tandfonline.com – From the American manufacturing belt to spatial clustering in transnational networks: the evolution of industrial geography as reflected in Geografiska Annaler

ABSTRACT

This article features the Swedish geographer Sten De Geer’s contribution to the concept and delimitation of the American manufacturing belt, as published in Geografiska Annaler in 1927, and the reception of his article among US geographers. The marked attention paid to this article contributed to the positioning of Geografiska Annaler as one of the leading European journals of geography in the North American academic debate. Later articles published in Geografiska Annaler during the ensuing nine decades illustrate how the field of industrial geography developed in Sweden and internationally. It is demonstrated that today’s economic geographers have made deliberate attempts to more closely cooperate across disciplinary boundaries, particularly towards the field of international business, in order to better understand and explain the spatial concentration and distribution of economic activities in the same spirit as Sten De Geer’s seminal work.