David Harvey (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Verso Books

David Harvey (2006) Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, Verso Books

As most writing on his work suggest, David Harvey is the most cited critical geographer and the fourth most cited social scientist in general. His works since 1970’s have introduced very important concepts in Marxist thought (ie. elaboration of space-time interaction of capital following Lefevbre) and brought daylight into newly emerging fields like political ecology with concepts such as spatio-temporal fix and accumulation by dispossession. Spaces of Global Capitalism: Towards A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development, in this sense, adds another block in attempting to produce “unified field theory of uneven geographical development” (pg. 75).

This book of Harvey is based upon Hettner-lectures he has delivered in University of Heidelberg in 2004. It is basically structured in three parts, each forming a different thread of Harvey’s work since to date. It encompasses Harvey’s rigorous critique of neoliberalism and capitalism’s self-making, then moves into the territory of theorizing uneven geographical development which gives the book its sub-title and finally closes with a discussion on introducing space as a key word / key concept in Marxist thought.

The book opens with an essay titled Neoliberalism and The Restoration of Class Power. Here Harvey focuses on the emergence of neoliberalism (as more thoroughly elaborated in his book The New Imperialism) and its implementation across the globe through producing consent and coercion. After this historical introduction and ground setting, Harvey moves on to explain the neoliberal state and elaborates the example of China. “The explicit authoritarianism of the Chinese instance” Harvey argues ”[...]is troubling in view of the more covert anti-democratic tendencies implicit in neoliberalism”. He argues that such successful implementation of neoliberal agenda with coercion in states like China and Singapore can deepen the antidemocratic tendencies elsewhere. Harvey defines two main factors on neoliberalism’s succes as volatility of uneven geographical development and its success in restoring class power of the ruling elite. He goes on to argue the neoliberal state with its legal monopoly of violence playing a crucial role in backing and promoting these processes. This section lays down the empirical backdrop of the book to prepare for the second section which theorizes the uneven geographical development.

In this theory-in-making on uneven development, Harvey argues that four conditionalities must co-exist for a unified field theory on this subject matter. He lists these as (i) material embedding of capital accumulation, (ii) accumulation by dispossession (iii)law-like character of capital in space-time and (iv) class struggles across scales. Despite establishing a theory for academic purposes, Harvey doesn’t miss to include that critique of everyday life provides us with possibilities for its transformation in the Gramscian sense (pg. 86). In setting the theory, Harvey emphasizes the importance of time and space for capital accumulation. He takes this further by discussing that uneven geographical development is inherent to functioning of capitalism and indeed it is the capitalism.

After what I would call empirical and then integrative theoretical sections of the book, the final chapter of the book titled as “Space as a key word” puts forward Harvey’s argument that Marxian tradition focuses very little (with the righteous exception of Lefebvre) on understanding the problematic of space and time. As himself rightly asserts, space turn out to be a extraordinarily complicated key word in geography and politics of the public. Harvey walks us through this conceptual chapter in order to discuss the opportunities of using space as a critical tool in Marxian analyses. His contribution to this discussion finds its niche in reworking on Lefebvre’s tripartite division on space as material space, spaces of representation and representations of space. Harvey argues that space could be understood as being absolute, relative or relational. None of these alone is enough to explain the power of space in geographical explanations he argues. Elaborating his argument through redesigning of post 9/11 Ground Zero, Harvey argues that these 3 explanations of space coexist and needs to be treated as a whole. This complementary understanding of space allows us to understand and create “spaces of hope” in Harvey’s vision. This book contributes to what Harvey calls as “troubling geographies” and thus for this it will be a valuable resource for students of capitalism and its troubling effects on human geography.

Peet, R., Robbins, P. and Watts, M. J. (eds.) (2011) Global Political Ecology, Routledge

Peet, R., Robbins, P. and Watts, M. J. (eds.) (2011) Global Political Ecology, Routledge (pg. 444)

Paul Robbins (2004), in his book “Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction”, defines the purpose of political ecology as an emergent field as making visible “all the struggle hidden behind the quiet vista”. This critical insight to a developing body of literature calls for a move from studies of environmental “destruction” to “production”, from “peasants” to “producers” and from the “chains” to “networks” of explanation. In a similar vein, the second edition of the edited volume by Peet and Watts (2004), titled “Liberation Ecologies”, published in the same year challenges us all by daring to ask “what’s next?” for liberating the political ecology.

Answers to these challenges come in the shape of an edited volume by the very own authors of the books mentioned above. Published 7 years after these books, Global Political Ecology edited by Peet, Robbins and Watts (2011) is a profound attempt to bring together state of the art in a field that links the “political economy of global capitalism with the political ecology of environmental disasters and failed environmental policies”. Opening up with a discussion of failed climate change policies of post-COP15 era, the book starts by dissecting climate change debate as an exemplar of political ecology’s promise to see beyond what is on the surface. In this regard, Peet, Robbins and Watts identify what seems to embody the central issues in contemporary political ecology literature which are respectively (i) planetary characters of the ecological crisis, (ii) centrality of expert knowledges, (iii) global problems of basic provisioning services to keep ecosystems running and energetic basis of modernity itself and (iv) a particular alignment of environmental rule (pg. 10-11).

In their introductory chapted setting ground rules of the volume, authors take up the challenge to lay down the theoretical basis of neo-Marxist and poststructuralist lineages in political ecology research successfully. By doing so, they both pay attention to global flows of capital and materials as well as power-knowledge nexus in defining a road map for a global political ecology of the 21st century. Authors’ detailed analysis of main issues in political ecology establishes a firm ground to be used as an introductory text in any political ecology class. To illustrate the central issues emerging from this analysis, this edited volume is divided into 7 sections, each taking up the challenge to present a radical insight into the most pressing ecological issues of our times. It opens up with a section on food, health and the body where agriculture, livestock breeding, fisheries policy and public health issues are problematized with a critical insight. However rich in substance in regards to latter 3 topics, this section remains a little short of what might be analyzed among the overarching political ecology topics in global agriculture. Thus a rather US-EU dominated vision of “global” political ecology of agriculture in this chapter doesn’t fulfill the promise of the book fully.

The next chapter is structured on the political ecology of the slum world. Recalling Mary Douglas’ (1966) remark that “[d]irt offends against order”, this chapter critically analyzes two intrinsicly intermeshed topics which are global flows of garbage and green evictions in the third world both of which are in turn linked to dominant discourses on “lack of purity”. Following this, third chapter in this volume is dedicated to the modalities of environmental governance which find its manifestations in ecolabelling, insurance sector and management of risk and carbon offsetting schemes. Providing critical insights into global environmental governance, this chapter only falls short in addressing the recent REDD+ and payments for ecosystem services debates.

The consequent two chapters on political ecology of security and political ecology of energy scarcity provide a complementary understanding of the nature-security nexus as well as energy scarcity discourse as a means to securitize geographies and populations. Starting with internalization of “the natural” to be used in modern warfare (ie. use of honeybee and mutant ecologies), the fourth chapter continues with a discussion on production of national natures through extensive use of coercive state tactiques in stripping jungles to make managable forests and populations. Fifth chapter in this volume builds the energy basis on top of these discussions. Despite being limited on political ecologies of oil, this chapter successfully address construction of energy scarcity and its geopolitical consequences.

Arriving later in the volume is a rather short but comprehensive chapter on political ecologies of water. This chapter open with a discussion on water privatization and water as commons and follows with a discussion on social construction of water scarcity and its consequences. The volume comes to an end with a chapter on biopolitics of life focusing on political ecologies of genetic manipulation. Foucauldian concept of biopower/biopolitics and technologies of government seems to be connecting a few articles in the volume theoretically (Sections 5, 12, 18).
This well-established volume calls for a deeper understanding of “the world as it is” as David Harvey would call it. Thus it hinges itself on the political ecology of the possible, that is a world in which artificial separations of man vs. nature and ecology vs. economy disappears and deconstructs the common knowledge on the inevitability of catastrophic self-destruction of mankind. Despite some minor shortcomings (ie. little methodological diversity), this volume will probably be at the top of the reference book pile in political ecology in years to come.

References:
1) Douglas, M. (1966) “Purity and Danger”, Routledge & Kegan Paul, London.
2) Peet, R. and Watts, M. J. (2004): “Liberation Ecologies”. Routledge, London.
3) Robbins, P. (2004): “Political Ecology: A Critical Introduction”. Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, Malden.

Book Review: Strawberry Fields by Miriam J. Wells

Strawberry Fields: Politics, Class and Work in Californian Agriculture, Miriam J. Wells (1996)

Cornell University Press

Miriam J. Wells in this book touches upon a topic that is widely unspoken about in advanced capitalist countries' agricultural development: migrant seasonal workers. Based on 14 years of extensive ethnographic fieldwork (in the period 1976-1990), Wells states that this book is an attempt to provide an insight into daily lives of migrant workers as well as an attempt to locate their lives at the junction of social conflict and economic restructuring. The book is organized into 9 chapters, starting with class relations and organization of work. Then Wells provides us with an historical insight of the Californian strawberry industry (Chapter 2) followed by the political construction of farm labor (Chapter 3). Having built the historical context, Wells starts problematizing the issues of local organization of production and growers, wage labor and workplace control, workplace justice, the role of federal and national policies in post-WWII revitalization of the sharecropping and concludes with the legal conflicts, class struggles and political responses to economic change.

Wells’ book opens with a preface on doing ethnography within a particular agricultural industry in 3 valleys of California (Salinas, Pajaro and North Monterrey valleys), which is strawberry production. This area is particularly important as 52% of all farmworkers in the USA are employed in California with 78% of the farmwork done in the state carried out by hired farmworkers. She argues that ethnography into the nature of this industry reveals a particular complexity as “several distinct fields of activity [were] divided along lines of ethnicity, position in the occupational structure and locality of dominant involvement”(pg. xvi). Following in-depth methodological remarks she makes in the preface, Wells provides us with appendices on methodology at the end of 4^th and 5^th chapters.

As the essence of her argument, Wells argue that class relations are structurally influenced but not structurally determined as they are “hammered out in the interactions between social classes in concrete historical contexts”. Thus what she proposes is that in order to explain the causes and processes of contemporary economic restructuring one must consider 3 influences beyond the structure of capitalism, which she lists as those of politics, industry and the locality. According to her, 3 political forces were mostly instrumental in composing the labor regimes in such contexts: changes in immigration policy, expansion of protective labor legislation into agriculture and the rise of agricultural unionization.

Wells provides us with some interesting arguments regarding the role of immigration, creation of vulnerability and civil rights. She mentions that “ironically the success of civil rights movement […] in increasing the entitlements of US citizens also enhanced the relative vulnerability of noncitizens and increased their utility to employers”(pg. 63). She also related this to the state of “chronically surplus labor market” that forms after the end of Bracero Program (1942-1965), which was a government sponsored program to bring Mexican workers to employ in US agriculture in post-WWII period. She observes that end of this period allowed growers to continue accumulation through using the political vulnerability of undocumented workers to uncut wage demands and prevent consolidation of power. Then she goes on to explain the 3 sites in detail according to 4 main points which are: a) economic organization and class composition, b) employment strategies, c) production relations and d) labor resistance (which seems to be most influenced by James C. Scott’s seminal book, Weapons of the Weak (1985)).

Despite all the achievements, Wells at times goes too much into historical details and micro-ethnography and provides us with a rather short account of how these translate into class struggle. Equally timing of the publication of the book seems to be about a long time after the fieldwork, which keeps us curious about the progression of the labor system in 1990s. Yet this book is an interesting read for those interested in how labor-intensive agriculture is structured in an advanced capitalist state, depending on continuous influx of precarious migrants. Main point of the book though remains to be valid: “In contemporary capitalist agriculture, political forces join – and sometimes outweigh - economic forces in shaping the relations between social classes at work”.

Seeing like a State - James Scott (1998)

James Scott is a professor from Yale University, Agrarian Studies. He is particularly famous for his work with Weapons of the Weak (1985) on everyday forms of peasant struggle and moral economy in southeast Asia. Currently I'm reading his book, Seeing like a state, where he critiques (and explains) the failure of certain schemes that were meant to improve human conditions. In this work, he argues that there are four main issues at play why these schemes went wrong:

1. First one is the administrative ordering of nature and society. The transformative state simplifies the relations between people and their surroundings
2. There exists a high-modernist ideology that thinks about people more than they do for themselves. In this vision, Scott argues that there often happens a miniaturization of modernity when larger scale attempts fail. Thus these miniature high-modernist plans in micro-spaces create further surveillance and control for the people. It shapes their aspirations for their lives.
3. Scott sees it inevitable that some sort of an authoritarian state is existent and willing & able to use coercive power to bring these high-modernist plans to life.
   
4. Last but not least, there often exists a "prostrate" civil society which lacks capacity to resist. Here at this point it might be useful to talk about Swyngedouw's "Communist hypothesis and revolutionary capitalisms" article. Swyngedouw argues that "Fear of failing has become so overwhelming that fear of real change is all that is left: Resistance is as far as our horizons reach - transformation, it seems, can no longer be thought, let alone be practiced."

Scott argues that in sum, the legibility of a society provides the capacity for large-scale social engineering, high modernist ideology provides desire [ps. an analysis of Lacan would fit here, Bjorn Sletto (2006) reports that - drawing on Lacanian psychoanalysis- desires are important determinants of institutional processes of place-making that is the social and material production of space occuring thru the fantasies of planning institutions and the material sources (economic power, exclusive right to violence and equipment) of state agencies.], authoritarian state provides determination to act on desire, an incapable civil society levels the social terrain on which to build.