Introduction

Framing Capitalism in Place:
A Marxist Travel Guide

Diagram: The Process of Place Formation

INTRODUCTION

Place is a tricky word. We use it all the time in everyday conversation, confident that no one will ask us to explain what it means. In the field of semiotics, such words are called empty signifiers because they can mean anything and everything. Yet this particular empty signifier has been a staple of learned discourse ever since Aristotle and continues to be a talking point in many specialized disciplines and institutionalized sites of knowledge production today. Paradoxically, place suffers from the double whammy of being underthought by some and overthought by others.

So you deserve to know at the outset how l intend to traverse the difficult discursive terrain of place. Simply put, I will define place as space imbued with meaning. This begs the question what is space and how is it made meaningful. I'll say something about meaning-making under this tab and address the production of space under the "Capitalism" tab. For the time being, allow me to make two preliminary claims: (1) place and space are not separate and autonomous things but abstract processes that can be understood only in relation to each other; (2) both of these abstract processes operate in accordance with the reproduction requirements of the capitalist mode of production.

In emphasizing the relational, historical and capitalist character of place and space, I will rely heavily on the theory of capital set out by Karl Marx and more recently applied to questions of place formation and space production by geographer David Harvey. Wherever the journey takes us in Framing Capitalism in Place, rest assured that Marx and Harvey won't be far behind.

This is the first of five mini-essays under the "Place" tab. They treat place formation as a more-or-less self-contained process abstracted from the larger political-economic forces acting on it. In contrast, the seven mini-essays under the "Capitalism" tab will shift the focus to the spatial dynamics of capital accumulation.

I am aware that proceeding along this dual track runs the risk of creating a false dichotomy between place and space. My hope is that after reading both essays you will see the truth in Harvey's observation: "The dialectical relation between space and place is central to understanding both the constructive and destructive aspects of the motion of capital in space and time."

The diagram above provides a visual representation of the process of place formation as it unfolds through its built, natural, social and cultural "moments."

The left half of the circle is labelled "materiality" and represents place as a spatial configuration of physical objects; the right half is labelled "meaning" and represents place as a spatial configuration of lived experience. The arrows indicate that place formation is a circular process in which physical objects and lived experience, materiality and meaning, are constantly interacting to form a coherent spatial whole.

This process operates at many, interconnected levels. To help you visualize this idea, I have subdivided each half of the circle into two parts: the built and natural moments fall on the materiality side of the divide, the social and cultural moments on the meaning side.

Here's a quick rundown of the moments. The built moment comprises all of the human-made physical structures of a given place, from streets, electrical grids and airports to public parks, sewer systems and suburban subdivisions. The natural moment includes the totality of biospheric entities, structures and processes of a given place, non-human and human alike. The social moment centers on the dynamics, strategies and practices of social reproduction which are nested in a given place. Finally, the cultural moment encompasses the values, norms and dominant ideologies through which the meanings of a given place are articulated and empowered.

You shouldn't mistake the moments of the circle for self-contained spatial entities like the areas of a paint-by-numbers canvas. Rather, they should be regarded as useful abstractions for examining how the four moments of place run together like the wet paint of a water color.

The terms "abstraction" and "moment" have particular meanings in the dialectical method of analysis, which is concerned with how the world is put together, how it changes and how it can be reproduced in the realm of thought. Marx and Harvey use this method of analysis, as will I in what follows.

The dialectical method has a long history. Its most famous practitioners are the German philosopher Hegel and Marx, his rebellious student. While Hegel advanced an idealist vision of the world, and Marx a materialist one, they both started from the same two dialectical propositions. First, all serious inquiry into concrete reality and its manner of representation should deal with processes rather than things, the latter of which are moments in which processes take on the appearance of material things. Second, all such inquiry should trace the motive force behind change to internal contradictions embedded within a given process rather than to external forces that operate outside and independently of the process under investigation.

This will undoubtedly sound strange to most modern ears. The dialectical method runs counter to the empiricism, positivism and obsession with quantifiability which have dominated Western modes of thinking since the Enlightenment, and which remain the common-sense thinking across the institutionalized disciplines of social science today. Fortunately, dialectical analysis continues to occupy a prominent place in neuroscience, earth science, evolutionary biology and quantum physics, albeit shorn of its Marxist associations.

If all this fancy philosophizing is starting to make you nervous, take heart in knowing that we will soon be discussing matters closer to home.

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Framing Capitalism in Place: A Marxist Travel Guide

Diagram: The Process of Place Formation

INTRODUCTION

Framing Capitalism in Place:
A Marxist Travel Guide