--- Raju Das wrote on 30/10/01 ---
>I think that as long as we live in class societies, and especially, in a
>world dominated by capitalism and imperialism,
Read 'exploitation' and 'oppression'.
>But class is precisely something that has almost
>vanished from the critical/Left human geography work. Where does this
>then place critical/Left geographers in relation to (the understanding
>of) of terrorism and other forms of violence?
If Leftist geographers have abandoned class as a critique, they are
also ignoring it as reality. If people ignore class they ignore the
corresponding exploitation that goes with it - the very base on which
both domestic and international society is based upon. If this is the
case then they are not really leftist geographers at all, but,
probably just using the labels 'radical' or 'leftist' or whatever to
identify themselves as distinct and different from the mainstream.
As anyone on this list that was born into the 'English working class'
will know, class exists every bit as much today as it ever has done -
it is just manifest in different ways, though of course, taking
'exploitation' as the fulcrum of 'class', one could assert that it
hasn't really changed very much at all.
>Can we really understand
>the latter if we ignore class, including its geographical forms such as
>imperialism? Raju
Yes Raju, violence goes hand-in-hand with capitalism/exploitation and
imperialism/oppression - one only has to look at current events over
the last month or so to see this. Only by recognising 'class' in it's
international context and the imperialism/oppression that goes with
it - either culturally, spiritually, economically, or otherwise, can
one can clearly identify the lynchpin of violence - exploitation.
Paul.
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Paul Broome
Department of Geography
Royal Holloway
University of London
Egham, Surrey, TW20 OEX, UK
Tel: +44 (0)178 444 3574
Fax: +44 (0)178 447 2386
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