Who out there loves them some David Harvey?
I've been reading his Spaces of Hope, wherein he tries to both develop a geographic re-reading of Marxism and underscore the importance of Marxist thought for explaining modern day econommic globalization. Anyway, the best part of the book is this concept he develops of "uneven geographic development." Harvey's basic point is that globalization unfolds across space-time, and this provides the best way to analyze it. He posits two main axioms:
1. Differential scales - Social process unfold at many levels (local/regional/continetnal/global). At different levels, and at different places in the same level, the same process can take on different forms.
2. Geographic differentiation - Part of social process is controlling space - defining what happens where and regulating that space. In terms of capital, this means doing things like defining borders, legislating capital flows, controlling immigration, and so on.
Anyway, it's a really cool theoretical construct, and I'm not really doing it service here. What it comes down to, however, is that globalization - understood thought this lens - is a process that has both *local* and *global* properties. In this way, Harvey wants to be able to be sensitive to local context (a la postmodernist bitching) WITHOUT giving up grand narratives and the notion that there are big processes at work. The specific form that globalization takes is that of uneven geographic development - economically hosing some places (with low wages) so that other areas (the industrialized West) can make out.
I'm less concerned with the critiques of capital part, personally. I just want his theoretical construct of geographic differentional and spatial scales. I was talking to E. just earlier this week, before reading Harvey, that I want to discuss the interstate - in my dissertation - as having both negative and positive qualities, dependent on its context. So I'm totally pining to bastardize from Harvey in order to make this work. I'm just so giddy that I found someone to back up my theoretical argument....
I've been reading his Spaces of Hope, wherein he tries to both develop a geographic re-reading of Marxism and underscore the importance of Marxist thought for explaining modern day econommic globalization. Anyway, the best part of the book is this concept he develops of "uneven geographic development." Harvey's basic point is that globalization unfolds across space-time, and this provides the best way to analyze it. He posits two main axioms:
1. Differential scales - Social process unfold at many levels (local/regional/continetnal/global). At different levels, and at different places in the same level, the same process can take on different forms.
2. Geographic differentiation - Part of social process is controlling space - defining what happens where and regulating that space. In terms of capital, this means doing things like defining borders, legislating capital flows, controlling immigration, and so on.
Anyway, it's a really cool theoretical construct, and I'm not really doing it service here. What it comes down to, however, is that globalization - understood thought this lens - is a process that has both *local* and *global* properties. In this way, Harvey wants to be able to be sensitive to local context (a la postmodernist bitching) WITHOUT giving up grand narratives and the notion that there are big processes at work. The specific form that globalization takes is that of uneven geographic development - economically hosing some places (with low wages) so that other areas (the industrialized West) can make out.
I'm less concerned with the critiques of capital part, personally. I just want his theoretical construct of geographic differentional and spatial scales. I was talking to E. just earlier this week, before reading Harvey, that I want to discuss the interstate - in my dissertation - as having both negative and positive qualities, dependent on its context. So I'm totally pining to bastardize from Harvey in order to make this work. I'm just so giddy that I found someone to back up my theoretical argument....
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Re: whether I ever think I should have studied political science instead... for me personally, the answer's a clear "no," because I am pathetic and kind of like law school (go masochism go!), but I'm willing to bet there are a ton of my fellow classmates who'd love a chance to blip back in time and go the other way.
As far as budding lawyers go, the real split seems to be between people who have a clear idea of what they want to do and why they're here, and people who came here because they had no other clear options and figured, hey, why not? The second group is deeply, deeply miserable... moreso than the first, even.