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Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development
An essential introduction to the field of historical geography, which offers a radical new way of understanding global capitalism.
Fiscal crises have cascaded across much of the developing world with devastating results, from Mexico to Indonesia, Russia and Argentina. The extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes seems to mock our best efforts to understand the forces that drive development in the world economy.
David Harvey is the single most important geographer writing today and a leading social theorist of our age, offering a comprehensive critique of contemporary capitalism. In this fascinating book, he shows the way forward for just such an understanding, enlarging upon the key themes in his recent work: the development of neoliberalism, the spread of inequalities across the globe, and 'space' as a key theoretical concept.
Both a major declaration of a new research programme and a concise introduction to David Harvey's central concerns, this book will be essential reading for scholars and students across the humanities and social sciences.
154 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2001
About the author
David Harvey
169 books1,500 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
David Harvey (born 1935) is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social theorist of international standing, he graduated from University of Cambridge with a PhD in Geography in 1961.
He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline.
His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.
David Harvey (born 1935) is the Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). A leading social theorist of international standing, he graduated from University of Cambridge with a PhD in Geography in 1961.
He is the world's most cited academic geographer (according to Andrew Bodman, see Transactions of the IBG, 1991,1992), and the author of many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as a discipline.
His work has contributed greatly to broad social and political debate, most recently he has been credited with helping to bring back social class and Marxist methods as serious methodological tools in the critique of global capitalism, particularly in its neoliberal form.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 47 reviews
December 29, 2022
Verso's monthly for December 2022. Three essays, ranging from fairly straightforward in the first (regarding neoliberalism) to reasonably abstract in the last ('Space as a Key Word' in Williams' sense). The theory of uneven geographical development is actually just 'notes,' the second essay. It's smart and cool, but also, as the title indicates, needs development. I'm sure that's been worked out in detail elsewhere, such as Harvey's monograph on Paris. He's certainly working in the marxist tradition, and is familiar with a number of recent debates and writings--he seems to like Gramsci and Lefebvre.
One of the main points is that capitalism functions by virtue of 'accumulation by dispossession' (cf. Fraser's recent Cannibal Capitalism), and that this can be subjected to representation by geography. This leads to a number of inferences, such as how regionality is a product of the process.
Recommended for those who confront the choice to historicize events or memorialize them.
One of the main points is that capitalism functions by virtue of 'accumulation by dispossession' (cf. Fraser's recent Cannibal Capitalism), and that this can be subjected to representation by geography. This leads to a number of inferences, such as how regionality is a product of the process.
Recommended for those who confront the choice to historicize events or memorialize them.
September 23, 2021
Mixed thoughts about this book.
While the first and second chapters were extraordinarily, simply put, cringe, the third and final chapter came out as extremely interesting, thought provoking and original.
In the first and second chapters, Harvey is trying very hard to describe neo-liberalism in contrast with keynesianism, inevitably failing to define either accurately, while defining neoliberalism as some kind of joint state-private run economy, which reality in neoliberal countries as the US, UK and in countries where neoliberalism is exported through debt as in my home country of Greece shows very clearly, and at the same time sticking the 'deficit spending' as a general tool to keynsianism, which is something objectively wrong as Keynes main focus was on outlining rational investment.
His trying to justify and label countries like China and Russia as neoliberal are also comical and his overall opinions on China in general are apart from ridiculous, wrong. There's a part where he mentions that the Chinese economy depends on deficit spending for large projects which is something that China rarely does. His other handy characterization ofcourse is every western academic favourite buzzword. Authoritarianism. Whatever China does is evil authoritarianism and this justifies the characterization as "neo-liberal".
Another horrible take of Harvey's was how he tries to argue how neoliberalism exists 'in general', 'de centralized' in the world and is not something exported by a hegemonic power, while at the same time he's himself arguing how tools like UN and IMF are tools of USA to spread and export neoliberalism in other countries. Overall his naïve attempt to define and describe imperialism without mentioning Lenin not a single time in this attempt fails miserably and barely manages to scratch the surface of imperialism as the final state of capitalism, resulting in him proposing as 'solutions' more loosely defined /democracy/ and /working together/.
The third chapter was in all honesty mind blowing. It came in with something extremely new, original and groundbreaking. I really cant find the words to describe it in a small summary but the way he revolutionaries the way space is seen and conceptualized was awe inspiring for me! I definitely suggest skipping most of the book and just reading the third chapter called "space as a key word" if anyone is interested in reading the book but doesn't wish to get tired on the incorrect and short term speculations that were proved false today about China and Russia (and at the same time better read Imperialism by Lenin and Xi Jinping's works on socialism with chinese characteristics).
3/5
While the first and second chapters were extraordinarily, simply put, cringe, the third and final chapter came out as extremely interesting, thought provoking and original.
In the first and second chapters, Harvey is trying very hard to describe neo-liberalism in contrast with keynesianism, inevitably failing to define either accurately, while defining neoliberalism as some kind of joint state-private run economy, which reality in neoliberal countries as the US, UK and in countries where neoliberalism is exported through debt as in my home country of Greece shows very clearly, and at the same time sticking the 'deficit spending' as a general tool to keynsianism, which is something objectively wrong as Keynes main focus was on outlining rational investment.
His trying to justify and label countries like China and Russia as neoliberal are also comical and his overall opinions on China in general are apart from ridiculous, wrong. There's a part where he mentions that the Chinese economy depends on deficit spending for large projects which is something that China rarely does. His other handy characterization ofcourse is every western academic favourite buzzword. Authoritarianism. Whatever China does is evil authoritarianism and this justifies the characterization as "neo-liberal".
Another horrible take of Harvey's was how he tries to argue how neoliberalism exists 'in general', 'de centralized' in the world and is not something exported by a hegemonic power, while at the same time he's himself arguing how tools like UN and IMF are tools of USA to spread and export neoliberalism in other countries. Overall his naïve attempt to define and describe imperialism without mentioning Lenin not a single time in this attempt fails miserably and barely manages to scratch the surface of imperialism as the final state of capitalism, resulting in him proposing as 'solutions' more loosely defined /democracy/ and /working together/.
The third chapter was in all honesty mind blowing. It came in with something extremely new, original and groundbreaking. I really cant find the words to describe it in a small summary but the way he revolutionaries the way space is seen and conceptualized was awe inspiring for me! I definitely suggest skipping most of the book and just reading the third chapter called "space as a key word" if anyone is interested in reading the book but doesn't wish to get tired on the incorrect and short term speculations that were proved false today about China and Russia (and at the same time better read Imperialism by Lenin and Xi Jinping's works on socialism with chinese characteristics).
3/5
July 17, 2020
3.5 stars
November 28, 2021
Essentially the text of three lectures given at Heidelberg University back in 2004. The first of these, Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class power, is the most accessible to the non-geography scholar. He chooses the date of the overthrow of the Allende government in Chile – 11 September 1973 – as the convenient moment to elaborate the idea of ‘the neo-liberal turn’. It marked the point where the capitalist hegemon ditched its loose association with socially progressive democratic politics in favour of rigorous enforcement of ‘free’ markets. Harvey provides a useful history of the following years, showing how the Anglosphere leadership – Reagan and Thatcher – worked in concert to make privatisation, deregulation, union busting, monetarism, and the roll back of welfare state the cornerstones of the new dispensation.
He makes the valuable point that a key difference between liberalism and neo-liberalism was that, under the former, lenders were forced to bear the cost of bad investment decisions: under the latter, the state uses its domestic power, and the extension it receives to act globally through international institutions and conventions, to load the cost onto debtors through debt repayment schemes and the fire sale disposal of assets to foreign companies (similar points to this are made in Radha D’Souza’s ‘What’s Wrong With Rights’ – see my review).
The effect of the transition to neo-liberalism according to Harvey was the restoration of class power. But it also meant a shift away from production as the key element in capitalist profitability and a move towards financialisation. Owners and managers began to receive the bulk of their remuneration in stock options, and consequently stock market valuation became the indicator of success rather than more orthodox profit margins. This produced instability which was expressed in such events as the collapse of Enron.
The state did not reduce in significance during this period. Its role in mediating between the interests of elite and subaltern groups, which had formerly taken the form of welfarism, was reduced and replaced with the object of creating ‘a good business environment’. By the new criteria used for judging success or otherwise, the notion of ‘personal responsibility’ became of central importance. The idea of human rights was enhanced within this framework, with grievance against the system being considered from the standpoint of infringement of individual autonomy rather than systemic disadvantage. Harvey makes the case that this set up tension within the system between the courts and the political authorities, with the latter coming to see human rights as limiting the scope for the authoritarian action needed to support business. From this point on a neo-conservative current began to position itself in opposition to the ‘liberalism’ in neo-liberalism.
As the 1980s moved into the 90s Harvey maps out the trajectory of what he designates as the three key components of neo-liberalism. One, financialisaton accelerated with foreign direct investment and portfolio investment expanding across the developed capitalist countries. Financial markets displaced the state as the coordinating centre of economic activity – disastrous for the Japanese economy which was flipped into long-term recession by a collapse in land and property markets. The hasty reunification of Germany created stresses that undermined the technological advantages enjoyed by the Federal Republic and hyped up pressure for the privatisation of state pension and free university education.
Two, the Clinton administration used US hegemonic power to bully developing countries onto the neo-liberal path. This led to a rapid economic expansion of this power, even though achieved by very low rates of wage growth. The flexible labour markets which had prevailed in the US became a model to be applied in other nations keen to retain access to markets shaped by American power. But Harvey states that the real reason for the apparent surge of US prosperity was the success its corporation now enjoyed in making high rates of return on investments made in subservient regions and bringing these back to the homeland.
Three, the Keynesian orthodoxy was driven from institutions like the IMF and the World Bank and replaced with monetarism. All of these strands merged into what came to be known as the Washington Consensus.
The book then features and interlude in order to examine what Harvey calls ‘the strange case of China’. Discussing the turn to markets that began with Deng’s ‘four modernisations’ he argues that changes of this magnitude cannot be made without a shift in class relations. This is characterised as a ‘radical process of bourgeois and capitalist-class formation (rather than a restoration of pre-existing class power as in the US.)” The structural inequalities entrenched in Chinese society, which communism had failed to eradicate, became a part of the inequalities in income between classes, social strata, and regions. But even so the power of the state and the Communist Party have this process features which were not seen in the older capitalist countries.
Elements of Keynesian deficit-financing of infrastructure projects under state direction remain a powerful feature but his has gone alongside the reinforcement of anti-democratic, authoritarianism. The Chinese system now represents a form of neo-liberalism that has fully incorporated neo-conservatism as it ideological leading edge.
From this point Harvey turns to a consideration of the spatial component of neo-liberal configuration. The idea of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ takes centre space here. He notes that neo-liberalism has not allowed capitalism to return to the growth rates it achieved during its golden period, being down from the 3.5% in the 1960s to just over 1% in the 90s, and barely touching that in the 00s. If it has appeared to be successful he sees this as arising from the extension of capitalist industrialisation into developing regions, giving the impression of spectacular progress in these areas. It also scores highly from the standpoint of promoting the interests of the elite classes, with huge growth in their personal fortunes. This latter aspect provides the power to wage the ideological struggle to dominate the narrative, through control of the mass media and influence over education, think tanks, etc, etc.
‘Accumulation by dispossession’ is discussed by way of a visit to Marx’s ideas about ‘primitive accumulation’ during the years when the capitalist mode was liberating itself from late feudal society. At that time it hinged on the appropriation of common land and the eviction of peasant farmers from small holdings, leading to the creation of a modern proletariat. In its modern form appropriation refers to strategies promoting privatisation of hitherto public assets and also the proliferation of intellectual property rights which now extends to genetic materials, seed plasmas and other processes associated with nature.
Financialisation provides another dimension, operating through the deregulation of markets and the creation of financial assets which generate the resources for mergers and takeovers, company restructuring and also, Harvey enumerates, predation and fraud. The facility to manage and manipulate crises – the example given being the sudden hike in interests rates by the US Federal Reserve chair, Paul Volcker in 1979 that forced Mexico into bankruptcy – allows assets to be devalued and ownership to be transferred. The final instrument facilitating dispossession is redistribution mandated by the neo-liberal state. In the UK a prime example is the ‘right to buy’ policies of the Thatcher government which transferred publicly-owned housing into personal property (and subsequently, after resale, into assets owned and controlled by private landlords). Structural adjustment programmes advanced by the Mexican state say the transfer of communally-farmed lands to agribusinesses and the dispossession of peasant communities. Similar developments have taken place in India and China.
As a system neo-liberalism generates its own contradictions and Harvey discusses a number of these. One of the prime, as mentioned above, is the conflict between individual rights and corporate interests. This has facilitated a neo-liberal specific form of politics which hinge on the role of NGOs and the promotion of human rights. This way of working transforms citizens engaged with a society-wide political process into the clients of beneficent bodies which use their expertise to advance legalistic claims for restitution. Though dispossession has terminated the forms of rights once asserted through collective action the prospect of remedy still appears as abstract, universalistic rights which can be pursued through the courts and international conventions. This works to institutionalise divisions between people and allows the social world to be degraded and abandoned as a space for leveraging change.
All these arguments echo the militant anti-human rights position taken by Radha D’Souza, but Harvey goes on to say that the contest on these issues should not be abandoned to the neo-liberal standpoint. As he says, “There is a battle to be fought not only over which universals and what rights shall be invoked, in particular situations but also over how much universal principles and conceptions of rights shall be constructed.” It is frequently the case that two sets of rights emerge from this confrontation, and he quotes Marx to say when this happens, “force decides.” The enemy here is idealistic conceptions of rights and these have to be opposed by bringing them down to earth.
He remarks that conceptions of rights cluster around “two dominant logics of power – that of the territorial state and that of capital” Giovani Arrighi also considers this in ‘The Long Twentieth Century’ and makes more of the case that it constitutes a contradiction within capitalism, with the state aiming to constrain free movement of factors of production but capital wishing to liberate them. There is much more to be said about, largely about the change that would be required to make space-centred interests consistent with movement – Harvey indicates something about the course this might take in his endorsement of the position of Bartholomew and Breakspear, that what is needed “is to recuperate human rights politics as a part of a critical cosmopolitan project aimed explicitly against imperialism...”
The long chapter reaches its conclusion with the statement that “… the profoundly anti-democratic nature of neo-liberalism backed by the authoritarianism of the neo-conservatives that should be the main focus of political struggle.” Amen to that.
He makes the valuable point that a key difference between liberalism and neo-liberalism was that, under the former, lenders were forced to bear the cost of bad investment decisions: under the latter, the state uses its domestic power, and the extension it receives to act globally through international institutions and conventions, to load the cost onto debtors through debt repayment schemes and the fire sale disposal of assets to foreign companies (similar points to this are made in Radha D’Souza’s ‘What’s Wrong With Rights’ – see my review).
The effect of the transition to neo-liberalism according to Harvey was the restoration of class power. But it also meant a shift away from production as the key element in capitalist profitability and a move towards financialisation. Owners and managers began to receive the bulk of their remuneration in stock options, and consequently stock market valuation became the indicator of success rather than more orthodox profit margins. This produced instability which was expressed in such events as the collapse of Enron.
The state did not reduce in significance during this period. Its role in mediating between the interests of elite and subaltern groups, which had formerly taken the form of welfarism, was reduced and replaced with the object of creating ‘a good business environment’. By the new criteria used for judging success or otherwise, the notion of ‘personal responsibility’ became of central importance. The idea of human rights was enhanced within this framework, with grievance against the system being considered from the standpoint of infringement of individual autonomy rather than systemic disadvantage. Harvey makes the case that this set up tension within the system between the courts and the political authorities, with the latter coming to see human rights as limiting the scope for the authoritarian action needed to support business. From this point on a neo-conservative current began to position itself in opposition to the ‘liberalism’ in neo-liberalism.
As the 1980s moved into the 90s Harvey maps out the trajectory of what he designates as the three key components of neo-liberalism. One, financialisaton accelerated with foreign direct investment and portfolio investment expanding across the developed capitalist countries. Financial markets displaced the state as the coordinating centre of economic activity – disastrous for the Japanese economy which was flipped into long-term recession by a collapse in land and property markets. The hasty reunification of Germany created stresses that undermined the technological advantages enjoyed by the Federal Republic and hyped up pressure for the privatisation of state pension and free university education.
Two, the Clinton administration used US hegemonic power to bully developing countries onto the neo-liberal path. This led to a rapid economic expansion of this power, even though achieved by very low rates of wage growth. The flexible labour markets which had prevailed in the US became a model to be applied in other nations keen to retain access to markets shaped by American power. But Harvey states that the real reason for the apparent surge of US prosperity was the success its corporation now enjoyed in making high rates of return on investments made in subservient regions and bringing these back to the homeland.
Three, the Keynesian orthodoxy was driven from institutions like the IMF and the World Bank and replaced with monetarism. All of these strands merged into what came to be known as the Washington Consensus.
The book then features and interlude in order to examine what Harvey calls ‘the strange case of China’. Discussing the turn to markets that began with Deng’s ‘four modernisations’ he argues that changes of this magnitude cannot be made without a shift in class relations. This is characterised as a ‘radical process of bourgeois and capitalist-class formation (rather than a restoration of pre-existing class power as in the US.)” The structural inequalities entrenched in Chinese society, which communism had failed to eradicate, became a part of the inequalities in income between classes, social strata, and regions. But even so the power of the state and the Communist Party have this process features which were not seen in the older capitalist countries.
Elements of Keynesian deficit-financing of infrastructure projects under state direction remain a powerful feature but his has gone alongside the reinforcement of anti-democratic, authoritarianism. The Chinese system now represents a form of neo-liberalism that has fully incorporated neo-conservatism as it ideological leading edge.
From this point Harvey turns to a consideration of the spatial component of neo-liberal configuration. The idea of ‘accumulation by dispossession’ takes centre space here. He notes that neo-liberalism has not allowed capitalism to return to the growth rates it achieved during its golden period, being down from the 3.5% in the 1960s to just over 1% in the 90s, and barely touching that in the 00s. If it has appeared to be successful he sees this as arising from the extension of capitalist industrialisation into developing regions, giving the impression of spectacular progress in these areas. It also scores highly from the standpoint of promoting the interests of the elite classes, with huge growth in their personal fortunes. This latter aspect provides the power to wage the ideological struggle to dominate the narrative, through control of the mass media and influence over education, think tanks, etc, etc.
‘Accumulation by dispossession’ is discussed by way of a visit to Marx’s ideas about ‘primitive accumulation’ during the years when the capitalist mode was liberating itself from late feudal society. At that time it hinged on the appropriation of common land and the eviction of peasant farmers from small holdings, leading to the creation of a modern proletariat. In its modern form appropriation refers to strategies promoting privatisation of hitherto public assets and also the proliferation of intellectual property rights which now extends to genetic materials, seed plasmas and other processes associated with nature.
Financialisation provides another dimension, operating through the deregulation of markets and the creation of financial assets which generate the resources for mergers and takeovers, company restructuring and also, Harvey enumerates, predation and fraud. The facility to manage and manipulate crises – the example given being the sudden hike in interests rates by the US Federal Reserve chair, Paul Volcker in 1979 that forced Mexico into bankruptcy – allows assets to be devalued and ownership to be transferred. The final instrument facilitating dispossession is redistribution mandated by the neo-liberal state. In the UK a prime example is the ‘right to buy’ policies of the Thatcher government which transferred publicly-owned housing into personal property (and subsequently, after resale, into assets owned and controlled by private landlords). Structural adjustment programmes advanced by the Mexican state say the transfer of communally-farmed lands to agribusinesses and the dispossession of peasant communities. Similar developments have taken place in India and China.
As a system neo-liberalism generates its own contradictions and Harvey discusses a number of these. One of the prime, as mentioned above, is the conflict between individual rights and corporate interests. This has facilitated a neo-liberal specific form of politics which hinge on the role of NGOs and the promotion of human rights. This way of working transforms citizens engaged with a society-wide political process into the clients of beneficent bodies which use their expertise to advance legalistic claims for restitution. Though dispossession has terminated the forms of rights once asserted through collective action the prospect of remedy still appears as abstract, universalistic rights which can be pursued through the courts and international conventions. This works to institutionalise divisions between people and allows the social world to be degraded and abandoned as a space for leveraging change.
All these arguments echo the militant anti-human rights position taken by Radha D’Souza, but Harvey goes on to say that the contest on these issues should not be abandoned to the neo-liberal standpoint. As he says, “There is a battle to be fought not only over which universals and what rights shall be invoked, in particular situations but also over how much universal principles and conceptions of rights shall be constructed.” It is frequently the case that two sets of rights emerge from this confrontation, and he quotes Marx to say when this happens, “force decides.” The enemy here is idealistic conceptions of rights and these have to be opposed by bringing them down to earth.
He remarks that conceptions of rights cluster around “two dominant logics of power – that of the territorial state and that of capital” Giovani Arrighi also considers this in ‘The Long Twentieth Century’ and makes more of the case that it constitutes a contradiction within capitalism, with the state aiming to constrain free movement of factors of production but capital wishing to liberate them. There is much more to be said about, largely about the change that would be required to make space-centred interests consistent with movement – Harvey indicates something about the course this might take in his endorsement of the position of Bartholomew and Breakspear, that what is needed “is to recuperate human rights politics as a part of a critical cosmopolitan project aimed explicitly against imperialism...”
The long chapter reaches its conclusion with the statement that “… the profoundly anti-democratic nature of neo-liberalism backed by the authoritarianism of the neo-conservatives that should be the main focus of political struggle.” Amen to that.
January 19, 2009
What do critics in the humanities with an environmental bent stand to gain from taking a closer look at space? This is a particularly vexed question considering the rewarding focus ecocritics have taken on the concept of place, with its connotations of narratives intimately tied to the land, valuing the local, ecological wisdom, and fostering community. But how does the perhaps isolated and isolating notion of place or regional character troubled by the current state of a decidedly global economy? One that has been overwhelming successful at instituting neoliberal capitalist and cultural policies throughout the developed and developing world? In short, how can a better understanding of how economy, space, politics, and nature interact help us to sustainably preserve the character of places, and the literature of those places?
Prominent geographer and political theorist David Harvey's newest book provides a powerful analysis of the spatial inequalities of neoliberal economics. This influential form of capitalism, pioneered by Milton Friedman and others at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, promotes global deregulation of trade, insists on the value of free markets, and the privatization of governmental organizations. Harvey's gathering of three, closely thematically related essays--"Liberalism and the Restoration of Class Power," "A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development," and "Space as a Key Word”--take on the rhetorical masking of neoliberalism's real effects by its proponents. Harvey is particularly interested in the “authoritarian†impulses buried in neoliberalism, for "while the virtues of competition are placed up front the reality is the increasing consolidation of monopoly power within a few centralized multinational corporations" (29). He further fleshes out the way in which neoliberalism perpetuates global systems of disparate wealth through geographical readings of recent economic history, tracing how class power was restored to capitalist elites through the dismantling of the social support networks of the sixties and seventies, and the institution of laissez-faire policies under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Harvey convincingly shows how these policies were kept in place through the nineties and were transformed into the paranoia of militant neoconservatism favored by the Bush administration. The skeleton key to Harvey's exploration throughout in Spaces of Global Capitalism, as he moves between spheres of economic, political, geographical, and environmental discourses, is his useful frame of "accumulation by dispossession." This he defines as the perpetuation of upper-class corporate and state, centralized power through the commodification of land, the forceful relocation of indigenous groups, a reliance upon national debts and consumer credit, and the shift from a traditional industrial economy to one dependent upon central finance.
If this carries more than a whiff of Marxism about it, it is no accident. Harvey has built his career around materialist geographical studies of society, globalization, and power, an approach first broached in 1973's Social Justice and the City, theoretically refined in 1982's Limits to Capital, and, more recently, put into dialogue with postmodernism (1989's The Condition of Postmodernity) and environmental justice (1996's Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference). Spaces of Global Capitalism's approach to social and spatial theory will probably fail to sway right-leaning readers, or even some mainstream liberals. But unlike other prominent, British-born theorists who place themselves in a Marxist genealogy (Terry Eagleton, Raymond Williams, and Fredric Jameson are the obvious candidates), Harvey's study is mercifully free of the dense jargon and impenetrable web of references that seem to litter other works in cultural geography and space theory. Clearly, one of the book's intents is to reach a larger audience beyond the usual inner circle of progressive intelligentsia and academic bloggers. The clarity and reach of Harvey's prose, however, is belied somewhat by a tendency to overgeneralize or gloss complex histories. This inclination is particularly the case in the book's first two essays, where the language occasionally veers into shopworn leftist complaint, and would benefit from a stronger element of counterargument.
The insights from Spaces of Global Capitalism that seem most readily transplantable to the terrain of the humanities are most evident in the third and most overtly philosophical of Harvey's essays, "Space as a Key Word." Here, Harvey attempts to sort through the fraught meanings and inflections of "space" in order to formulate a geographically useful definition of the term. This inquiry leads ultimately not to a redefinition, but rather an open, defining question: "How is it that different human practices create and make use of space?" (126) This semantic shift from definition to interpretation makes Harvey's spatial theory particularly applicable to literary and cultural texts, artifacts that also create and make use of imagined and represented space.
Prominent geographer and political theorist David Harvey's newest book provides a powerful analysis of the spatial inequalities of neoliberal economics. This influential form of capitalism, pioneered by Milton Friedman and others at the University of Chicago in the 1960s, promotes global deregulation of trade, insists on the value of free markets, and the privatization of governmental organizations. Harvey's gathering of three, closely thematically related essays--"Liberalism and the Restoration of Class Power," "A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development," and "Space as a Key Word”--take on the rhetorical masking of neoliberalism's real effects by its proponents. Harvey is particularly interested in the “authoritarian†impulses buried in neoliberalism, for "while the virtues of competition are placed up front the reality is the increasing consolidation of monopoly power within a few centralized multinational corporations" (29). He further fleshes out the way in which neoliberalism perpetuates global systems of disparate wealth through geographical readings of recent economic history, tracing how class power was restored to capitalist elites through the dismantling of the social support networks of the sixties and seventies, and the institution of laissez-faire policies under Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan. Harvey convincingly shows how these policies were kept in place through the nineties and were transformed into the paranoia of militant neoconservatism favored by the Bush administration. The skeleton key to Harvey's exploration throughout in Spaces of Global Capitalism, as he moves between spheres of economic, political, geographical, and environmental discourses, is his useful frame of "accumulation by dispossession." This he defines as the perpetuation of upper-class corporate and state, centralized power through the commodification of land, the forceful relocation of indigenous groups, a reliance upon national debts and consumer credit, and the shift from a traditional industrial economy to one dependent upon central finance.
If this carries more than a whiff of Marxism about it, it is no accident. Harvey has built his career around materialist geographical studies of society, globalization, and power, an approach first broached in 1973's Social Justice and the City, theoretically refined in 1982's Limits to Capital, and, more recently, put into dialogue with postmodernism (1989's The Condition of Postmodernity) and environmental justice (1996's Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference). Spaces of Global Capitalism's approach to social and spatial theory will probably fail to sway right-leaning readers, or even some mainstream liberals. But unlike other prominent, British-born theorists who place themselves in a Marxist genealogy (Terry Eagleton, Raymond Williams, and Fredric Jameson are the obvious candidates), Harvey's study is mercifully free of the dense jargon and impenetrable web of references that seem to litter other works in cultural geography and space theory. Clearly, one of the book's intents is to reach a larger audience beyond the usual inner circle of progressive intelligentsia and academic bloggers. The clarity and reach of Harvey's prose, however, is belied somewhat by a tendency to overgeneralize or gloss complex histories. This inclination is particularly the case in the book's first two essays, where the language occasionally veers into shopworn leftist complaint, and would benefit from a stronger element of counterargument.
The insights from Spaces of Global Capitalism that seem most readily transplantable to the terrain of the humanities are most evident in the third and most overtly philosophical of Harvey's essays, "Space as a Key Word." Here, Harvey attempts to sort through the fraught meanings and inflections of "space" in order to formulate a geographically useful definition of the term. This inquiry leads ultimately not to a redefinition, but rather an open, defining question: "How is it that different human practices create and make use of space?" (126) This semantic shift from definition to interpretation makes Harvey's spatial theory particularly applicable to literary and cultural texts, artifacts that also create and make use of imagined and represented space.
October 18, 2022
Published in 2006, Spaces of Global Capitalism reflects a somewhat outdated political discourse, but contains a number of prescient formulas for thinking through the contemporary geopolitical turn.
The COVID pandemic and Russia’s imperial war against Ukraine, hot on the heals of a populist surge across the world, which seeks to reclaim agency against what are perceived as impersonal globalization processes (although in the case of populist leaders like Orban, who would reap the benefits of EU membership while flouting cosmopolitan norms, this rhetoric rings hollow), have revealed the structural vulnerabilities generated by globalized trade networks and created an interest in undoing economic and political co-dependencies by renationalizing supply chains and seceding from multinational governance institutions. These crises have pushed the regionally-variegated and contradictory nature of economic globalization, embedded in territorializing processes and jurisdictions, right to the surface and are in many ways prefigured in the book.
Harvey’s geography-inflected theories are therefore invaluable for mapping out the shifting hierarchies of space and the imbrication of hypermobile capital with spatially fixed institutional architectures, which are undergoing broad and painful torsions as China seeks to reroute global trade through its Belt-and-Road projects and Western states seek to leverage control over key chokepoints in global trade networks in order to extract political concessions from Russia (I am thinking of for instance the expulsion of Russia from Swift, although the same can be said conversely of Russia's response vis-a-vis Nordstream). That said, although Harvey correctly points out that the state is increasingly in competition with private and multistakeholder organizations for setting policy agendas and enforcing the norms of interstate relations, I do feel that Harvey underemphasizes the nation-state as the site where its own global rescaling gets done, foregrounding instead the logics of capital accumulation which can but do not necessarily override political logics.
The COVID pandemic and Russia’s imperial war against Ukraine, hot on the heals of a populist surge across the world, which seeks to reclaim agency against what are perceived as impersonal globalization processes (although in the case of populist leaders like Orban, who would reap the benefits of EU membership while flouting cosmopolitan norms, this rhetoric rings hollow), have revealed the structural vulnerabilities generated by globalized trade networks and created an interest in undoing economic and political co-dependencies by renationalizing supply chains and seceding from multinational governance institutions. These crises have pushed the regionally-variegated and contradictory nature of economic globalization, embedded in territorializing processes and jurisdictions, right to the surface and are in many ways prefigured in the book.
Harvey’s geography-inflected theories are therefore invaluable for mapping out the shifting hierarchies of space and the imbrication of hypermobile capital with spatially fixed institutional architectures, which are undergoing broad and painful torsions as China seeks to reroute global trade through its Belt-and-Road projects and Western states seek to leverage control over key chokepoints in global trade networks in order to extract political concessions from Russia (I am thinking of for instance the expulsion of Russia from Swift, although the same can be said conversely of Russia's response vis-a-vis Nordstream). That said, although Harvey correctly points out that the state is increasingly in competition with private and multistakeholder organizations for setting policy agendas and enforcing the norms of interstate relations, I do feel that Harvey underemphasizes the nation-state as the site where its own global rescaling gets done, foregrounding instead the logics of capital accumulation which can but do not necessarily override political logics.
January 4, 2023
essays mostly unrelated but harvey per usual does incredible work synthesizing neoliberalism and how its forces play out geographically. it's almost incredible how much ground he covers (almost toooooo much ground). while it was the least revealing, i think my favorite was the last essay on space mostly because it reads like a lecture given by a very funny old man. it's also a thought-experiment-process essay, where you almost see Harvey's thinking on the page as it meanders and loops back around. i also love a good chart.
Currently reading
July 15, 2007just started reading this book for an urban planning book club. little did i expect a heady marxist analysis of neo-liberalism. well, it's something i've needed a deeper understanding of for some time. i enjoy the read, although i feel i need a dozen or so references readily available-- various economics text books, das kapital, the way the world works, etc.
also, there's more to the book than just the recent trend of neo-liberalism as the dominant world economic ideology. i just haven't reached those parts yet. further book review forthcoming.
also, there's more to the book than just the recent trend of neo-liberalism as the dominant world economic ideology. i just haven't reached those parts yet. further book review forthcoming.
January 10, 2023
Una muy buena recopilación de textos clásicos de Harvey para personas que quieran aproximarse a su obra (imprescindible) y a eso de enlazar espacio y acumulación de capital. Es muy buen libro para gente que le abrume un poco el tema y un buen repaso de cosas ya aprendidas para más expertxs.
June 25, 2024
A foundational book for Harvey - many of these themes have been expanded and developed in subsequent books. This remains a good entry point for his work: neoliberalism, accumulation by dispossession, the uneven geographical development of capitalism ...
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December 29, 2015David Harvey has written far better things. And considering this is just a set of lectures without a sustained argument at its core, it's rather secondary to his more researched, more nuanced work. For a fuller understanding, note that Harvey said most of the same things much better in A Brief History of Neoliberalism, Spaces of Capital, etc. I'd recommend starting with that, and if you don't supplement that argument with the sketches in Spaces of Global Capitalism, you're not missing that much.
June 29, 2021
I like Harvey's writing. He writes very clearly. Everyone complains how how inaccessible theory is to read, but Harvey always seems approachable to a layman such as myself. And Harvey's spatial point of view applied to the concept of uneven development seems full of potential, though incomplete in the single essay he focused on it in this three essay volume. I am left wanting something more thorough, but so it goes.
December 19, 2017
I think the best introduction to Harveys thought. three short essays, the first on the rise of neoliberalism, the second on uneven geographical development, and the third about the roll of space in social science/humanities. All super good and easy to follow understand. I just wish itd focused on the second topic much more.
August 2, 2009
I was quite disappointed with Spaces.... Unfortunately, it's my own stupidity for not looking more clearly at the description as it is made up of essays written and lectures delivered around A Brief History....
July 4, 2019
While very academic and difficult to follow for someone not fully versed in all the Marxist theory Harvey references, this is a fantastic read. I especially liked the conceptualizations of space and 'space as a key word' towards the end of the book.
April 11, 2008
I want to be David Harveyish when I grow up!
September 15, 2024
For my class this week, we read three of David Harvey’s essays. In the first, Neoliberalism and The Restoration of Class Power, Harvey captures the history of the project of neoliberal capitalism in creating structural inequalities and wealth disparities, restoring class power to the richest strata in the population. It was a project that started in Iraq and Chile, before the US and UK started doing it on home-ground, undoing many foundations and equity-building aspects of social democracy.
What caught my attention was probably Harvey’s introduction of NGOs as a neoliberal construct, created outside of the political system and now increasingly seen in societies that propound the primacy of rights-based individual advocacy as the pathway for change. I have a curiosity/question if others have counter-points or cases of NGO successes to counteract Harvey’s warning that NGOs are essentially toothless and ineffective at best (as they are not sufficiently representative, accountable, answerable, democratic and responsive to the public concerns), and accelerators and trojan horses for the neoliberal project at their worst?
In the conclusion to this essay, Harvey engages his readers to think about how we are cutting ourselves short by preferring the neoliberalism liberal bundle of rights (which are essentially rights foundational to capital accumulation), even though at the very moment we might not be able to imagine a life without them. Harvey argues for a re-prioritisation and reconsideration of what should be the derivative right and primary rights. In “searching within the present for alternative futures”, Harvey proposes that we focus on an alternative bundle of rights and values, which then carry with them “the obligation to specify a dominant social process [of open democracy] within which such rights can be inherently embedded".
In the second essay, Notes towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Harvey outlines 14 ways that capital accumulation has taken place in space and time. His impetus to build an adequate theory is motivated by the extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes, the chronic state of uneven geographical development, and the political necessity to promote convergence in social wellbeing across societies. Harvey demonstrates via the variegated (14!) avenues of uneven geographical development, that “capitalist activity is always grounded somewhere”, with “different social groups… materially embedded their modes of sociality into the web of life, understood as an evolving socio-ecological system”.
Finally, in the third essay, Space as a Key Word, Harvey shared his tripartite division in the way space could be understood: absolute space, relative space and relational space. On the third, he shared that relational space is useful for “certain topics, such as the political role of collective memories in urban processes” and “Marxian political economy”. Harvey posits that space is neither of the three conceptions, but it can “become one of all simultaneously depending on the circumstances” and “human practices” with respect to space. Harvey creates a general three-by-three matrix of spatialities and a matrix of spatialities for Marxist theories, the latter matrix demonstrating no priority to any one spatio-temporal frame but rather kept in dialectical tension with each other. Harvey concludes that gaining a sense of space, spatialities and spatio-temporalities is “crucial to the construction of a distinctively geographical imagination”.
What caught my attention was probably Harvey’s introduction of NGOs as a neoliberal construct, created outside of the political system and now increasingly seen in societies that propound the primacy of rights-based individual advocacy as the pathway for change. I have a curiosity/question if others have counter-points or cases of NGO successes to counteract Harvey’s warning that NGOs are essentially toothless and ineffective at best (as they are not sufficiently representative, accountable, answerable, democratic and responsive to the public concerns), and accelerators and trojan horses for the neoliberal project at their worst?
In the conclusion to this essay, Harvey engages his readers to think about how we are cutting ourselves short by preferring the neoliberalism liberal bundle of rights (which are essentially rights foundational to capital accumulation), even though at the very moment we might not be able to imagine a life without them. Harvey argues for a re-prioritisation and reconsideration of what should be the derivative right and primary rights. In “searching within the present for alternative futures”, Harvey proposes that we focus on an alternative bundle of rights and values, which then carry with them “the obligation to specify a dominant social process [of open democracy] within which such rights can be inherently embedded".
In the second essay, Notes towards a Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Harvey outlines 14 ways that capital accumulation has taken place in space and time. His impetus to build an adequate theory is motivated by the extreme volatility in contemporary political economic fortunes, the chronic state of uneven geographical development, and the political necessity to promote convergence in social wellbeing across societies. Harvey demonstrates via the variegated (14!) avenues of uneven geographical development, that “capitalist activity is always grounded somewhere”, with “different social groups… materially embedded their modes of sociality into the web of life, understood as an evolving socio-ecological system”.
Finally, in the third essay, Space as a Key Word, Harvey shared his tripartite division in the way space could be understood: absolute space, relative space and relational space. On the third, he shared that relational space is useful for “certain topics, such as the political role of collective memories in urban processes” and “Marxian political economy”. Harvey posits that space is neither of the three conceptions, but it can “become one of all simultaneously depending on the circumstances” and “human practices” with respect to space. Harvey creates a general three-by-three matrix of spatialities and a matrix of spatialities for Marxist theories, the latter matrix demonstrating no priority to any one spatio-temporal frame but rather kept in dialectical tension with each other. Harvey concludes that gaining a sense of space, spatialities and spatio-temporalities is “crucial to the construction of a distinctively geographical imagination”.
March 24, 2023
A collection of 3 long form essays written in the middle years of Bush II by Harvey, each addressing either global capitalism in some way or his musings on the conceptualization of space. The first essay deals mostly with neoliberalism, and quite possibly may be planned aspects of his history of the subject (which makes me wonder as to whether or not he just recycled most of it) though there does seem to be some original observations in the essay regarding dispossession, though quite possibly these may have been aspects of the history I forgot. Harvey is, after all, (and rightly so!) obsessed with Rosa Luxemburg’s ideas of primitive accumulation as a repetitive process. The next essay, somewhat incomprehensible, though interesting none the less, deals with a “New theory of uneven geographical development,” though much of the focus is on the later 20th century, rather than the Decolonial period, and gets bogged down into certain questions which often prove confusing. The last essay and perhaps the most interesting is about “Space,” as a keyword, which deals wholly with conceiving of space in a tripartite manner, as absolute (the material), relative (in relation to mostly nonhuman issues, or in relation to other absolutes) and relational (between humans, mostly, though not wholly) and argues for the synthesis of understanding with Marxian conceptions- indeed, arguing that this already happened with Marx himself in terms of value. In my own dealing with absolute and relational space in terms of reading this, though, makes me wish verso would have higher standards in terms of printing!!!
March 2, 2021
Excellent read. Harvey writes by and large in plain language, allowing the reader to get situated with the straightforward and recognizable elements of his theory before appropriately and gradually moving in more abstract directions. In contrast to other "Marxist" theorists, Harvey actually engages with the Marxist alternatives without churlishly falling back on anti-Soviet (read: anti-Marxist) platitudes that dominate the academy.
Rather than discounting actually existing(ed) socialist states out of hand as "failed states" in the typical cowardly closet Trotskyist fashion of "Marxist" charlatans, Harvey regards these behemoth and ground-breaking projects with the seriousness that they deserve, all without falling victim to dogmatism, formulating genuine critiques. The main focus of the book is not the legacy of these socialist projects, of course, but it was refreshing to see this perspective in what is considered "legitimate" academic discourse, even I may not agree with all of his points (or find them necessarily palatable).
As part of this (and at the same time independently of this), I found Harvey's way of discussing space in the concluding notes to be not only useful and exciting, but I really enjoyed the way it challenged me to think differently about space. Although I was looking for a resource more closely oriented towards a micro-level theory of the city for my current work, some of these insights are still salient, and I'm nonetheless happy to have read it, even if I ultimately will not personally draw from it in my current work.
Rather than discounting actually existing(ed) socialist states out of hand as "failed states" in the typical cowardly closet Trotskyist fashion of "Marxist" charlatans, Harvey regards these behemoth and ground-breaking projects with the seriousness that they deserve, all without falling victim to dogmatism, formulating genuine critiques. The main focus of the book is not the legacy of these socialist projects, of course, but it was refreshing to see this perspective in what is considered "legitimate" academic discourse, even I may not agree with all of his points (or find them necessarily palatable).
As part of this (and at the same time independently of this), I found Harvey's way of discussing space in the concluding notes to be not only useful and exciting, but I really enjoyed the way it challenged me to think differently about space. Although I was looking for a resource more closely oriented towards a micro-level theory of the city for my current work, some of these insights are still salient, and I'm nonetheless happy to have read it, even if I ultimately will not personally draw from it in my current work.
January 21, 2022
Currently have read about half of the book and thinking of stopping; here's why.
While Harvey delivers an incredibly interesting discussion and analysis of neoliberalism in the contemporary world and its detrimental effects on geographical developments, the style of writing makes it rather difficult to understand. The use of straightforward terms was great, though it is the assembling of words and sentences that I find particularly complex. I must say, however, that as the English language is not my first language, there may be a certain degree of limitation within the linguistic framework in which my opinion is derived. Though as I find it, many people are also struggling with understanding the points Harvey is trying to deliver, which validates my review.
Regardless, I still recommend the book for anyone who is interested as the given analysis of neoliberalist capitalism and uneven geographical development are interesting and equally insightful.
While Harvey delivers an incredibly interesting discussion and analysis of neoliberalism in the contemporary world and its detrimental effects on geographical developments, the style of writing makes it rather difficult to understand. The use of straightforward terms was great, though it is the assembling of words and sentences that I find particularly complex. I must say, however, that as the English language is not my first language, there may be a certain degree of limitation within the linguistic framework in which my opinion is derived. Though as I find it, many people are also struggling with understanding the points Harvey is trying to deliver, which validates my review.
Regardless, I still recommend the book for anyone who is interested as the given analysis of neoliberalist capitalism and uneven geographical development are interesting and equally insightful.
September 23, 2020
This was tough at times but worth it! Weirdly my first david harvey book even tho ive been listening to his marx lectures for a bit. The first essay on neoliberalism was incredibly clear and useful; the second on uneven geographical development was dense and unoriginal (just listing ways in which geography is connected to capital lol) but i was won back by the last, weird essay on understanding what "space" might mean and the importance of moving between lived, conceptualised, and physical space ! :)
September 16, 2018
Read this for my social and economic development policy class. It was REALLY hard to get through - Harvey does not write in a way that is accessible to the general public. But I thought the information was very useful. He explains neoliberalism fully, as well as gives his critique about it's inherent problems. I also found the history of how neoliberalism has spread across the globe to be informative; it has changed how I see geopolitics
July 2, 2022
Great little book with three main essays. One on neoliberalism and class power that helps chart the development and rise of neoliberalism historically, politically, and geographically. The second and third (2. Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development, 3. Space as a key word) help chart a geographical understanding of the role space and time play in the development of capitalism. All in all definitely recommended essays. Harvey is a clear and lucid writer as always.
February 26, 2023
Three Sentences on Harvey’s Spaces of Global Capitalism
This text feels more like an introduction to Harvey’s thinking on geographic spaces and development that a fully fleshed-out theory.
When Harvey isn’t talking directly about Marx part of me is like a fan of a band’s particular album: “It was good, but they didn’t play the hits”.
In spite of this being a newer book, the collection is a couple of essays that may feel dated but remain eternally relevant.
This text feels more like an introduction to Harvey’s thinking on geographic spaces and development that a fully fleshed-out theory.
When Harvey isn’t talking directly about Marx part of me is like a fan of a band’s particular album: “It was good, but they didn’t play the hits”.
In spite of this being a newer book, the collection is a couple of essays that may feel dated but remain eternally relevant.
April 6, 2023
Only read the last two essays; these are of course, only relatively sporadic notes that point in the direction of a new area of research (a broad theoretical framework for analysing uneven geographical development grounded upon rigorously defined conceptualisations of space), but nevertheless provide valuable insights. Might return to studying Marx's Capital next, however much of my attention has been dwelling on Harvey's magnum opus The Limits to Capital lately.
October 25, 2023
David Harvey as someone who started off as a geographer manages to outline the fundamental issues with infrastructural development and ground rent in an amalgamation of methods. He touches upon issues throughout the social sciences in this book from politics, economics to geopolitics outlining fundamental issues in our society regarding displacement and the uneven exponential need for capital to keep growing. A must read for anyone interested in the uneven movement of capital.
April 7, 2015
I had a most rewarding experience viewing Harvey's video lectures while reading Marx's Capital V.1., so rewarding that I've decided to go further than many people do and read V.2 & 3 with his help as well. But I also want to read some of Harvey's original contributions to Marxian theory and decided to start with this slim volume. His ruminations on space, conflating his own tripartite division of the concept with that of French Marxist Lefebvre, are most intriquing. He puts the lie to crudely reductionist view many have of Marxian thought. I include below a brief review from the Notes Taken blog at
http://notes-taken.blogspot.com/2010/...
David Harvey is one the premiere academic Marxists writing today. He's a geographer by training, but his analysis of post-Fordist capitalism and his materialist critique of cultural postmodernism have earned him a notable place in debates ranging across a number of other disciplines. Unfortunately for the Harvey neophyte, much of his work is packaged in daunting paving stone sized volumes. Spaces of Global Capitalism, clocking in at a mere 148 pages, comprises a lecture series given by Harvey in 2004. It makes for a concise introduction to Harvey and has the added benefit of drawing a neat, if somewhat artificial, division between three levels of ascending explanatory abstraction with which Harvey is concerned.
I should comment further on this last point. Much as Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit figures as the ladder to the greater Encyclopaedic system, but at the same time a concluding gloss on the very same, Harvey's Spaces of Global Capitalism is structured to reward repeated readings. The first lecture is the most easily digestable. Having made it to the end of the third lecture, however, one will have better grasped the theoretical abstractions Harvey employs and be in a better position to start again.
Lecture 1: "Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class power"
Lecture 1 is a concise restatement of the narrative contained in Harvey's essential A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005). The global fortunes and local determinations of neo-liberalism are briefly recounted, with particular emphasis on its political causes and mechanisms. Harvey argues that the history of neo-liberalism shows it to be a failed and mystifying economic program masking a retrenchment of upper-class power. He explains with precision neo-liberalism's inherent contradictions and goes on to examine both the neo-conservative and progressive responses to these. Of particular interest to me was his critique of human rights discourses as engendered by and responding to neoliberalism. Harvey ends on a hopeful note.
Lecture 2: "Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development"
Here Harvey takes a step back and sketches the components of a "'unified' field theory of uneven geographical development" ("unified" in scare-quotes because harvey seeks a dialectical rather than a reductionist or organicist theory). In brief, Harvey uses Marxist conceptual tools (updated and broadened in certain respects; for instance, his interpretation of "primitive accumulation" as "accumulation by dispossession") to make sense theoretically of the kinds of events tracked by the first lecture. The subsection "Capital accumulation in space and time" on pages 95-96 is as concise a statement as one can find of Harvey's general theory (though it should also be understood that for Harvey, theory is not a static but rather a dynamic discourse). One will find that Harvey is open to explanatory tools from a variety of traditions, but, given his penchant for dialectics, is sensitive to where these have potential to become sclerotic and obfuscating. This lecture could be titled: "Harvey's Marxism in Brief".
Lecture 3: "Space as a keyword"
Harvey's main contribution to Marxism, following Lefebvre, is in pushing space to the forefront of Marxian analysis. More accurately, he has insisted on a variegated category of "space-time" in studying capital accumulation and, by extension, uneven geographical development. In this lecture he analyzes the notion of "space" and how it may be cashed out into three different conceptions (Cartesian/Newtonian "Absolute space", Einsteinean "Relative space(-time)", and Leibnizean "Relational space(-time)"). All of these stand in dialectical tension with each other and form a grid with "experienced", "concepualized" and "lived" variants. One must "roam the grid" to construct or reconstruct the role of space(-time) in a given materialist explanation. There's much fuel for philosophical reflection here, and ultimately one gets a sense of how even at a highly abstract level, Harvey's spatial/geographical thinking can be brought to bear on his history of neo-liberalism and his search for a "unified" theory of uneven geographical development. He signals that such a thinking is "rich in possibilities"; his history of neo-liberalism is a skeleton to be filled in by richer spatializations which must, however, keep in mind the dialectical unity of the spatial grid and not founder on specificities. For Harvey, there are real consequences to such an error: by focusing on place, rather than space, one courts political irrelevance and defeat. Hence his call for an enriched Marxism beyond the impasse of culturalism/postmodernism.
http://notes-taken.blogspot.com/2010/...
David Harvey is one the premiere academic Marxists writing today. He's a geographer by training, but his analysis of post-Fordist capitalism and his materialist critique of cultural postmodernism have earned him a notable place in debates ranging across a number of other disciplines. Unfortunately for the Harvey neophyte, much of his work is packaged in daunting paving stone sized volumes. Spaces of Global Capitalism, clocking in at a mere 148 pages, comprises a lecture series given by Harvey in 2004. It makes for a concise introduction to Harvey and has the added benefit of drawing a neat, if somewhat artificial, division between three levels of ascending explanatory abstraction with which Harvey is concerned.
I should comment further on this last point. Much as Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit figures as the ladder to the greater Encyclopaedic system, but at the same time a concluding gloss on the very same, Harvey's Spaces of Global Capitalism is structured to reward repeated readings. The first lecture is the most easily digestable. Having made it to the end of the third lecture, however, one will have better grasped the theoretical abstractions Harvey employs and be in a better position to start again.
Lecture 1: "Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class power"
Lecture 1 is a concise restatement of the narrative contained in Harvey's essential A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford, 2005). The global fortunes and local determinations of neo-liberalism are briefly recounted, with particular emphasis on its political causes and mechanisms. Harvey argues that the history of neo-liberalism shows it to be a failed and mystifying economic program masking a retrenchment of upper-class power. He explains with precision neo-liberalism's inherent contradictions and goes on to examine both the neo-conservative and progressive responses to these. Of particular interest to me was his critique of human rights discourses as engendered by and responding to neoliberalism. Harvey ends on a hopeful note.
Lecture 2: "Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development"
Here Harvey takes a step back and sketches the components of a "'unified' field theory of uneven geographical development" ("unified" in scare-quotes because harvey seeks a dialectical rather than a reductionist or organicist theory). In brief, Harvey uses Marxist conceptual tools (updated and broadened in certain respects; for instance, his interpretation of "primitive accumulation" as "accumulation by dispossession") to make sense theoretically of the kinds of events tracked by the first lecture. The subsection "Capital accumulation in space and time" on pages 95-96 is as concise a statement as one can find of Harvey's general theory (though it should also be understood that for Harvey, theory is not a static but rather a dynamic discourse). One will find that Harvey is open to explanatory tools from a variety of traditions, but, given his penchant for dialectics, is sensitive to where these have potential to become sclerotic and obfuscating. This lecture could be titled: "Harvey's Marxism in Brief".
Lecture 3: "Space as a keyword"
Harvey's main contribution to Marxism, following Lefebvre, is in pushing space to the forefront of Marxian analysis. More accurately, he has insisted on a variegated category of "space-time" in studying capital accumulation and, by extension, uneven geographical development. In this lecture he analyzes the notion of "space" and how it may be cashed out into three different conceptions (Cartesian/Newtonian "Absolute space", Einsteinean "Relative space(-time)", and Leibnizean "Relational space(-time)"). All of these stand in dialectical tension with each other and form a grid with "experienced", "concepualized" and "lived" variants. One must "roam the grid" to construct or reconstruct the role of space(-time) in a given materialist explanation. There's much fuel for philosophical reflection here, and ultimately one gets a sense of how even at a highly abstract level, Harvey's spatial/geographical thinking can be brought to bear on his history of neo-liberalism and his search for a "unified" theory of uneven geographical development. He signals that such a thinking is "rich in possibilities"; his history of neo-liberalism is a skeleton to be filled in by richer spatializations which must, however, keep in mind the dialectical unity of the spatial grid and not founder on specificities. For Harvey, there are real consequences to such an error: by focusing on place, rather than space, one courts political irrelevance and defeat. Hence his call for an enriched Marxism beyond the impasse of culturalism/postmodernism.
December 26, 2020
The first essay is essentially compiled notes and information I think he ended up using for “Neoliberalism”; the second essay is quite good, positing the basic tenets for a theory of uneven geographical development (as the title suggests). The third essay is an interesting discussion on how to conceptualize “space”.
January 18, 2022
I enjoy reading most of David Harvey's writings. Despite the fact that parts of the book were quite hard to follow, I do think that he is a talented writer and is capable of neatly constructing a theory and bringing the reader with him on the journey. His arguments are eye-opening and inspiring and reaching the end left me wanting more.
November 8, 2022
As a friend on this site has already said, Harvey's analysis about China is plain wrong, but the following sections , specially the systematization of spaces, are a delight.
As a formed geographer, this is an excellent book, but as a marxist I'm really confused of this vulgar political analysis.
As a formed geographer, this is an excellent book, but as a marxist I'm really confused of this vulgar political analysis.
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