From our point of view, the ontological challenge that GPN research is facing mainly lies in
integrating both the material and the socio-cultural dimensions of GPN development. In other
words, how do we conceptualise a relational network approach that is neither undersocializing
nor over-socializing in its explanatory capacity? How should future GPN research
address the mutual interdependencies of the social/cultural and the economic, and agency and
structure (see also Bathelt, 2006)? A way forward might be to try and reconsider some
fundamental insights from different intellectual currents in economic geography, namely
political economy, actor-network-theory (ANT) and “new economic geography”, the latter
often used as a synonym for the cultural turn in the discipline and not to be confused with
Krugman’s “geographical economics”. Political economy has much to offer in terms of