Energizing historical materialism: Fossil fuels, space and the capitalist mode of production

In this paper, I present a theoretical argument that fossil fuel represents a historically specific and internally necessary aspect of the capitalist mode of production. Despite sustained attention to distributional conflicts between international capital and energy rich nation-states, few historical-materialists have paid attention to the relations between fossil fuel and capital accumulation in industrial capitalist societies. In opposition to ecological economic notions of fixed thermodynamic “laws”, I first propose a dialectical conception of energy as embedded in dynamic social processes and power relations. Second, I review the historical importance of the energy shift from solar or biological sources of energy (muscles, wind, and water) to fossilized sources of energy (coal, oil, and gas). I then demonstrate how attention to fossil fuel energy forces a reexamination of the core insights of ecological Marxism and the political economy of nature. In the core argument of the paper, I reconsider the shift from biological to fossil energy as internal to the generalization and extension of capitalist social relations from two basic vantage points - (1) capitalist production based on wage labor; (2) the spatial conditions of capitalist circulation. I conclude by asking whether it is accurate to conceptualize capitalism as a “fossil fuel mode of production” and highlight the political urgency of a historical materialist perspective that takes seriously the importance of energy to the reproduction of capitalist social relations.     

Sociospatial aspects of Australian aboriginal underdevelopment. Empirical evidence from the East kimberley

Prior to the penetration of the European capitalist economy into central and northern Australia, the Aboriginal mode of production was one of hunting and gathering. Spiritual, economic and social relationships betwen people and land produced a spatial distribution of small bands of people living on their traditional lands. To the incoming white settlers the low population density and type of land use appeared uneconomic. This observation was used as ideological justification for the expropriation and development of the land for commercial pastoralism. This paper discusses the articulation of the Aboriginal and European modes of production in the East Kimberley region of northwest Australia. It argues that the introduced capitalist economy virtually destroyed the Aboriginal means of subsistence, incorporating Aborigines into the new mode of production within various subordinate roles. The exploitation of Aborigines, formerly as labour and now predominantely as consumers, is fundamental to the maintenance of the capitalist mode of production in pastoral areas. The spatial effects of the dominant mode of production have been to centralise Aborigines in locations suited to the various phases of development of the European economy, undermining the traditional Aboriginal social-spatial structure. The centralisation of the Aboriginal population also enhances the opportunities for the further development of the mining industry, which is in direct competition with Aboriginal interests in land. Aboriginal resistance to these spatial tendencies is intense in many quarters, but efforts to return to living on traditional lands and to develop alternative ways of living are hampered by the dominant mode of production.     

Natures of risk: Capital,rule, and production of difference

This purpose of this paper is to propose starting points for a critically informed understanding of the role of risk in contemporary environmental practice, and to flesh out some preliminary implications of the work risk does as a logic though which environment is managed. Taking cues from scholarship interrogating the production of capitalist natures (e.g., Smith, 1984/2008; Braun, 2000, Heynan et al., 2007). I ask what it means in environmental terms to put risk at the intersection of capital and rule--to conceive of it as something that to paraphrase Dillon (2008, p. 319) makes the combination of capital and rule possible, and to interpret risk as something which (as Martin (2007b, p. 67) has suggested) undertakes to create the very conditions that make new wealth possible. I argue that in order to understand the intersection of capital and rule in environmental terms, risk must be understood as an epistemic framework and political ontology consistent with the advent of capitalist political economy--not as an occasion of danger or geographical condition of insecurity. Using difference as a starting point to attempt to think through connections between risk and accumulation I suggest that risk is a knowledge practice instrumental to accumulation and the politics of rule that secure it, which obscures the functioning of difference and processes of differentiation.     

The inner city: In search of the problem

This paper explores the theoretical content of the inner-city debate in Britain and seeks to examine the extent to which the ‘problem’ is either new or primarily economic. It is argued that the inner-city issue, while subject to specific political and ideological forces, is associated with the general processes of uneven capitalist development. In this sense, metropolitan decline is a further manifestation of the relationship between the built environment, the transience of economic activity and social change. More specifically the decline of the inner city relates to the incipient role of Britain in the development of capitalism and its current position in the world economy. The emergence of this as a ‘problem’ for the British state is combined with a convenient spatial determinism, which isolates the inner city as an anomaly even as the search for palliatives is erected to the status of a major social task.     

The changing spatial distribution of socio-economic groups employed in manufacturing in Great Britain, 1971–1981

In this paper an attempt is made to study the spatial division of labour in Britain, through an investigation of the changing structure of employment in the manufacturing sector between 1971 and 1981. The separate impacts of loss in the volume of manufacturing employment, change in the balance between production and non-production activities in the occupational structure and the spatial shift of the population employed in manufacturing upon spatial variations in manufacturing employment change are tentatively identified. Data on the socio-economic composition of the population employed in manufacturing from the Small Area Statistics of the Censuses of Population for 1971 and 1981 are used to measure the impact of these processes at the local labour market area (LLMA) scale and to draw conclusions for the future employment prospects of different parts of Britain.     

Wasting the rural: Meat,manure, and the politics of agro-industrialization in contemporary China

This paper uses pork as a lens on China’s rural transformations. Taking the industrialization of pig farming in the reform era as a trace on broader processes of social and environmental change, it advances three arguments. First, the massive increase in pork production and consumption since 1978 has been propelled by an industrial meat regime. A party-state led and agribusiness-operated regime, it articulates modernist notions of meat-as-progress with the relentless drive for capital accumulation. Second, using Marx’s concept of metabolic rift, the paper examines how processes of concentration in the industrial meat regime are at the same time processes of separation. This dialectical approach highlights the contradictions inherent in ongoing attempts to disembed capitalist production from biological and social relations. Finally, while official party-state discourse conceptualizes “the rural” as a production base for surplus value, and/or as a site for preserving environmental integrity, the paper’s analysis reveals a further unofficial recasting of the rural: in the process of agroindustrialization, the rural is also a sink for offloading capitalist crises. Between the rivers of manure that flow from industrial livestock operations and contaminate rural waterways; the loss of soil nutrients and food calories in the inefficient conversion of grains and oilseeds into industrial meat; the erosion of agricultural knowledge and practice that accompanies the dispossession of China’s farmers; and the shifting values of pigs, pork, and manure, this is a system that “wastes” the rural in service of capital.     

Spatial policies towards the Seoul Capital Region

This paper describes and evaluates the impact of spatial policies towards the Capital Region of Korea (the Seoul Capital Region hereafter). Following the introductory section, the second section presents an overview of trends of concentrations of people and employment in the Seoul Capital Region since 1960. The evolution of spatial policies and the major policy instruments employed is described together with an assessment of the validity of the perception of excessive concentration in the Region. In the third section, the impact of spatial polices towards the Seoul Capital Region is evaluated based on new empirical evidence as well as findings from previous studies. The impact of policies on the spatial distribution of jobs and populations between the Seoul Capital Region and the rest of the country, as well as that of specific policies such as green belts, and the new towns project is analyzed. The section ends with a discussion of public opinion on spatial policies revealed through recent surveys. The last section addresses the political economy of spatial policies and concludes with thoughts on the way forward considering the changing environment for spatial policies.     

Spatial systems and structures. A model and a case study

World space appears to be divided into unequally stable wholes which we see as being structures produced by the combined action of natural systems, spatial gradients and open energetic systems. The latter are based on the inter play of population, information, resources and capital, acting through the means of production, and in interaction with the social structures which are reproduced by the system and in turn reproduce it — until they become inconsistent with it: these successive reproductions are factors of change.This model is applied, as an example, to Champagne (France).     

Spatial systems and structures. A model and a case studyRäumliche systeme und strukturen. Ein Modell und ein BeispielStructures et systèmes spatiaux. Un modèle et une application

World space appears to be divided into unequally stable wholes which we see as being structures produced by the combined action of natural systems, spatial gradients and open energetic systems. The latter are based on the inter play of population, information, resources and capital, acting through the means of production, and in interaction with the social structures which are reproduced by the system and in turn reproduce it — until they become inconsistent with it: these successive reproductions are factors of change.This model is applied, as an example, to Champagne (France).     

Internal spatial fix: China’s geographical solution to food supply and its limits

Over the past three decades, China has managed to maintain and even increase grain production in the context of rapid industrialization and urbanization through a process of internal spatial fix in which grain production is relocated to and concentrated in less developed inland regions. However, the fix created political and environmental problems that will undermine it in the future. Using national statistical data and two case studies, the paper demonstrates how the fix has been a result of complex interactions between central and local actors and is a key factor shaping China’s trajectories of food politics and agrarian transitions. It also reveals that confronting the underproduction crisis of food under capitalist accumulation China has first sought to produce sufficient grain within its national border rather than rely on overseas resources.     

Markets in the Chinese countryside: the case of “rich Wang’s village”

Social change in rural China is to be understood as a complex interaction of global effects, state and regional actions and competing systems of valuation. An important implication of this model of path dependence is the development of distinctive forms of markets in different regions of the country. One such distinctive model that is emerging in southern Inner Mongolia is based on the independent commodity production of milk (on small dairy farms) for large, capitalist dairy corporations. Yet this production system is also being challenged by the emergence of large, capitalist dairy farms in this region. The outcome of the competition between these two forms of production will depend on locally specific trajectories of costs and opportunities. The long run evolution of this production system is thus not plannable in advance and is locally contingent.     

Dispossessing irrigators: Water grabbing,supply-side growth and farmer resistance in India

This paper examines, first, the conditions under which irrigating farmers are being alienated from their water through a state-led process of dispossession, and then, second, details the dialectical process of farmers’ resistance to these efforts. The paper advances recent scholarship on water grabbing and ‘accumulation by dispossession’ by drawing on a case from northwestern India to explore the connections between non-agrarian economic growth, irrigated agriculture and farmer livelihoods. Specifically, it examines an urban water infrastructure development project that aims to provide water to Jaipur, the Indian state of Rajasthan’s capital city, through the appropriation of an existing rural dam/reservoir complex built for irrigation and redirecting it to domestic, commercial and industrial uses. Drawing on an examination of policy documents and interviews with farmers and state planners, this paper argues that these transfers must be understood as a supply-side solution to support economic growth, where the lack of stable water supplies is a barrier to capital accumulation. The paper contributes to critical scholarship by showing that the processes underpinning water’s reallocation are specific acts of ongoing ‘dispossession’ through extra-economic means under advanced neoliberal capitalism, which alienates water away from peasant producers towards new centers of capital accumulation, dialectically creating peasant resistance to these efforts.     

Preliminary Discussion on Comprehensive Utilization of Tailings

Tailings produced in a concentration plant are the discharge of solid wastes after grinding ore into size and selecting useful components in the specific economic and technological condition. According to statistics, for the mining of metal ore, non-metallic ore, coal, clay, etc, the production of tailings of the world is up to 100 million tons per year. The number of existing tailing piles is 12718 in China, of which the construction ones are 1526, accounting for 12% of the total, and the closed tailing piles are 1024, accounting for 8%. As of 2007, the national total tailings accumulation is 8.046 billion tons. The non-ferrous metal mining is one of the largest discharge of solid wastes industries because of its low comprehensive recovery rate. For example, the beneficiation and recovery rate of non-ferrous metal mine is from 50% to 60% in China, which is lower 10% to 15% than developed countries, and the associated non-ferrous metal recovery rate is 40%, which is lower 20% than developed countries. On the utilization of duns, Poland is 90% to 100%, United States, Australia, France, Canada, Belgium and other countries followed, while China is only about 20%. The utilization of fly ash is to 100% in Japan and Denmark, France is 65%, UK is 55%, and China is just 45%. Quantities of waste rock, waste slag, and waste water have occupied land, destructed vegetation, deteriorated the soil and water quality, and caused land subsidence, landslides, mud-flow and other geological disasters. Therefore, the comprehensive utilization of resources is the right choice of mining sustainable development, environment protection, resource conservation, economic and social development.     

New York: the Big Apple in the 1990s

New York plays a fundamental role in the world economy as both a motor and beneficiary of globalization. This paper traces New York’s international ties in the 1990s. While the city’s global pre-eminence as a center of finance capital is well known, New York is also an important international center of corporate headquarters, business services, communications, tourism, and commercial real estate. Next, it reviews the spatial configuration of employment, with an emphasis on the overwhelming concentration of jobs in Manhattan, a reflection of the enormous agglomerative economies found there. Third, it notes the marginalized populations that have not benefited from globalization. Fourth, it addresses changing regimes of governance that have accompanied the city’s intersections with the global economy.     

Budapest's built environment in transition

The construction of major new buildings has been noticed in Budapest since the mid 1980s. New hotels, office blocks, housing projects and most recently shopping centres have become a prominent feature of the landscape in several districts of the city. The paper first outlines a conceptualisation of the `Transition' in terms of eastern Europe as a whole identifying internationalisation, Europeanisation and national government policies as key strands in a specific case of a process of change interpreted as the interaction of antecedent conditions and current processes. It then addresses the question of conceptualising the built environment in terms of the `Transition' and three `schools of thought' in geography stressing the urban morphogenesis approach. It thus poses the question of how radical a change has `occurred on the ground' since 1989–1990. Consequently the paper examines the transition in the built environment of Budapest under three principal headings: (a) the antecedent conditions of the built environment of Budapest by spatial structure, (b) the relationship between new buildings and current processes, (c) comparing models of the spatial structure of Budapest as a socialist city and as a post-socialist-(industrial) city or post-industrial (capitalist) city. It concludes that although the processes shaping the city's built environment have changed quite radically since 1990 the physical fabric of the city and its antecedent usage have strongly influenced the spatial impact of the current processes. Budapest is a post-socialist industrial city with capitalist forms fitted into it. The city is passing from socialist to capitalist processes in a way that suggests that morphological analysis has clear potential in theorising the relationship between the global and the local. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

法国典型聚煤盆地厚煤层独特的沉积条件分析

从法国典型的断陷聚煤盆地具有重要经济价值的厚煤层的成因标志和沉积特征出发,对这些厚煤层独特的沉积条件进行了剖析,指出了厚煤层均发育于盆缘、盆内断层活动强烈的构造背景下。煤层内大量的重力流沉积物——碎屑流、稀性泥石流、重力滑塌、变形构造和再搬运—再堆积的记录等特征,均表明了这些厚煤层在堆(沉)积时为较深覆水、且水体动荡的湖泊沉积环境,部分厚煤(泥炭)层在初次堆积后经过了再搬运而在异地堆积。      

Accumulation and ecological effects of soil heavy metals in conventional and organic greenhouse vegetable production systems in Nanjing,China

The spatial variability of soil heavy metals in conventional and organic greenhouse vegetable production (CGVP and OGVP) systems can reveal the influence of different farming activities on their accumulation and plant uptake. This provides important basic data for soil utilization and pollution risk assessment. Based on horizontal and vertical spatial analysis, this paper presents the spatial variability and accumulation of soil heavy metals. The effects on plant uptake and factors influencing heavy metal accumulation are presented using the two typical greenhouse vegetable sites in Nanjing City, China as examples. Results showed that different greenhouse vegetable production systems had their own dominant heavy metal accumulation, specifically, Hg and Pb in CGVP system and Cd in OGVP system. The spatial analysis showed that horizontally, distribution of soil properties and heavy metal concentrations in the two sites showed decreases from specific regions to the periphery for organic matter (OM), Cd, Cu, Hg, Pb, and Zn in CGVP and OM, As, Cd, Cu, Hg, Pb, and Zn in OGVP. Vertically, soil properties and heavy metals mainly vary in the topsoil. The key factor for the accumulation was excess fertilizer input. Variation of soil properties and the accumulation of soil heavy metals significantly influenced heavy metal uptake by plants. However, accumulation risk varied according to different heavy metals and different plant species. Environmental management of these two kinds of production systems should pay more attention to fertilizer application, plant selection, and soil properties.     

Economic refugees in post-apartheid South Africa – Assets or liabilities? Implications for progressive migration policies

While South Africa's political transformation has been lauded internationally, one of the greatest challenges facing the post-apartheid democratic government is undocumented immigration. There has been a xenophobic tendency to stigmatise immigrants, particularly those from other African countries as criminals, as people who undermine economic development and take jobs from locals. The aim of this paper is to critically review changing policies towards undocumented migration in post-apartheid South Africa. More specifically, the paper will present a historical context to migration; question whether there are millions of illegal immigrants in South Africa; identify reasons for the increasing influx of migrants into the country; analyse the rise of xenophobia in the Republic; discuss problems associated with migrants; and assess changing immigration policies. The main reason for leaving their home countries was a lack of employment opportunities. Therefore the migrants could be regarded as economic refugees. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Manila’s metropolitan landscape of gentrification: Global urban development,accumulation by dispossession & neoliberal warfare against informality

A new regime of gentrification is dramatically restructuring Manila’s metropolitan landscape. Grounded upon an on-going neoliberal warfare of accumulation by dispossession, this gentrification serves as the fulfillment of postcolonial visions of a world class and modern metropolis through public–private arrangements and market-oriented developments but necessitates the systematic demolition of informal settlements, the home of the Manila’s urban poor and working class population. Through a mixed-methods approach, this paper examines gentrification’s spatial forms and trajectories and exposes context specific dynamics facilitating accumulation by dispossession. Using barangay (village)-level data on changes in population of informal households and median zonal values, I calculate for local measures of spatial autocorrelation and locate significant clusters of spatial shifts. Using the quantitative results plus field narratives and community histories, I triangulate local dynamics of accumulation by dispossession. What emerges is a sprawling gentrification process that, in producing a market-oriented metropolis, displaces and asphyxiates informal spaces. These accounts illustrate the contingencies of violence, neoliberal urbanism, colonial legacies of land regimes, and elite power in the production of a globally-competitive Manila. With other Global South megacities similarly competing in the global market, gentrification in Manila, with its expanding landscape of property accumulation and ’legitimized’ dispossession, is instructive of the emerging form of gentrification in the 21st century.