The history of western economic geography in the past 60 years is characterized by many twists and turns of substantive focus and sudden changes of theoretical mood. Since the mid-1990 s, with the reassessment to the content, concepts and approaches of western economic geography, cultural turn has become a new direction to the academic study of western economic geography. This paper introduces briefly cultural turn in western economic geography, and analyses the causes and characteristics of this turn. The culture has changed from constant considered in the past to variable considered at present in the cultural turn that has taken place in economic geography, the turn to culture destabilizes what is conventionally regarded as 'the economic', cultural determinants of the economic and interaction between the culture and the economy has attracted many scholars' attention. Before the cultural turn, economic geographers of the quantitative revolution think that knowledge that mirrors the world is genuine; knowledge that does not is spurious. New economic geographers propose the theories which not include the ability to mirror the world, shun disembodied vision as a metaphorical blueprint, stress the importance of situating oneself as an author, the recognition that who you are and have been affects what you know and tell others. New economic geographies influenced by hermeneutics of postmodernism are interested in keeping the conversation going. The method has changed from positivism in the past to humanism at present in the cultural turn that has taken place in economic geography.