Building Dignified Worlds: Geographies of Collective Action

202 Pages·2016·1.43 MB·English

by  Gerda Roelvink

BUILDING DIGNIFIED WORLDS
Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds
Series Editors: J. K. Gibson- Graham, Maliha Safri, Kevin St. Martin, Stephen Healy
1 Building Dignified Worlds: Geographies of Collective Action
Gerda Roelvink
B U I L D I N G

D I G N I F I E D W O R L D S
GEOGRAPHIES OF COLLECTIVE ACTION
Gerda Roelvink
Diverse Economies and Livable Worlds 1
UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA PRESS
MINNEAPOLIS • LONDON
Portions of chapter 2 were previously published in “Broadening the Horizons of
Economy,” Journal of Cultural Economy 2, no. 3 (2009): 325– 44. Portions of chapter 3
were published in “Collective Action and the Politics of Affect,” Emotion, Space, and
Society 3, no. 2 (2010): 111– 18. Portions of chapter 5 were published in “Rethinking Marx’s
Species Being in the Anthropocene,” Rethinking Marxism 25, no. 1 (2013): 52– 69.
Copyright 2016 by the Regents of the University of Minnesota
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,
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written permission of the publisher.
Published by the University of Minnesota Press
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Minneapolis, MN 55401-2520
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Roelvink, Gerda.
Title: Building dignified worlds : geographies of collective action / Gerda Roelvink.
Description: Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2016. | Series: Diverse
economies and livable worlds ; 1 | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2015026040| ISBN 978-0-8166-7617-0 (hc) |
ISBN 978-0-8166-8317-8 (pb)
Subjects: LCSH: Social movements. | Social change. | Organizational change. |
Economic development—Social aspects. | Marketing—Social aspects. |
Globalization—Social aspects. | Social sciences—Research.
Classification: LCC HM881 .R64 2016 | DDC 303.48/4—dc23
LC record available at http://lccn.loc.gov/2015026040
Printed in the United States of America on acid- free paper
The University of Minnesota is an equal- opportunity educator and employer.
21 20 19 18 17 16 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
For Julie Graham
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Contents
Introduction: Geographies of Collective Action 1
1. The Discontents of Knowing Neoliberalism 23
2. Spatializing Economic Concerns 59
3. Affective Collective Action 83
4. Transforming Markets 109
5. Dignified Humanity, Dignified World 135
Conclusion: Doing Research Together 157
Acknowledgments 173
Notes 175
Bibliography 177
Index 189
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Introduction
Geographies of Collective Action
I sometimes think of social science as being a bit like coming up with
constellations in the night sky. You step out under this vast sky and there are
thousands of stars. The human brain picks out eight of them, and turns them
into a stick figure, and calls it Orion. The issue is not only that some people
get out there and say, “Hey, that is not a mighty hunter, it’s a saucepan!” It is
also that once someone has taught you the constellations, each time you step
under the night sky, you look for that constellation. There are millions and
millions of stars. But our minds will gravitate to trying to find those eight
stars and will focus on them, filtering everything else out.
— Lindy Edwards at the Sydney Writer’s Festival, 2007
Pondering Contemporary Alignments
While there is a long history of social movement struggle, contemporary
forms of collective action centered on political economic concerns and joining
diverse groups together can be linked back to what was and still is popularly
known as the antiglobalization movement or, in more technical language, a
movement against neoliberal capitalist globalization. The antiglobalization
movement has been a struggle against a powerful alignment of economy
and society, an association so strong that it has been dubbed TINA, “There
Is No Alternative.” Just as the eye is drawn to the same constellations of stars
once they are given a name and description, the alignment called neoliberal-
ism can be seen in most areas of life. Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2002,
381) take this as evidence that neoliberalism has become a “commonsense of
the times”:
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