These debates occur more readily outside the discipline.
For example, the new book below looks promising.
I am finding teaching about development and peripheral regions to be quite
liberating OUTSIDE geography. Sitting in on other peoples' lectures at the
LSE, it is evident that in a 20 week course on development theory, there is
virtually no geographer on the reading list. In particular , the work of
Wallerstein, who has some discussion of space and peripheries in his work,
is generally considered to be passe' and unhelpful - a theoretical dead end.
Harvey, Smith, MAssey et al are not featured.
Although this state of affairs might feed into Massey's early critique that
the spatial dynamics of capital are poorly theorized and understood in the
social sciences more widely (or ignored), I makes me think that it more
helpful to turn the question around - what can geographers learn from the
masses of literature on peripheral capitalism that does NOT fit our standard
disciplinary models of modernisation/globalisation/deindustrialisation?
There is plenty of it; eg Jonathan Parry's work on the articulations of
caste, migrant labour and state corporations in central India.
Parry_JP Lords of labour: working and shirking in Bhilai. Contributions to
Indian sociology, Jan-Aug 1999, Vol.33, No.1-2, pp.107-140
Dr Simon Batterbury
Lecturer, Development Studies Institute (DESTIN)
LSE, Houghton St
London WC2A 2AE, UK
fax (44 0) 20-7955-6844
telephone (+44 0)20-7955-7771 (direct) 7425 (general office)
Web pages: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/depts/geo/simon.html
TITLE: The Subsistence Perspective - Beyond the Globalised Economy
AUTHORS: Maria Mies & Veronika Bennholdt-Thomsen
ISBN/PRICE: 1 85649 775 5 hbk GBP45.00/US$65.00
1 85649 776 3 pbk GBP15.95/US$25.00
FEATURES: Notes/Bibliography/Table/Index/256 pp
COURSE RELEVANCE: Economics/Women's Studies/Development/Social Theory
KEY POINTS
- A compelling alternative to the top-down ideology of development
politics
- A radical and wide-ranging feminist perspective on the
globalisation debate
ABOUT THE BOOK
In this book, two leading feminist thinkers pose a radical
alternative to the current free-market industrial system.
hey show how, if we are to survive, economies must
become needs-based, environmentally sustainable,
co-operative and local. They explain how the current capitalist
system is none of these things, is inherently unstable and
is dependent on the exploitation of various marginalized groups,
particularly women, and of the environment. They call instead for a
new politics and economics based on subsistence and, drawing on
practical examples from Africa, Latin America and Europe, show how
this principle can and does have a positive effect on market
exchange.
The book brilliantly demonstrates how development only works when it
is done from the bottom up and concludes with a call for a new
politics based on the view from below.
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Raju Das [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 10 November 1999 16:43
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: parochialism of radical political economy in geography
>
> I must say that radical political economy has been very much
> 'capital-centric' in the sense that it almost always neglects that
> there is a world outside the orbit of capitalist _production_
> relations (it is also capital-centric in the sense Herod has been
> discussing for years now -- that it has ignored class struggle and
> its role in the production of geographies). Think of the vast
> peasantry and the semi-proletarians in Africa, South Asia etc.
> The exchange-oriented view of capital is amenable to spatial
> treatment and hence geographers have fallen for dependency type
> formulations. But I have not seen many interesting geographical works
> on non/pre-capitalism in the periphery as it exists now: the
> articulation of modes of production (Rey, Wolpe etc), on peripheral
> capitalism (Hamza Alavi, Banaji), and so on. If you know of any
> geographical work (does not have to be by geographers), please let me
> know. (Rey, Wolpe etc
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