Richard Walker, professor of geography

Richard Walker is professor of geography at UC Berkeley, and co-founder and current chair of the California Studies Association, as well as chair of the campus’s California Studies Center. He has written extensively about economic and urban geography, as well as environmental policy, and taken the odd foray into philosophy. He is co-author of “The Capitalist Imperative: Territory, Technology and Industrial Growth (Oxford: Blackwell, 1989) and “The New Social Economy: Reworking the Division of Labor (Cambridge USA: Blackwell, 1992).

Most recently, his focus has been on the regional peculiarities of California, which he considers to be one of the most important economic, political and cultural hearths of world capitalism, and one of the least studied. Walker's 2004 book, "The Conquest of Bread: 150 Years of Agribusiness in California," recounts the state's transformation into the nation's leading agrarian production complex, its "bread basket." He received a B.A. in economics from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in geography and environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University.