Relational and evolutionary economic geography: competing or complementary paradigms?

Economic geographers have recently been confronted with attempts to constitute both relational and evolutionary economic geography. The two proposed paradigms have much in common, such as the perception of space as being socially constructed instead of a pre-given entity with causal powers. Until now, however, astonishingly little has been written about the differences between these proposed paradigms. By comparatively focussing on three research issues, the paper concludes that the conceptual differences are rather subtle and that the relational approach seems to include a wider and therefore, more unspecific perspective to explain the distribution of economic activities over space.