand Editora, 2021. ISBN: 978-972-25-4119-0
Aghion, Philippe; Antonin, Célina; Bunel, Simon; O Poder da Destruição Criativa. Inovação, crescimento e o futuro do capitalismo, Círculo de Leitores - Temas e Debates, 2021. ISBN: 978-989-644-671-0
Allen J. Scott; On Hollywood. ISBN: 0-691-11683-0
Richard Florida; The^new urban crisis. ISBN: 978-0465079742
Candance Jones; The^Oxford handbook of creative industries. ISBN: 9780199603510
Dan Breznitz; Innovation in real places. ISBN: 978-0-19-750811-4

Teaching methods and learning activities

Student-centred learning with experiments in active methodologies that mobilise student participation. Application of Eric Mazur's Peer Instruction methodology and the so-called flipped classroom.
Classes structured in such a way as to create conditions for students to debate with each other and exchange doubts, interpretations, arguments and rationales, among themselves, testing and developing critical reasoning, accuracy and the ability to communicate in science.
Regular auscultation of the students about their difficulties in fulfilling the targets of the curricular unit.
Taking into account that this is one of the foundation UC of the Licenciatura, students will have to do a considerable amount of readings and therefore they will have to be given very close support in the follow-up of the readings. There will be, however, room for fieldwork, study trips, for contact with reality and businesses, possibly some experiments with questionnaires and practical exercises with secondary statistics in classes (INE and EUROSTAT)

Software

Word
Access
Excel

keywords

Social sciences > Economics > Political economy
Social sciences > Political sciences > Policy studies > Development policy
Social sciences > Geography > Social geography
Social sciences > Geography > Economic geography
Social sciences > Geography > Regional geography
Social sciences > Political sciences > Policy studies > EU policies
Social sciences > Sociology > Socio-economic research
Social sciences > Geography > Human geography

Evaluation Type

Distributed evaluation with final exam

Assessment Components

Designation	Weight (%)
Participação presencial	5,00
Teste	30,00
Trabalho prático ou de projeto	10,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	5,00
Exame	50,00
Total:	100,00

Amount of time allocated to each course unit

Designation	Time (hours)
Estudo autónomo	65,00
Frequência das aulas	41,00
Trabalho escrito	20,00
Apresentação/discussão de um trabalho científico	6,00
Trabalho de campo	10,00
Trabalho de investigação	20,00
Total:	162,00

Eligibility for exams

Attendance of at least of 75 per cent of practical classes is compulsory.

Calculation formula of final grade

The assessment of students on the Economic and Social Geography (GES) course follows the Regulations for the assessment of students on first cycles, second cycles and doctoral courses at FLUP, revised and approved in 2018 and available on SIGARRA.

The assessment of the GES course is a distributed assessment with a final exam.

The formula for calculating the final grade, including the assessment methods, is as follows:

An Exam - Theoreticl part - 50% (10 grades)
A test - Practical part - 30% (6 grades)
Presence and participation in classes with the execution of several assignments and its presentation - 20% (4 grades).

The exam amd the test are of Multiple Choice Questions (MCQ)  to be taken in the classroom, on the FLUP computers, during the exam normal period, on Moodle.

Students who do not obtain a positive mark in the sum of the two components or who, due to the lack of any component, did not pass the exam in the normal period, can take an appeal.

The appeal consists of taking the MCQ exam for students who did not take it in the normal period or improving and an oral exam for the others.

There is no repeat of the MCQ exam. 

Students with special status must take the MCQ test for the practicl part for 50% (10 grades).

In all other aspects of assessment, the regulations in force at FLUP apply.

 

Examinations or Special Assignments

n.a.

Internship work/project

n.a.

Special assessment (TE, DA, ...)

As described above.

Classification improvement

The appeal exam consists of taking the MCQ exam for students who did not take it in the normal period or improving and discussing the practical assignments orally. There is no repeat of the MCQ exam. Students who have not fulfilled the attendance requirements must take an oral exam.

Students with special status must take the MCQ exam and a compulsory oral exam on the practical component of the course. The appeal for TEs consists of taking the PEM exam for students who did not take it during the normal period and repeating the oral exam.

Observations

n.a.