The fact that ‘Geography matters’ has been an underlying argument of the whole of this book, but in each section we have treated it in a different way. In the first section we looked at the social significance of conceptualization and at its relationship to developments both within and between societies. In the second section we looked at the significance of ‘geography’ in the constitution and operation of a number of very different social processes. Our argument there, and throughout, has been not only that the geography of society is socially constructed and that, to understand it, that fact must be recognized, but also that social processes and phenomena are constituted geographically. The corollary, therefore, is that to understand them account must be taken of their geography. In that second section, we considered this proposition in relation to the organization of the city, the constitution and reproduction of cultural forms, and the operation of international law. In the third section we turned our attention to the central question of the construction of ‘place’ and of geographical variation within the wider system, whether that be international or national.

In this final section we tackle the question at the broadest level of all, the level which allows us to pull together all our arguments: why does geography, in the sense in which we have defined it, matter to the development of society as a whole? Let us take an example which builds upon the conclusions of the last section.