GEOGRAPHY 560 A, Economic Geography

Political economy seminar

Fall 2011

Trevor BarnesJim Glassman

Geography 140cGeography 140b

Phone: 604-822-5804Phone: 604-822-1892

Email: ail:

Office Hours: by appointment Office Hours: M, F 2-4 PM

Course Description

The rich and variegated intellectual tradition known as political economy is central to the concerns of many economic geographers. This seminar reviews some of the major themes of political economy in the development of economic geography since the 1970s. We are concerned with both the broader works in political economy that influenced geographers and how geographers made use of those works to write a spatial political economy. We start with the influential infusion of Classical Marxist political economy into geography in the 1970s, and follow it with an examination of other (later) varieties of political economy such as institutionalism and post-Marxism. We are concerned to work through political economy on the ground by examining particular geographical issues and themes that include industrial restructuring, the roles of social, cultural, and political institutions in economic development, globalization and fragmentation of economies, spatial economic performativity, agrarian change and urbanization, political ecology, financialization, and the gendering and racialization of economic geographical processes.

Course Requirements

This seminar is organised around weekly, in-class, student-led discussions, with the instructors undertaking only a limited amount of lecturing. The seminar’s success or failure thus depends on your completion of the assigned readings for each week, and your willingness to engage in a lively and open-minded discussion with the other participants. In addition to completing the assigned readings and participating in the seminar discussion, there are three specific assignments to complete:

  • A weekly one-page single-spaced reflection on the readings, which might include summaries, criticisms, comments, and questions. These are to be handed in to the instructors by email by no later than 9 AM the day of class; this will give us a chance to look at them before the discussions;
  • To lead the weekly in-class discussion once during the term. This involves a short presentation where you summarize some of the main points in the readings, and suggest questions to initiate discussion;
  • A 20-page, double-spaced, term paper, on a topic to be negotiated with the instructors by no later than week 7 of the term. The paper is due on Tuesday 13 December, in Geography 217 (the main office).

The breakdown of the marking for the assignments will be as follows:

  • Weekly one-page reflections10 percent
  • Participation in discussions10 percent
  • Leadership of discussion10 percent
  • Term paper70 percent

Readings

There are two books that are required for the course and available in the UBC Bookstore:

David Harvey, The New Imperialism (Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press, 2003)

J. K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (as we knew it): a Feminist Critique of Political Economy (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2006)

All other readings will be in a packet that will be available via the instructors, in the Geographic Information Center (GIC), Geography 112, and/or will be available for download on-line, through the UBC library web site or other web sites.

Weekly Readings

Please note that we list both the required readings, as well as recommended readings. You do not need to consult immediately the recommended readings, but we list them both for your future reference and in helping you get started tracking down additional readings for your term paper.

Week 1 (September 13)

Topic: Marxist political economy I: Marx

Required reading: Karl Marx, Capital volume I, chapter 1 “Commodities” ( “Preface to a Critique of Political Economy” ( and “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte” (

Recommended reading: There is an enormous amount of writing by both Marx and various “classically”-oriented Marxist scholars. The complete works of Marx and Engels, as well as of many other Marxists, are available at the marxists.org archive. For an understanding of some of the core themes in Capital, and for an understanding of Marx’s general project in this work, the following commentaries are also invaluable: Roman Rosdolsky, The Making of Marx’s Capital; Ben Fine and Alfredo Saad-Filho, Marx’s Capital; Harry Cleaver, Reading Capital Politically; David Harvey, A Companion to Marx’s Capital.

Week 2 (September 20)

Topic: Marxist political economy II: Harvey’s spatialization of Marx

Required reading: David Harvey, The New Imperialism, chapter 3, “Capital Bondage”; chapter 4, “Accumulation by Dispossession”; chapter 5, “Consent to Coercion”; David Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital, chapter 2, “The Urban Process under Capitalism: A Framework for Analysis ( Benjamin Kunkel, “How Much is Too Much,” London Review of Books 33, 3: 9-14 (3 February 2011),

Recommended reading: David Harvey has undoubtedly been the most prodigious among the geographers who have overtly “spatialized” Marx’s project. In addition to the chapters from The New Imperialism and Urbanization of Capital that we are reading, we recommend that those wanting a broad view of Harvey’s project read the following: David Harvey,The Limits to Capital(2006); David Harvey, all ofThe Urban Experience(1989); David Harvey, The Enigma of Capital(2010); Castree, N., Essletzbichler, J., Brenner, N. (2004). “Symposium: David Harvey’s ‘The Limits to Capital’: Two Decades On.”Antipode 36(3):400-549. For an understanding of Marx’s conception of “primitive accumulation,” adapted and updated by Harvey into the concept of “accumulation by dispossession,” see Marx’s original writings in Capital volume I, part 8, “The So-Called Primitive Accumulation”: (

Week 3 (September 27)

Topic: Marxist political economy III: Gramscian Marxism

Required reading: Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, “The Modern Prince,” and “Americanism and Fordism”;Sharad Chari and VinayGidwani, Geographies of Work, Introduction to Special Edition of Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, Vol. 22, 4(2004): 475-485; Jim Glassman, “Hegemony” in Rob Kitchen and Nigel Thrift, eds., International Encyclopedia of Human Geography (Oxford: Elsevier, 2009): 80-90; Joel Wainwright, “On Gramsci’s ‘conceptions of the world’,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers NS 35 (2010): 507-521.

Recommended reading: There is an immense amount written by and about Gramsci. Along with the standard Selections from the Prison Notebooks (1971), a great portion of his prison notebooks has now been translated into English by Joe Buttigieg (three volumes to date, covering notebooks 1 through 8). Perry Anderson, “The Antinomies of Antonio Gramsci,” New Left Review 100 (1976) is one of the earliest critiques of Gramsci’s prison writings, one challenged by Peter Thomas in The Gramscian Moment (2009), in a work that also takes on Louis Althusser’s critique of Gramsci. For other recent Gramscian work by geographers, see John Agnew, Hegemony: The New Shape of Global Power (2005); Michael Ekers and Alex Loftus, “The power of water: developing dialogues between Gramsci and Foucault,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 26 (2008): 698-718; Jim Glassman, “Transnational Hegemony and US Labor Foreign Policy: Towards a Gramscian International Labor Geography,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 22, 4 (2004): 573-593; Jim Glassman, “Cracking Hegemony in Thailand: Gramsci, Bourdieu, and the Dialectics of Rebellion,” Journal of Contemporary Asia 41, 1 (2011): 25-46; Geoff Mann, “Should Political Ecology by Marxist? A case for Gramsci’s historical materialism,” Geoforum 40: 335-344; Peter J. Taylor, The Way the Modern World Works: World Hegemony to World Impasse (1996); Peter J. Taylor, Modernities: A Geohistorical Interpretation (1999); Joel Wainwright, “Was Gramsci a Marxist?” Rethinking Marxism 22, 4: (2010): 617-626.

Week 4 (October 4)

Topic: Regulationism and restructuring

Required reading: Alain Lipietz, “New Tendencies in the International Division of Labor: Regimes of Accumulation and Modes of Regulation,” in A. J. Scott and M. Storper, eds., Production, Work, Territory: The geographical anatomy of industrial capitalism (Boston, London, and Sydney: Allen & Unwin, 1986): 16-40.; Mick Dunford (1990), “Theories of regulation,” Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 8, 297-321; Tickell, Adam and Peck, Jamie (1995) “Social regulation afterFordism: regulation theory, neo-liberalism and the global-local nexus.” Economy and Society, 24: 357-386; Jessop, Bob (1992) “Fordism and post-Fordism: a critical reformulation,” in M. Storper and A. J. Scott (eds.), Pathways to Industrialization and Regional Development. London: Routledge, 46-69.

Recommended reading: The regulationist literature is enormous and has had tremendous influence on geography. For a sampling of some major works that have contributed to the “spatialization” of regulationism, see the following: Jessop, Bob (1997) “Twenty years of the (Parisian) regulation approach: The paradox of success and failure at home and abroad,” New Political Economy 2(3) 503-526; Peck, Jamie (2000) “Doing regulation,” in G L Clark, M P Feldman & M S Gertler (eds) The Oxford handbook of economic geography. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 61-80; McDowell, Linda (1991) “Life without father and Ford: the new gender order of post-Fordism,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers16: 400-419; Alain Lipietz (1987) Mirages and Miracles: the crises of global Fordism. London: Verso; Gordon MacLeod (1997) “Globalizing Parisian thought-waves: recent advances in the study of social regulation, politics, discourse and space,” Progress in Human Geography, 21: 530-553. On regional development, see also the crucial work by Doreen Massey, “Regionalism: Some Current Issues” Capital & Class, 6, 106-23 (1978); as well as herSpatial Divisions of Labour (1984).

Week 5 (October 11)

Topic: Institutional political economy

Required reading: Karl Polanyi (1957) “The economy as instituted process,” in Trade and market in the early empires: Economies in history and theory, eds. K. Polanyi, C. M. Arensberg, and H. W. Pearson. New York: Free Press, 243-270; Fred Block and Margaret R. Somers (1984) “Beyond the economistic fallacy: The holistic science of Karl Polanyi,” in T.Skocpol(ed) Vision and method in historical sociology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 47-84; Michael Burawoy (2003) “For a sociological Marxism: The complementary convergence of Antonio Gramsci and Karl Polanyi” Politics & Society, 31, 193-261; Martin Hess (2004) “Spatial relationships: towards a reconceptualization of embeddedness” Progress in Human Geography, 28, 165-86.

Recommended reading: Institutional political economy is a rich vein that begins with the writings of the maverick American economist, Thorsten Veblen, e.g., The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899). It is picked up in Canada by Harold Innis, e.g., The Fur Trade (1930). Polanyi’s works, especially The Great Transformation (1944), were important contributions, and given impetus by one of the most cited papers in social sciences, Mark Granovetter’s 1985 “Economic Action and Social Structure: the Problem of Embeddedness,” American Journal of Sociology 91, 481-510 (1985). In geography it is found in works by MericGertler (2004) Manufacturing Culture: the Institutional Geography of Industrial Practice; Ron Martin (2000) “Institutional Approaches in Economic Geography” in A Companion to Economic Geography, eds., T. Barnes and E. Sheppard; and Trevor Barnes (1992) (with MericGerter) The New Industrial Geography: Regions, Regulation and Institutions; Ash Amin (1999). “An institutionalist perspective on regional economic development”.International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 23: 365-378; Ash Amin and Nigel Thrift (1995). “Institutional issues for European regions: from markets and plans to socioeconomics and powers of association,” Economy and Society 24, 41-66; and Jamie Peck (2005). “Economic Sociologies in Space,” Economic Geography 81, 129-75.

Week 6 (October 18)

Topic: Post-Marxist political economy I: class fragmentation and the gendering of class

Required reading: J.K. Gibson-Graham, The End of Capitalism (as we knew it), chapter 2, “Capitalism and Anti-essentialism: An Encounter in Contradiction”; chapter 3, “Class and the Politics of Identity”; chapter 4, “How Do We Get Out of this Capitalist Place?”; chapter 6, “Querying Globalization”; chapter 7, “Post-Fordism as Politics”; chapter 9, “‘Hewers of Cake and Drawers of Tea’”; John Pickles (2012) “The cultural turn and the conjunctural economy: Economic geography, anthropology, and cultural studies,” in The Wiley-Blackwell Companion to Economic Geography, eds., T. J. Barnes, J. Peck, and E.Sheppard (in press)

Recommended reading: Post-Marxist theories have many variants, including work that sees class as of decreasing importance, such as Andre Gorz, Farewell to the Working Class (1980), and work that sees class as one among many equally significant forms of oppression. The latter includes works such as Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe’s influential Hegemony and Socialist Strategy (1985) and Gibson-Graham’s works, includingThe End of Capitalism andA Post-Capitalist Politics (2006).

Week 7 (October 25)

Topic: Post-Marxist political economy II: performing markets

Callon(2002)“Technology, politics and the market: an interview with Michel Callon”. Interview conducted by Andrew Barry and Don Slater,Economy and Society 31: 285-306; Donald MacKenzie, FabianMuniesa, and Lucia Siu (2007) Do Economists Make Markets, ch. 3; Berndt, Christian and Boeckler, Marc (forthcoming). “Performing regional (dis-)integration: Transnational markets, mobile commodities and bordered north-south differences,” Environment and Planning A; Lansing, David (2012) “Performing Carbon’s Materiality: the production of carbon offsets and the framing of exchange,” Environment and Planning A (in press).

Recommended reading: See the other essays in The Laws of Markets; Donald MacKenzie, An Engine, Not A Camera (2006); and Material Markets: How Economic Agents are Constructed (2009). A recent collection is: Trevor Pinch and Richard Swedberg eds., Living in a Material World (2008). Finally there are two short review pieces by geographers on the geography of performing markets:TrevorBarnes, “Making space for the market: live performances, dead objects, and economic geography,”Compass 3, 1-17 (2008); and Berndt, Christian and Boeckler, Marc (2009). “Geographies of circulation and exchange: Constructions of markets,” Progress in Human Geography 33, 4, 535-551.

Week 8 (November 1)

Topic: Political economy of agrarian change

Required reading: Alain de Janvry, The Agrarian Question and Reformism in Latin America (Baltimore and London: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981), chapter 1, “Laws of Motion of the Center-Periphery Structure: The Underlying Forces, pp. 7-60”; Michael Watts, Silent Violence: Food, Famine, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria (Berkeley, Los Angeles, London: University of California Press, 1983), ch. 4, “Capital, State, and Peasantry in Northern Nigeria,” pp. 148-186; Michael Watts (2009), “Crude Politics: Life and Death on the Nigerian Oil Fields,” .

Recommended reading:The agrarian change literature, in which de Janvry and Watts’ work is steeped, is vast, and extends back a century to the famous Kautsky-Lenin debate. More recent work stemming from the tradition that sees agrarian change and uneven global development of capitalism as central to political economy include Andre Gunder Frank, Capitalism and Underdevelopment in Latin America (1967); SamirAmin, Accumulation on a World Scale (1974); Immanuel Wallerstein, The Capitalist World-Economy (1979); Harold Wolpe, The Articulation of Modes of Production (1980); Harold Brookfield, Interdependent Development (1975); Lourdes Beneria, Women and Development (1985); Carmen Diana Deere, “Rural Women's Subsistence Production in the Capitalist Periphery,”Review of Radical Political Economy, Vol. 8, 1 (1976): 9-17; and Richard Walker, The Conquest of Bread (2004).

Week 9 (November 8)

Topic: Political economy and political ecology

Required reading: VinayGidwani, Capital, Interrupted (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2008), chapter 3, “Machine”; Joel Wainwright, Decolonizing Development (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2008), chapter 6, “Finishing the Critique of Cultural Ecology”; Becky Mansfield (2004) “Rules of Privatization: Contradictions in Neoliberal Regulation of North Pacific Fisheries,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 94(3) 565-584; Gavin Bridge and Karen Bakker (2006) “Material worlds? Resource geographies and the ‘matter of nature’,”Progress in Human Geography30(1)5-27.

Recommended reading: The agrarian change literature has evolved rapidly in recent decades, increasingly intersecting work in political ecology, post-colonial theory, and critical race theory. In addition to the required readings for this week, the following works signpost some of the transformations in this approach to political economy: Michael Watts and Richard Peet (2004) “Liberating political ecology,” In Peet and Watts (eds) Liberation ecologies. London: Routledge; Piers Blakie and Harold Brookfield, Land Degradation and Society (1987); Scott Prudham, Knock on Wood (2004); Geoff Mann, Our Daily Bread (2007); Becky Mansfield, Privatization (2008); James McCarthy, “Privatizing Conditions of Production: Trade Agreements as Neoliberal Governance,” Geoforum 35, 3 (2004): 327-241; and Michael Watts and Ed Kashi, Curse of the Black Gold: 50 Years of Oil in the Niger Delta (2008).

Week 10 (November 15)

Topic: Political economy of urbanization

Required reading: Mike Davis, “Planet of Slums: Urban Involution and the Informal Proletariat,” New Left Review 26 (March-April 2004): 5-34; Mike Davis (1990). City of quartz.New York: Verso, chapter 2, “Power Lines”; Mike Davis, “Fortress Los Angeles: The Militarization of Urban Space,” in M. Sorkin, ed., Variations on a Theme Park: the new American city and the end of public space. New York: Hill & Wang (1992): 154-180;E. Brown et al., “World City Networks and Global Commodity Chains: Towards a World-Systems’ Integration,” GaWC Research Bulletin 236 (2010), Peter J. Taylor, “World City Network and Planet of Slums,” GaWC Research Bulletin 239 (2007),.

Recommended reading: For theoretical issues on cities in the global south, see Warwick Armstrong and T. G. McGee, Theatres of Accumulation. For a generative work by one of the most important urban geographers and progenitors of world cities approaches, see John Friedmann (1986), “The World Cities Hypothesis,” Development and Change17: 69-83. For an important rejoinder to the world cities project, from a post-colonial perspective, see Jenny Robinson, Ordinary Cities (2006). The space between literature on cities in the global north and cities in the global south has constricted in recent years, in part as a result of the effects of the world cities literature and other approaches that emphasize globalization. See Peter J. Taylor, World City Network (2004). For other work on this terrain, see Neil Brenner (1998) “Global cities, glocal states: global city formation and state territorial restructuring in contemporary Europe,”Review of International Political Economy 5(1): 1-37; Neil Smith (2002) “New Globalism, New Urbanism: Gentrification as Global Urban Strategy,” Antipode, 34(3): 434-457; Ash Amin and Stephen Graham (1997) “The ordinary city,” Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers22(4): 411-429. On urban entrepreneurialism, see David Harvey (1989) “From managerialism to entrepreneurialism: the transformation in urban governance in late capitalism,” GeografiskaAnnaler B, 71(1): 13-17. On urbanism and neoliberalism, see Neil Brenner and Nik Theodore (2002) “Cities and the geographies of ‘actually existing neoliberalism’, in N. Brenner and N. Theodore, eds., Spaces of Neoliberalism. Oxford: Blackwell, 2-32.

Week 11 (November 22)

Topic: Financialization and economic crisis