Globalisation as Late Capitalism

Objectives of Lecture

• Offer a clear introduction to the work of David Harvey on Globalisation

• To briefly review the positions adopted by Woods and Wallerstein

David Harvey

• Harvey is the famous geographer (most cited) and Marxist theorist in the World. Born in 1935 in Kent and he has taught mainly in elite US Universities

• In different texts he seeks to do slightly different, but not contradictory, things

• The purposes of the Condition of Postmodernity and the Articles in Schmidt and Panitch are quite differently

• The Condition of Postmodernity: The Condition essentially constitutes a study of articulation of time and space since the European Enlightenment.

• Important differences between Gidden’s and Harvey

• Explicitly Materialist and rejection of simple idea of premodern and modern sense of space

• Different Premodern Conceptions of Space and Involving Modern Conception of Space and Time

• For Harvey different senses of time exist (enduring time, deceptive time, erratic time, cyclical time, retarded time etc) and dominate at different times and in different relationships

• Key Institutions of development of Modernist conceptions of space private property coupled with technological development

• Time linked with capitalist work discipline

• Clearer than Giddens in identifying who make space and time and why

• Harvey interested in Time-Space as sources of social power and how they impact on human psychology (Historical Geographical Materialist)

• Control of Time, Money, Space are three axis of social power (fungible)

• For Harvey the study of space involves the study of four things (more of a framework for analysis than a theory)

(1) Distanciation

(2) Appropriation of Space

(3) The domination space

(4) The production of space

Structural and Suprastructural analysis of space

• Capitalism superior command of space is critical to its survival

• Capitalism involves periodic Spatial-Temporal Fixes

Importantly for Harvey been a qualitative and quantitative shift in the organisation of space and time (and capitalism more generally) since 1973

New Spatial Temporal Fix

Annihilation of Space

Features of Contemporary Global PeriodAnnihilation of Place increases importance of

place specific competition Pursuit of Economies of Flexibility and Turnover

time over scalePolitical Economy of the ImageFocus on SpeculationPursuit of Economies of Flexibility and Turnover

time over scaleFashions

• Harvey has always interesting relationship between art and wider political economy

• For Harvey the film Bladerunner says some fundamentally important things about contemporary political economy

• Themes of Bladerunner: Time, the Global City (sweatshop), the Real and the Simulacra, Polarisation and Corporate Power. Body itself as object of accumulation

• Problem with Bladerunner problem of postmodern politics

• For Harvey the film Bladerunner says some fundamentally important things about contemporary political economy

• Themes of Bladerunner: Time, the Global City (sweatshop), the Real and the Simulacra, Polarisation and Corporate Power. Body itself as object of accumulation

• Gangster Rap- Astheticisation of Poverty, Individualisation, Compression of Time

• Pornography- Global (destruction of space) industry. Time compression Simulacra dominates the ‘real’. Excellent example, of postmodern political economy. Atomisation and physiology of postmodernism.

• The Potential Political Responses to Time-Space Compression can be Disastrous. Anesthetisation of Place and the Politics of Charisma

• Harvey other work can be seen as building on the Condition of Postmodernity.

• Big new idea is accumulation through dispossession

• Substitute for more desire accumulation through expanded reproduction

• Fundamentally very simple. Transfer of resources from capitalist sector to global capital. Both a internal and external element

• Interesting example Blair policy towards the NHS

• In 2005 Hewitt announced plans to increase percent of operations performed by private sector from 5 to 15 percent

• Also Biopiracy

• For Harvey Globalisation= Space-time compression and commodification

Other Interesting Radical Accounts

• Wallerstein and Wood’s stress continuity. • For Wood’s particular features of modern

nation state make it uniquely suited to capitalism

• Wallerstein argues globalisation nonsense and what we are in fact living in age of transition. Capitalism faces crisis stemming from 3 sources rising wages, taxation and input costs

Conclusions

• Harvey is master theorist and one greatest social theorists of the 20th Century

• Difficulty with his work level of abstraction. Harvey provides us point of departure for empirical work

• Contribution of Woods’ is to check excessive focus on the new

• Wallerstein’s work is problematic but should not be allowed to take from pervious contributions

• After reading week leave theory behind to study concrete processes.