The Dictionary of Human Geography (121 page)

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Authors: Michael Watts

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Marxist geography
The analysis of the geo graphical conditions, processes and outcomes of socio economic systems, primarily capital ism, using the tools of Marxist theory. Marxist geography is significant both for its role in the evolution of the discipline and, more import antly, for its analytical claims about the world in which we live. (NEW PARAGRAPH) Marxism first became an important theoret ical influence in GEOGRAPHy in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Motivated by the radical pol itics of that era, many younger geographers grew dissatisfied with the then dominant vis ion of geography as a technocratic, positivist spatial science. They noted that: (i) a narrow focus on spatial patterns often left unexamined and unchallenged the social processes that produced the inequalities evident in those patterns; (ii) technically oriented, ostensibly neutral geographical techniques and analyses often served in practice to enable and perpetu ate various relations of domination; and (iii) the ?universal laws? advanced by spatial ana lysts were often merely generalizations about industrialized Western societies. Marxist the ory, by contrast, was dialectical, overtly pol itical, focused on the analysis and remediation of exploitation and inequality, and inter nationalist. It therefore seemed to many an ideal theoretical foundation for a critical geog raphy aimed at understanding and combating the production of unequal geographies. Rad ical geography framed in terms of Marxist the ory grew quickly in the discipline: its arrival was signalled by the publication of the first issue of Antipode in 1969, and its theoretical architecture and points of departure from positivist spatial science were first laid out clearly in David Harvey?s Social justice and the city in 1973. (NEW PARAGRAPH) For much of the 1970s and 1980s, Marxist approaches were the dominant ones in crit ical human GEOGRAPHy. Scholars working in this area developed increasingly comprehen sive and detailed accounts of the geographical dynamics of capitalism, demonstrating persuasively both that Marxist theories of cap italism were incomplete without attention to spatial dynamics, and that identifiable capital ist processes and relations lay at the root of many issues of concern in contemporary human and environmental geography. Despite the fact that much of this work emerged from a critique of spatial science, some of it still bore the stamp of that theoretical tradition, inas much as much early Marxist geography sought to provide systematic, logical, deductive and generalizable accounts of the spatial processes and outcomes likely to result from endogenous dynamics understood as inherent to capitalism. David Harvey?s The limits to capital (1999 [1982]) remains the single most ambitious and significant work in this vein. In this and other works, Harvey sought to build upon Marx?s basic framework (see Marx, 1967 [1987]) to analyse the ways in which capitalism uses and produces space and particular geo graphical relationships. For instance, ongoing uneven dEvELOPMENT at multiple SCALES was interpreted as the inevitable result of the ten sion between the need for capital to be fixed in place bound material forms in order for pro duction to occur on the one hand, and the imperative for it to remain liquid and mobile in the face of competition and shifting rates of profit in different places and sectors on the other. Similarly, Harvey explored how geo graphical relationships and strategies could be used to stave off crisis tendencies. Other work in this period was more historical in nature, examining the role that geographical relation ships played in the origins of capitalism whether those that concentrated large numbers of wage labourers in urban areas, thereby fos tering class consciousness, or those that vio lently extracted and transferred labour and raw materials from colonies to industrializing core countries (e.g. Amin, 1976). Marxist geography (broadly conceived) also intersected productively with debates in ThlRd woRLd Marxism in this period, leading to the develop ment of explicitly geographical theorizations of the global capitalist economy, including woRLd sysTEMS ThEORy (Wallerstein, 1979) and dE PENdENcy ThEORy (Frank, 1967), as well as critiques of the geographical imaginations underlying what often remained EUROCENTRIC conceptualizations of the global economy (Blaut, 1993). This brief review cannot do just ice to the extent of Marxist geography in these decades, which also examined questions ran ging from regional economic development strategies and industrial location decisions (e.g. Storper and Walker, 1989) to historical materialist interpretations of cultural polit ics (e.g. Harvey, 1989b). Marxist geographers? engagement with the discipline?s nature sociETy tradition proved highly fruitful as well: the intersection of Marxist theory, cul tural ECOLOGy and related work in the 1970s led directly to the burgeoning field now known as political ECOLOGy (e.g. Watts, 1983a), while Neil Smith, focusing more on industrialized countries, made the strong claim that nature under capitalism was increasingly materially produced (1990). Such engagements sparked a line of work on the PROdUCTlON Of nature that continues up to the present (e.g. Henderson, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , including debates about the primacy that such perspectives accord humans in gen eral, and capitalist processes in particular, in the co construction of nature. Much recent work in Marxist geography has focused less on structuralist Marxist economics, and sought instead to provide critical EThNOGRAPhlES of capitalist societies (Postone, 1993; see, e.g., (NEW PARAGRAPH) Chari, 2004; Wright, 2004), while at the same time re evaluating core Marxist concepts, such as primitive accumulation, in light of contem porary geographies (e.g. Glassman, 2006). (NEW PARAGRAPH) Marxist geography itself soon became an object of critique, however, not least because of its very scope. Beginning in the early 1990s, much critical theory in geography and related fields moved strongly towards ?post Marxist? theoretical frameworks that accept many basic elements of Marxist theory (e.g. the centrality of commodification and exploitation in capit alist societies) while criticizing much Marxism as fatally ?modern?; that is, as an overly ambi tious and totalizing meta theory that seeks to explain nearly all human experiences, dlffER ences and power relations via a narrow, econ omistic schema in which interests, conflicts, outcomes and even forms of consciousness can be deterministically read off from the pos ition of an individual or group within relations of production (see Castree, 1999b). Whether such critiques rest upon a fair reading of all Marxist theory is debatable, but what is beyond question is that in recent years many critical geographers have found Marxism unhelpful, and sometimes even a hindrance, in attempts to analyse and combat multiple and intertwined forms of oppression. Instead, theoretical frameworks broadly characterizable as post structuralist (see post structuralism) have dominated critical geography in recent years, providing different entry points and tools with which to grapple with the problematics of GENdER, RACISM, SExUALITy, POST COLONIALISM and what might constitute ?Left? or radical pol itics in the contemporary era. Gibson Graham (2006b [1996]), for instance, made a widely influential argument that Marxism often grants ?capitalism? far more coherence and power than it actually has, and that radical politics would be better pursued by seeking to identify and foster more modest alternatives to capitalist relations from the ground up, rather than by attempting to analyse and transform ?capitalism? as a global totality. Framings that pit these various theoret ical frameworks against one another frequently rely upon quite reductive and static renderings of each; the most robust work in critical geography makes use of multiple theoretical perspectives in order to develop the fullest and most rigorous critical analyses possible. Nonetheless, Neil Smith?s observation (2005a, p. 897) that Marxism, ?... may be the one oppositional politics which really has not been significantly rescripted into media fodder, integrated, in greater or lesser part co opted, but always has to be opposed?, suggests at (NEW PARAGRAPH) the least Marxism?s enduring significance for critical geography. jM (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Gibson Graham (2006b [1996]); Harvey (1999 (NEW PARAGRAPH) ); Henderson (1999); Smith (1990). (NEW PARAGRAPH)
masculinism
The tracing of connections between cultures of masculinity, knowledge and power. It is located within traditions of Western scientific rationality; in particular, the dualisms between mind and body, and suBjECT and object, and the presumption that scientific knowledge can and should be objective and context free. Masculinist knowledge is criti cized for claiming to be exhaustive or universal, while actually ignoring women?s existences or casting them within a gendered binary, framed from the perspective of men. Rose (1993) ar gues that geography is a masculinist discipline, and that masculinism determines conventions of what is deemed worthy of geographical investigation, flELDWORk practice, theory de velopment, writing and representation, as well as everyday academic life from conduct in seminars to job searches and promotion. She identifies two masculinities (social scientific and aesthetic) that frame this pervasive mas culinism within the academic geographical imagination. (See also epistemology; fEMINIST geographies; phallocentrism; (NEW PARAGRAPH) POST STRUCTURALISM.) GP (NEW PARAGRAPH)
material culture
Relationships between people and things, or, more formally put, the expression and negotiation of cultural, polit ical and economic relationships via the mater ial world of objects. Appadurai?s (1986) noted text in this area supplies a further shorthand definition: The social life of things. Culture has often been conceived as an immaterial and disembodied entity, composed of ideas, cus toms, knowledges and shared beliefs and val ues. One task for material culture studies today an interdisciplinary venture, bringing together researchers from human geography, archaeology, anthropology, sociology and cul tural and social theory has been to examine how cultural beliefs and values gain perman ence, power and significance through being given material form and expression in build ings, artefacts, commodities, visual symbols, displays, rituals and so on. Beyond this, how ever, writers in this area have also increasingly been concerned to think through the inherent materiality of culture itself. This has involved attending to the question of how cultural val ues are materially produced and circulated. It has further involved rethinking the categories of ?culture? and ?materiality? themselves. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The origins of material culture studies are complex. Traditionally, archaeology and an thropology have been the disciplines most clearly associated with the study of material forms of culture. Archaeology takes a realm of recovered material objects as the basis from which it seeks to reconstruct past cultures. Equally, anthropology places emphasis upon the importance ofmaterial forms and processes (NEW PARAGRAPH) objects, clothes, buildings in the formation and communication of distinctive cultures and subcultures. However, contemporary material culture studies also draws inspiration from semiotic and interpretative analyses of the sig nificance of particular commodity forms under capitalism. In such analyses (e.g. Roland Barthes? 1957 Mythologies), cultural objects such as cars, wine and washing powders are understood as texts which are authored (or produced) and read (consumed) in various ways, and this is viewed as a process in which particular hegemonic or ideological cultural meanings are communicated and reproduced. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The study of commodities and their use and consumption has continued to be a main stay of material culture studies (e.g. Miller, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , and this has further been one of the most important ways in which human geog raphers have contributed to and interacted with this field (e.g. Jackson, 1999). Over the past ten years, studies of the materiality of cultures and commodities have indeed flour ished in human geography. In part, this has been framed in terms of an agenda seeking to ?re materialize? human geographies (Jackson, (NEW PARAGRAPH) , in the wake of a cultural turn which, it is argued, placed undue emphasis upon the determining role vis a vis cultural practice of imaginative geographies of texts and images. This renewed geographical empiri cism takes shape through studies ?following? material objects within circuits of capital and commodity chains (e.g. Cook, 2004), and through studies focused upon the physical materialities of particular spaces and practices. At the same time, work drawing inspiration from actor NETWORk THEORY and new vital isms has aimed to overcome a traditional dual ity in which matter is viewed as dead and inanimate, and can only be given meaning and form via the conduits of human thought and discourse. Writing in this area (e.g. Anderson and Tolia Kelly, 2004) has been explicitly concerned to rethink the epistemo logical status of material objects, and has sought to develop languages and methods (NEW PARAGRAPH) through which the agency and, it is argued, inherent ?liveliness? of the material world might be addressed. jwy (NEW PARAGRAPH)
materialism
The history of materialism as a keyword in Western PHlLOSOPHy can be traced back to the Early Atomists in Greek thought, particularly Democritus, and thereon in the writings of Epicurus and Lucretius. Materialism has multiple strands, more or less mechanistic and more or less sensational ist. What each shares is the metaphysical claim that the nature, constitution and structure of reality are physical. Materialism is typically contrasted to various forms of spiritualism or otherworldly existence (such as belief in God or supernatural beings), or to idealism that is to say, a metaphysics that privileges mental entities in other words, minds and their states over physical entities. Of course, dual ist metaphysics that admit as ?real? both phys ical and mental entities are also possible. (NEW PARAGRAPH) The Italian philologist Sebastiano Timpanaro provides one of the most forthright definitions of materialism on record. In his monograph On materialism, he writes: (NEW PARAGRAPH) By materialism we understand above all acknowledgement of the priority of nature over ?mind?, or if you like, of the physical level over the biological level, and of the biological level over the socio economic and cultural level; both in the sense of chronological priority . . . and in the sense of the conditioning which nature still exer cises on man and will continue to exercise for the foreseeable future. Cognitively, therefore, the materialist maintains that experience cannot be reduced either to a production of reality by a subject . . . or to a reciprocal implication of subject and object. (1976, p. 34) (NEW PARAGRAPH) Few would disagree that the physical world precedes life and consciousness, and that other life forms precede the human. But to contend that nature is a self evident or even autonomous domain that unilaterally condi tions ?man? is problematic. As Raymond Williams (2005b [1980]) notes, Timpanaro?s separation of nature and human wilfully ignores the fact that the materials that com prise nature are extrinsic and intrinsic to human beings. Additionally, a diverse litera ture on the production Of nature within fields such as agrarian studies, Marxist geog RAPHy, and science and technology studies (see science/science studies) armed with (NEW PARAGRAPH) a retinue of concepts such as ?social nature?, ?cyBORG?, ?techno natures? and ?post humanism? (See posthumanism) demolishes the notion of an independent nature. (NEW PARAGRAPH) What, then, binds materialism in its various forms historical, dialectical, linguistic, cul tural and postmodern? First, there is a rejec tion of spiritualism and idealism (indeed, radical materialists would contend that the dichotomy between idealism and materialism is itself an artefact of idealism); second, there is an emphasis on the social effects of an object or material world that is at least partly autonomous of humans; and, third, there is a commitment to forms of explanation that are attentive to the specific properties of materials as they influence in often unpredictable ways various sorts of interactions between human and non human bodies. A specifically Marxist materialism might additionally assert that materialism is ultimately about how a mode Of production constitutes matter (nature, human bodies, language) through social labour which then carries the implication that any being is a historical and political fabrication. VG (NEW PARAGRAPH) Suggested reading (NEW PARAGRAPH) Althusser (1977 [1965]); Smith (1984); Williams (2005b [1980]). (NEW PARAGRAPH)

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