This article intervenes in debates on the illicit in economic geography, notably in the tensions between cultural and political economic approaches. First, it assesses critiques of political economic evaluations of the illicit. It then offers a ‘trading zone’, drawing upon both cultural and political economy, and argues that the two economic epistemologies are complementary, not mutually exclusive. The article instates political and ecological missing links in cultural political economy to foster multidimensional analyses of illicit practices in discursive, material and ecological registers. It concludes by discussing the broader implications of a cultural political economy of the illicit for economic geography.

本文干预了关于经济地理非法的辩论，特别是在文化和政治经济学方法之间的紧张关系中。首先，它评估了对非法政治经济学评估的批评。然后，它提供了一个利用文化和政治经济学的“贸易区”，并认为这两种经济认识论是互补的，而不是相互排斥的。本文阐述了文化政治经济学中政治和生态方面的缺失环节，以促进对话语，物质和生态登记中的非法行为进行多维分析。最后，本文讨论了非法的文化政治经济学对经济地理学的更广泛影响。