Table Of ContentThe Point Is To Change It
Antipode Book Series
General Editor:Noel Castree,Professor of Geography,University of Manchester,UK
Like its parent journal,the Antipode Book Series reflects distinctive new developments
in radical geography. It publishes books in a variety of formats – from reference books
to works of broad explication to titles that develop and extend the scholarly research
base – but the commitment is always the same:to contribute to the praxis of a new and
more just society.
Published
The Point Is To Change It
Edited by Noel Castree,Paul Chatterton,Nik Heynen,Wendy Larner,and Melissa W. Wright
Practising Public Scholarship:Experiences and Possibilities Beyond the Academy
Edited by Katharyne Mitchell
Grounding Globalization:Labour in the Age of Insecurity
Edward Webster,Rob Lambert and Andries Bezuidenhout
Privatization:Property and the Remaking of Nature-Society Relations
Edited by Becky Mansfield
Decolonizing Development:Colonial Power and the Maya
Joel Wainwright
Cities of Whiteness
Wendy S. Shaw
Neoliberalization:States,Networks,Peoples
Edited by Kim England and Kevin Ward
The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism:Cleaners in the Global Economy
Edited by Luis L. M. Aguiar and Andrew Herod
David Harvey:A Critical Reader
Edited by Noel Castree and Derek Gregory
Working the Spaces of Neoliberalism:Activism,Professionalisation and
Incorporation
Edited by Nina Laurie and Liz Bondi
Threads of Labour:Garment Industry Supply Chains from the Workers'
Perspective
Edited by Angela Hale and Jane Wills
Life’s Work:Geographies of Social Reproduction
Edited by Katharyne Mitchell,Sallie A. Marston and Cindi Katz
Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth
Linda McDowell
Spaces of Neoliberalism
Edited by Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore
Space,Place and the New Labour Internationalism
Edited by Peter Waterman and Jane Wills
Forthcoming
Space of Environmental Justice
Edited by Ryan Holifield,Michael Porter and Gordon Walker
Working Places:Property,Nature and the Political Possibilities
of Community Land Ownership
Fiona D. Mackenzie
The Point Is To Change It
Geographies of Hope and Survival
in an Age of Crisis
Edited by
Noel Castree, Paul Chatterton, Nik Heynen,
Wendy Larner and Melissa W. Wright
A John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., Publication
This edition first published 2010
Chapters ©2010 the Authors
Book Compilation ©2010 Editorial Board of Antipode and Blackwell Publishing Ltd
First published as volume 41,supplement 1 of Antipode
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
The point is to change it :geographies of hope and survival in an age of crisis/edited
by Noel Castree ... [et al.].
p. cm. – (Antipode book series)
Includes index.
“First published as volume 41,supplement 1 of Antipode.”
ISBN 978-1-4051-9834-9 (pbk. :alk. paper) 1. Geography. I. Castree,Noel,1968-
G62.P65 2009
320.01′1–dc22
2010002766
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication data is available for this book
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
Set in 10.5pt Times
by Aptara,New Delhi,India
Printed in Singapore
by Markono Print Media Pte Ltd.
01 2010
Antipode
Volume 41 Supplement 1
CONTENTS
The Point Is To Change It
Introduction:The Point Is To Change It
Noel Castree,Paul Chatterton,Nik Heynen,Wendy Larner
and Melissa W. Wright 1
1 Now and Then
Michael J. Watts 10
2 The Idea of Socialism:From 1968 to the Present-day Crisis
Hugo Radice 27
3 The Revolutionary Imperative
Neil Smith 50
4 To Make Live or Let Die? Rural Dispossession and the Protection
of Surplus Populations
Tania Murray Li 66
5 Postneoliberalism and Its Malcontents
Jamie Peck,Nik Theodore and Neil Brenner 94
6 D/developments after the Meltdown
Gillian Hart 117
7 Is the Globalization Consensus Dead?
Robert Wade 142
8 The Uses of Neoliberalism
James Ferguson 166
9 Crisis,Continuity and Change:Neoliberalism,the Left and
the Future of Capitalism
Noel Castree 185
10 Money Games:Currencies and Power in the Contemporary
World Economy
John Agnew 214
11 Pre-Black Futures
Katharyne Mitchell 239
12 The Shape of Capitalism to Come
Paul Cammack 262
13 Who Counts? Dilemmas of Justice in a Postwestphalian World
Nancy Fraser 281
14 The Communist Hypothesis and Revolutionary Capitalisms:
st
Exploring the Idea of Communist Geographies for the 21 Century
Erik Swyngedouw 298
15 An Economic Ethics for the Anthropocene
J. K. Gibson-Graham and Gerda Roelvink 320
Index 347
Introduction:
The Point Is To Change It
Noel Castree
SchoolofEnvironmentandDevelopment,UniversityofManchester,UK
Paul Chatterton
SchoolofGeography,UniversityofLeeds,UK
Nik Heynen
DepartmentofGeography,UniversityofGeorgia,USA
Wendy Larner
SchoolofGeographicalSciences,UniversityofBristol,UK
Melissa W. Wright
DepartmentofGeography,PennsylvaniaStateUniversity,USA;
[email protected]
The title we have chosen for this book, borrowed from one of Marx’s
most famous injunctions, is an invitation to think and a provocation
to act. We’re in the midst of some exceptionally challenging, complex
and momentous changes to the global economy, polity, society and
ecology. Disease, starvation, malnutrition, hunger, poverty, torture,
unlawfulimprisonment,poverty,marginalization,racialdiscrimination,
cultural chauvinism, ethnic prejudice, gender inequality, religious
intolerance, sexual discrimination, and environmental destruction are
all signature features of the early twenty-first century. Democracy,
in its various imperfect actually existing forms, is something that
only a small minority of the world’s people enjoy. Material wealth
exists in abundance, but is commanded disproportionately by an
elite of financiers, land developers, property tycoons, commodity
traders, corrupt politicians and owners of various transnational
corporations. “Uneven development” is, today, extreme in both social
andgeographicalterms.Equalityofopportunity(nevermindoutcome)
is still an idealist’s dream in most of the twenty-first century world.
AntipodeVol.41No.S12009ISSN0066-4812,pp1–9
doi:10.1111/j.1467-8330.2009.00713.x
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2 Antipode
Militarismisalsowrit-large:thelegalandillegaltradeinweaponryhelps
to sustain the economies of supply countries and underpins seemingly
endlessconflagrationsintheglobalSouth.Geopoliticaltensionsbubble
under the surface where they are not already made manifest. Virtually
alloftheworld’sproblemshaveaninternationaldimensiontothem,yet
cross-governmentaleffortstoenactjoined-uppolicy—suchastheKyoto
protocol—are routinely foiled or attenuated. On top of this, the new
powerhouses of capitalism—such as China and India—seem to be
following a Western road to development, with all this implies for the
world’secology.Andwehaven’tevenmentionedtheeffectsoftherecent
worldfinancialcrisis.Butlikeanycrisismoment,thelatenoughtiesare
also a crossroads, a crucial interregnum of immense opportunity and
newpossibilities.
Theessaysinthisvolumehavebeencommissionedtomarkthe40th
birthdayofAntipode:ARadicalJournalofGeography.Thejournalwas
foundedduringanextraordinaryperiodinmodernhistory,oneinwhich
hopesforprogressivechangewereexceedinglyhigh.Fourdecadeson,
andLeftistshaveanawfullottocontemplate.Wethinkthisisespecially
true for those of us who work with ideas and books, abstractions and
words,amongthesundrytoolsoftheacademictradeaswearefacedwith
the task of using them to engage with the world in progressive ways.
Plying the tools of our trade to reveal more effectively the multiple
relations of power along with bolstering efforts for thwarting these
relations continues to be an urgent challenge confronting academic
leftists.ItisthechallengethatAntipodehasembracedsinceitsfounding
in 1969 as its many contributors endeavor to generate knowledge
and pedagogy that sustain resistance to all manner of injustice and
exploitationinaworldinwhichthebestwaystodosoarenotpatently
clear.
Engagingwiththischallengeisthedefactoobligationofanyjournal
that proudly claims the word “radical” in its masthead. Linguistically,
the term originates from the Latin word, radix, meaning “root” that
links the term to the idea of foundational truth, as is commonly used
in mathematics, chemistry and also in politics, as radicals seek to
expose political truths and not shy away from the consequences of
doing so. Political truths in this meaning of the term “radical” are
twinned always with subversion. As Rosa Luxemburg notably opined:
“Themostrevolutionarythingonecandoalwaysistoproclaimloudly
what is happening.” Or as Gloria Steinem quipped: “The truth will
set you free, but first it will piss you off.” Whether advocating for
political rights under fascism or for a woman’s right to control her
own body within limited democracies, the point is not only to expose
the many truths concerning how power corrupts all manner of social
relationships.Thepointofradicalleftistacademicwork,asKarlMarx
famously announced, is also to conjoin revelation with revolution, not
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Introduction:ThePointIsToChangeIt 3
necessarilyoftheviolentvariant,butinitsmostbasicsenseofturning
power around, however and whenever it corrodes the bonds of justice
andhumanity.AsAntonioConti,theItalianautonomousMarxist,said:
“The goal of research is not the interpretation of the world, but the
organization of transformation.” We are in this game to change things,
directlyorotherwise.
As a journal of radical geography, Antipode was founded with this
point in mind. When it was the birth-child of a handful of Left-wing
academicsandgraduatestudentsatClarkUniversityin1969,thejournal
was the only one of its kind within the field of human geography, and
not only because it was produced on a shoestring and eschewed the
conventions of normal “academic” writing. It was the only geography
journal that called itself “radical” at a time when universities were
expunging faculty and expelling students so-labelled. By calling some
fourdozenpages“ajournal”,thefoundersofAntipodecreatedanoutlet
forthepublishingofworkthatwasunapologeticallycriticalofthestatus
quoanddedicatedtoidealsofsocialjustice.Andwiththisopening,the
journal joined an incipient list of others across a variety of fields to
turnthetopicsandapproacheswithinitspagesintolegitimateacademic
concerns.Overthelastfourdecades,Antipodehasplayedanimportant
role within and beyond geography in making capitalist exploitation,
social justice, radical movements, gender inequality and other such
topicsintostapleintellectualthemes.ButasAntipode’scontributorsto
this volume agree, now is not the time to settle into some middle-aged
complacency. Around the world there is clearly a desperate need for
progressivescholarsandactiviststochallengethenotionthat“business
asusual”isnotacceptable—andthatwearewillingtoworkashardas
wecan,andinconcertwithothers,tochangethingsforthebetter.
Addressing this challenge is what we had in mind when we invited
some 14 contributors (as we said in our letter to them) “to offer
informative,illuminatingandsophisticatedanalysesof‘thestateofthe
world’intheearlytwenty-firstcenturyandhowitmightbechangedfor
thebetter”.Inresponse,wehavereceivedacollectionofessaysthatseek
to align commitments to social and environmental justice to political
strategies for addressing complex political realities and our roles as
radicalswithintheacademy.Thisvolumeistopicallyandintellectually
diverse, reflecting the microcosm of the broad Left comprised by our
authors. The contributors speak to multiple concerns and use diverse
examples to illustrate their assessments. And yet, they all converge
around a common desire to unravel the meanings of power, inequality,
injusticeandprogressivepoliticsinthecurrentperiod.Whilewedonot
want to impose an artificial interpretation that finds common ground
across a wide-ranging set of essays, there is a coherent call within
this volume for refining of conceptual tools that can be better used as
instruments of political change in specific places and in response to
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4 Antipode
specific issues in the world today. The essays are not oriented toward
polemics or for theorizing for its own sake. They, rather, seek to hone
andcraftideasintoimplementsofprogressivechange.
Towardthisend,theauthorsaddressthefollowingsetsofquestions:
Howdoourconceptionsofjusticecontributetosocialjusticeactivismin
diversepartsoftheworld?Howdoouranalysesofsocialandeconomic
crises assist those who are struggling against mean-spirited processes
of neoliberalization, the ravages of privatization and the biopolitics of
internationaldevelopment?Howcanweapplyouranalyticalinsightsin
ways that are accessible beyond our narrow disciplines and specialties
and that address the devastation of racism and xenophobia? How can
weontheleftcontinuetobeeffectiveaswedoourjobsininstitutions
that are conservative and corporate? How can we make the principal
medium of our craft—the written and spoken word—more accessible
to international publics that do not have access to our publications or
to the languages of our medium and to less educated populations who
areeagertoengageourradicaltheory?Howcanwereachtheyouthof
today who read less and communicate through Twitter and Facebook?
Howcanweberelevantfromourplacesofprivilegetothepeoplewhose
outrage,sufferingandpoliticalcommitmentsprovidethematerialofour
conjoinedpoliticalandacademicinterests?
In raising such questions, the authors brought together in this
collection are agreed on the continued need for radical scholarship.
Less clear, however, is the form radical scholarship should take in the
current period. Whereas 40 years ago when Antipode was founded
there may have been a broad consensus that variants of Marxism
offered the best intellectual platform on which challenges to injustice
and exploitation should be based, this is no longer the case. While
Marx, Polanyi and Gramsci remain key theorists for many of our
authors, we also see clearly in these contributions how the challenges
of, and ongoing encounters with, feminist, postcolonial, “green” and
poststructuraltheorizinghaveindeliblyreshapedthecontoursofradical
scholarship. Even those who remain committed to a Left theoretical
orthodoxy no longer take for granted the centrality of the industrial
worker as the potential revolutionary subject, the economism of some
Marxian frameworks, or the nation-state as the container within which
capitalism operates. In addition to a more internationalist stance, there
is also a new emphasis on plurality, contingency and a richer sense of
the validity of multiple political sensibilities. Indeed, overall there is
a notable reluctance to be overly prescriptive about the forms that left
alternativesshouldorcouldtakeinthecurrentperiod.
Then there are those who aspire to even broader conceptualizations
of radical politics. Foucault, Negri, Latour, Plumwood, Said, Nancy,
Ranciere, Agamben and Haraway, among others, are also part of the
conceptual repertoire on which our contributors draw to the effort to
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Introduction:ThePointIsToChangeIt 5
understand and address the challenges of the present. Such accounts
are attempting to develop new ways of thinking about politics that are
genuinelyprogressive,butmoveawayfromtherevolutionaryidealsand
utopian desires that have tended to characterize leftist accounts. This
oftentakestheformofmorespecificandsituatedapproaches,inwhich
alreadyexistingpoliticsandpracticesarereframedandinterrogatedfor
their transformative potential. Whereas economies, states and markets
tend to feature as the dominant categories in more conventional leftist
political-economicanalyses,spatialized,genderedandracializedbodies
becomemorevisibleinthesealternativeaccounts,asdogeographically
specific processes and practices of imagination and assembly, and the
micro-politics of emotion, affect and ethics. There is also a politics
of prefiguration flagged-up here (“be the change you want to see” as
Ghandi said), which aims to build achievable future aspirations in the
presentthroughanaccumulationofsmallchanges.Itisaboutembracing
“powertogether”ratherthanpowerover.
There is, of course, a variety of views herein about the analytical
and political utility of these diverse theoretical positions, and also of
the actual and potential relationships between them. We would not
wish it to be otherwise. However, what we do want to do is foster the
linking of these critical analyses to contemporary political struggles,
understanding that these struggles encompass, among others, issues
such as finance, poverty, environment, indigeneity, enclosure, work,
education and citizenship. None of these struggles are new foci in
broader political ambitions to further economic and social justice.
However,inthepresentpolitical-economicconjuncturetheymayappear
to be taking on new characteristics both because the world itself has
changed—in both epochal and quotidian ways—but also because we
arecomingtounderstandthischangingworldinnewways.
Radical scholars have taken many cues from the emergence of
anti-globalization activism often inflected with a strong anti-capitalist
sentiment.Theterm“movementofmovements”isoftenusedtodescribe
thislatterturn,avibranthydra-likedisorganizationwithnoclearcentre,
defined through the idea of “one no, many yeses”, and which has
networked groups across the world and mobilized large international
days of action. The spaces opened up by this new anti-capitalist
internationalism are fraught with tensions, disagreements and conflict,
oftenreflectingthewellworndivisionsontheLeftbetweenmajoritarian
and minoritarian politics—or the horizontals and the verticals. Part
of this is because it represents a clear tension and desire for a break
with traditional models of Left political organizing, a rejection of
ideologicaldogmainfavouroffluid,creativeandmoreshiftingpolitical
affiliations. Well-worn routes to political change—central committees,
organizedmarchesandtheballotbox—arerejectedorquestioned,and
a much more complex definition of the enemy, political programmes
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