Chapter Introduction

Morning exercise at a sport shoes factory, Gao Bu Chen, Dongguan, China.

(Francis Li/Alamy.)

Almost every facet of our lives is affected in some way by economic activity. On a Friday night out, you might drive in a car to a single outlet in a nationwide chain of restaurants, where you order chicken raised indoors several states away on special enriched grain, brought by refrigerated truck to a deep freeze, and cooked in an electric deep fryer. The car you drive most likely was manufactured in several different locations around the world, assembled somewhere else, brought by container ship or truck to your local automobile dealership, and purchased with financing provided by a bank or other financial service provider. Later, at a movie, you buy a candy bar manufactured halfway across the country. You then enjoy a series of machine-produced pictures that flash in front of your eyes so rapidly that they seem to be moving. Just about every object and event in your life is affected, if not actually created, by economics. What we mean by economics is how goods (from the food we eat to the Internet sites we visit) and services are produced, distributed, financed, sold, and consumed. These diverse activities greatly shape culture and are in turn shaped by cultural preferences, ideas, and beliefs. Economies function differently in different parts of the world. In this chapter, we examine differences and similarities of geographies of economic activities from a variety of vantage points that range from our own neighborhoods to the entire globe.