WORKERS AS GEOGRAPHICAL ACTORS

Andrew Herod

doi:10.33026/peg.v18i2.5335

Abstract

In this paper I first detail some of the geographical concepts that help us make sense of capitalism’s spatiality. I then provide several brief vignettes which illustrate how conflicts over how capitalism’s geography is made can be central to disputes both between and within groups of workers and capitalists. The paper’s purpose is to argue that understanding how social life is geographically structured can add important insights to explaining economic and political praxis.

Highlights

RESUMO: Neste artigo serão detalhados alguns conceitos geográficos que nos ajudam a entender a espacialidade do capitalismo
To be able to reproduce themselves over time, in other words, capitalists have a vested interest in ensuring that the geography of capitalism is constructed in certain ways, ways that facilitate the realization of profit and the accumulation of capital
For Lefebvre, the spatiality of capitalism is established through this triad and different sets of social actors may struggle with one another over each or every aspect of it, simultaneously or separately – that is to say, workers and capitalists may collectively agree on the plans for a particular space but disagree as to what its symbolic meaning might be, or they may agree on a place’s symbolic meaning but want to see different things happen to it, or they may disagree about both a place’s symbolic value and plans to alter its physicality through, for instance, redevelopment

Summary

Absolute versus relative distance

Distance is often thought to be a fairly self-evident measure of the interaction between places. This is a notion of place where specificity (local uniqueness, a sense of place) derives not from some mythical internal roots nor from a history of relative isolation – to be disrupted by globalisation – but precisely from the absolute particularity of the mixture of influences found together there.[22] This conceptualization of place is important because it means that all places seem to express a certain uniqueness (no two places are exactly alike), this uniqueness is traceable to broader social processes like capital circulation, to the place’s location within the broader spatial division of labor, and to the articulation of class (and other) conflicts within particular places, amongst other things. This means that processes of class formation and action are spatially structured as well as structuring, a fact which forces analysts to consider how the spatiality of capitalism shapes the social practices of workers and capitalists (and other social actors)

Pulling things together

STRUGGLING GEOGRAPHICALLY

Struggles to organize across space

Shifting the geographical terrain of struggle

Findings

CONCLUDING REMARKS