Allan Watson

Through a concise and accessible overview, Economic Geography: The Basics examines how geographical concepts – place, space, territory, networks, and scale – enable the study of economic phenomena from a spatial perspective. Readers will develop an understanding of the diverse theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that define Economic Geography. The book highlights how economies constitute and are constituted by their geographical contexts. The five chapters will cover the internal complexities and contradictions of the field, its fluid boundaries, and its diverse contexts. Methodologically, it addresses critical challenges, such as the bias towards national-level analysis that neglects regional and local nuances, and the tendency to oversimplify diverse groups, treating them as uniform entities and ignoring internal complexities. The book also underscores the importance of considering inherent power dynamics between the researcher and their ‘subjects’. These critical reflections collectively underscore the importance of economic-geographical research for explaining how economies function. Designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Geography, Business, Economics, Sociology, and Politics, Economic Geography: The Basics equips students with the spatial analytical tools to explore a wide range of economic activities and their broader societal implications, including but not limited to markets, state interventions, industrialisation processes, the organisation of labour, and the dynamics of social reproduction.

Through a concise and accessible overview, Economic Geography: The Basics examines how geographical concepts – place, space, territory, networks, and scale – enable the study of economic phenomena from a spatial perspective. Readers will develop an understanding of the diverse theoretical frameworks and methodological approaches that define Economic Geography. The book highlights how economies constitute and are constituted by their geographical contexts. The five chapters will cover the internal complexities and contradictions of the field, its fluid boundaries, and its diverse contexts. Methodologically, it addresses critical challenges, such as the bias towards national-level analysis that neglects regional and local nuances, and the tendency to oversimplify diverse groups, treating them as uniform entities and ignoring internal complexities. The book also underscores the importance of considering inherent power dynamics between the researcher and their ‘subjects’. These critical reflections collectively underscore the importance of economic-geographical research for explaining how economies function. Designed for undergraduate and postgraduate students in Geography, Business, Economics, Sociology, and Politics, Economic Geography: The Basics equips students with the spatial analytical tools to explore a wide range of economic activities and their broader societal implications, including but not limited to markets, state interventions, industrialisation processes, the organisation of labour, and the dynamics of social reproduction.

The music industries are being reshaped by a fresh round of platform intermediation – one based on MusicTech, social media platforms and user-generated content, live streaming, crowdfunding and gamification. Andrew Leyshon and Allan Watson critically examine this latest wave of new platform music industries and consider how they are influencing music creation, distribution and consumption as well as their wider economic and cultural impact. Drawing on contemporary case studies and examples, the authors situate this latest wave of innovation within the historical context of earlier rounds of platform reintermediation, which saw the music industries lurch from a file-sharing crisis to the emergence of the major streaming platforms that first halted and then reversed the decline in revenues derived from recorded music. While debates about the moral economy of streaming dominate both media and academic accounts of the music industries, they show that a focus on streaming alone obscures much of the complexity resulting from related and concurrent platform innovations. The book provides an up to date and comprehensive study of the latest developments in one of the fastest-moving and innovative sectors of the cultural economy.

Recording studios are the most insulated, intimate and privileged sites of music production and creativity. Yet in a world of intensified globalisation, they are also sites which are highly connected into wider networks of music production that are increasingly spanning the globe. This book is the first comprehensive account of the new spatialities of cultural production in the recording studio sector of the musical economy, spatialities that illuminate the complexities of global cultural production. This unique text adopts a social-geographical perspective to capture the multiple spatial scales of music production: from opening the "black-box" of the insulated space of the recording studio; through the wider contexts in which music production is situated; to the far-flung global production networks of which recording studios are part. Drawing on original research, recent writing on cultural production across a variety of academic disciplines, secondary sources such as popular music biographies, and including a wide range of case studies, this lively and accessible text covers a range of issues including the role of technology in musical creativity; creative collaboration and emotional labour; networking and reputation; and contemporary economic challenges to studios. As a contribution to contemporary debates on creativity, cultural production and creative labour, Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio will appeal to academic students and researchers working across the social sciences, including human geography, cultural studies, media and communication studies, sociology, as well as those studying music production courses.

Recording studios are the most insulated, intimate and privileged sites of music production and creativity. Yet in a world of intensified globalisation, they are also sites which are highly connected into wider networks of music production that are increasingly spanning the globe. This book is the first comprehensive account of the new spatialties of cultural production in the recording studio sector of the musical economy, spatialities that illuminate the complexities of global cultural production. This unique text adopts a social-geographical perspective to capture the multiple spatial scales of music production: from opening the "black-box" of the insulated space of the recording studio; through the wider contexts in which music production is situated; to the far-flung global production networks of which recording studios are part. Drawing on original research, recent writing on cultural production across a variety of academic disciplines, secondary sources such as popular music biographies, and including a wide range of case studies, this lively and accessible text covers a range of issues including the role of technology in musical creativity; creative collaboration and emotional labour; networking and reputation; and contemporary economic challenges to studios. As a contribution to contemporary debates on creativity, cultural production and creative labour, Cultural Production in and Beyond the Recording Studio will appeal to academic students and researchers working across the social sciences, including human geography, cultural studies, media and communication studies, sociology, as well as those studying music production courses.