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REVIEWS / COMPTES RENDUS
| David Harvey, Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (London: Verso 2006)
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| DAVID HARVEY IS, arguably, the geographer who has done the most to spatialize Marx over the past four decades, showing how the way in which economic landscapes are made under capitalism is not something which is contingent to the accumulation process but is, rather, central to it. There is, he argues, a dialectic between capitalism's geography and its social organization: how capitalism functions as a social system shapes the economic landscapes produced under it, whilst the form which landscapes take shapes the possibility for accumulation. Accumulation can only occur, for example, if capitalists can access raw materials, labour, and markets, all of which requires a certain spatial configuration of the economic landscape (what Harvey has called a "spatial fix"). Spaces of Global Capitalism, then, represents a brief overview of several key arguments along this line of thinking and emerged out of an invitation to Harvey to give the Eighth Hettner Lecture at the University of Heidelberg in 2004. The book itself is in three main sections, following a brief introduction by two members of the invitation committee. The first two chapters are written versions of public lectures Harvey gave at Heidelberg, whilst the third emerges from a seminar conducted with graduate students from Heidelberg and several other European and us universities. |
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The first chapter – "Neo-liberalism and the restoration of class power" – focuses on the contemporary period and explores what the neo-liberal turn means for how the planet's economic geographies are being remade. Beginning with an analysis of us foreign policy towards Iraq, which us neo-cons view as a massive laboratory for trying out all sorts of new policy initiatives (like the much-vaunted "flat tax," of which they are much enamoured), together with a recounting of how other countries in the Global South were used for similar such experimentation (witness Chile after 1973, with the Chicago Boys' tinkerings), Harvey proceeds to explore how neo-liberalism has served to transfer massive amounts of wealth from the Global South to the Global North, especially the us. For instance, he shows how the debt crisis which began with Mexico defaulting on its loans in 1982 has allowed the International Monetary Fund (whose voting structure is such that the us has virtual veto power over Fund actions) to impose structural adjustment programs across the Global South which transfer wealth (in the form of interest payments) geographically from South to North. Although there are certainly contradictions here – many us neo-cons have decried the growth of "illegal" migration from Mexico in the past twenty years, even as they have pushed the financial policies which have exacerbated it – Harvey shows how the various strands of economic policy furthered in the us and UK in the 1980s had emerged as a fairly well-coordinated "Washington Consensus" by the mid-1990s. Although he concludes that, as a strategy for resolving problems of low accumulation rates globally and stimulating economic growth in the past two decades, neo-liberalism has been a dismal failure, it has had two important outcomes: first, it has made geographically uneven development much more volatile, thereby permitting a small number of territories to grow spectacularly (at least for a short time) even as others have lagged; second, it has been a huge success for the upper classes, allowing them to restore some of the class power they lost under the Fordist compromise of the mid-20th century. Neo-liberalism, in other words, has resulted in both a social redistribution of power and wealth (from workers to capitalists) and a geographical one (from the Global South to the Global North and from working-class neighbourhoods to centres of corporate power and conspicuous consumption). |
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Having tangentially introduced the theme of geographical restructuring associated with neo-liberalism, in the second chapter – "Notes towards a theory of uneven geographical development" – Harvey outlines in greater detail the argument that the process of accumulation and the producing of capitalism's unevenly developed geography are intimately interconnected. Specifically, he argues that space must be seen not simply as a container nor as a stage for social action but as an active moment within any social process. Thus, at a most basic level, space is something to be crossed, such that the friction of distance plays a forceful role in shaping how labour markets operate and whether producers can get goods like perishable fruit or flowers to market. More fundamentally the way in which the economic landscape is spatially constituted can both enable and constrain the accumulation process – an inability to access labour spatially means capitalists cannot secure surplus value, no matter how exploitable (and hence potentially profit-making) such labour may be, whereas the construction of new highways "opens up," both metaphorically and literally, new arenas for capitalist exploitation. In particular, Harvey is keen to show that because we are all spatially embedded in our everyday lives, we must view capitalism through a historical- geographical materialist lens. This means that the accumulation process cannot be seen as somehow separate from what Habermas and others have termed "the lifeworld," for even when not directly generating surplus value, workers are embroiled in myriad capitalistic relationships which are themselves shaped by the planet's unevenly developed economic geography. Hence workers consume the products of far-off commodity production yet must live sufficiently close to their place of employment to be able to access it on a daily basis, meaning they are geographically connected to their workplaces even as they are locationally separate from them. |
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The book's third chapter – "Space as a key word" – plays off Raymond Williams' famous book Keywords, with Harvey exploring the meanings of the word Space in the kinds of detail which Williams devoted to words like Nature (as Harvey notes, Space is not a keyword which Williams addresses, a fact that perhaps testifies to the lack of attention historically paid it by social theorists). To begin with, Harvey explores how different traditions have conceptualized space, from space as an absolute "thing" which can exist separately from matter (i.e., space as "container" of social objects – think Newton) to space as relative (i.e., the standpoint of the observer plays an important role in shaping one's view of the world – think Einstein) to space as relational (i.e., processes and objects do not occur/ exist in space but define their own spatial frames through their relationships with one another – think Leibniz). Harvey then provides an overview whereby these different perspectives can be seen to intersect, giving us a more nuanced understanding of capitalism's geography – a piece of private property is defined in absolute terms by its legally-inscribed boundaries, it may be seen as being close or far (depending upon the location of a particular individual), with all the attendant social consequences thereof (should that individual purchase it or not?), and its value will be partially determined by what lies around it (golf course or garbage dump?). Each of these elements, in turn, has significant implications for the circulation of value through the landscape – a piece of property's absolute size will shape what can be done on it, while its relative distance will shape how much space must be crossed to access it (thereby involving variable transportation costs) and its price will shape its use. |
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For those who are familiar with Harvey's large opus of work, the book does not cover too much new ground, though it does serve as a good and highly readable overview of theorizing the imbrication of space and society, even if it tends to focus upon capital's role in shaping economic landscapes to the exclusion of how workers do so (a tendency critiqued by labour geographers in the past decade or so). For those who have never before pondered matters such as the "socio-spatial dialectic" or the differences between absolute, relative, and relational space, however, this book will provide a ready means to get up to speed fairly easily. It will also challenge them to think seriously about how a-spatial theorizing is simply insufficient to understand the ever-changing world around us. |
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ANDREW HEROD
University of Georgia |
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