Many social science disciplines suffer from a tradition of tolerating vaguely formulated theoretical claims. The authors report a case study of the explanatory claims made in an emerging knowledge-based theory of clusters proposed by the economic geographers Malmberg and Maskell. In doing so...

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The paper provides an analysis of the reception of realism in human geography. Gaps are identified between geographers' realism and realism as conceived by philosophers of science. The paper first outlines philosophers' abstract or thin 'CoreRealism' in simple ontological, semantic, and...