Hal Baron as Radical Geographer: Institutions, Geopolitics, and the Reproduction of Racial Capitalism

Abstract

Harold Maurice Baron (1930–2017) was a researcher and organizer of the Chicago Freedom Movement (1965–1967) who made important contributions to racial formation theory and the broader theorization of the relationship between racism and capitalism. Baron produced notable contributions to the study of racism throughout the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s, such as his essays “The Demand for Black Labor,” “Racial Domination in Advanced Capitalism,” and “Racism Transformed: The Implications of the 1960s.” I argue that Baron can be productively read as a radical geographer, and in turn, that his corpus offers important theoretical reflections for the task of building antiracist geographies. Baron produced a “geopolitical” interpretation of racism in the United States, highlighting how racist practices were used as problem-solving measures by the hegemonic institutions of postwar capitalism, most notably the capitalist state (at multiple scales), capitalist production, and the imperative to manage the unemployed and racialized poor (particularly via civil society institutions). In this article, I outline Baron’s research project as it evolved throughout his life, and offer a geographical interpretation of his work, highlighting his relevance to contemporary theoretical projects within human geography.