Geographical Imagination Questions for Discussion:

Geographical Imagination

Questions for discussion:

In the 1824 Brazilian constitution's endorsement of the rights of man, could it be long before they would question the denial of those rights to the country's chattel slaves? Is not the "free market" simply an ideological sham that has been constructed to keep the proletarian toilers quiet while capitalism is actually based upon the ruthless exploitation of the toiling masses? Is capitalism incompatible with a green world-economy? Given the rise in violence in western societies, have we finally reached the point of revolution that Marx referred to?

This presentation will accomplish a few things. This will include a selective overview of the most important formal or thematic aspects of the readings, including situating those readings in the context of the course. While this presentation will include elements of many of the readings, it will focus upon Neil Smith's work. It will make connections and raise the questions mentioned above from Smith's intellectual template.

Briefly, Neil Smith's classic Uneven Development, offers the first really full theory of how industrial and capitalist development is responsible for uneven geographical development in various parts of the world. Entwined with this, Smith features analyses of the production of nature and the politics of scale. Many of the ideas of this path breaking work prefigure the present neo-liberal globalization debate of today. What is so important about Smith's critique is that it is so topical and is as applicable in the real economy as it is in academia. The world that neo-liberalism built is imploding and if we understand the dynamics of uneven development globally. What he attempts is an integration of nature and space in with a Marxist theory of capitalist development. His goal is to link two separate radical traditions, the geographical and the political, by creating a viewpoint that integrates the reality of uneven development.

This is the central point of chapter one in Smith's book. While it might seem common sense to the individual observer, few have actually the contradictions in the way we perceive nature and our interaction with and domination of it in the modern capitalist world. Internally, there are contradictions in this perception. As Smith observes, it is on the one hand something external to us, given by a higher power to provide us with substance and raw materials. On the other had, we are an integral part of nature (Smith, 11-12).

When this author passes a student on campus at a Greenpeace table or at an environmentalist demonstration, this contradiction in terms is evident. Almost inevitably, features idealistic young students feeling guilty about how much they have negatively affected the environment while they are listening to their I pod (most likely e-waste within a year), wearing Reebok's made by child labor in Burma and enjoying their Starbucks coffee from a disposable, non-reusable container. If the contradiction was not so macabre, it could actually be humorous. As Smith explains, this strange dualism has roots in Western philosophy Western tradition as old the Book of Genesis (ibid, 12). However, the Enlightenment made this contradiction manifest in such thinkers as Bacon as they pondered the new knowledge and how man now had the power to shape nature in his image. These Enlightenment thinkers were generally believers in God. However, 19th century science started to unravel this belief system in Darwinian fashion. This changed again as nature became more and more dominated by technology to the point now that the urbanites actually had to leave their areas and venture out into the wilderness or rural America to see in fashionable tours (ibid, 21).

The contradiction between science and technology tugs at the strings of our very souls. We feel it deep down. Even totally secular analysts such as Marx had to reconcile nature and technology (ibid, 31). Analysts such as Schmidt have expanded upon this Marxian analysis of alienation between nature and technology as Marx (the ultimate proponent of the Hegelian dialect) laments over how we are stuck in what Hegel would have called "first nature." This is nature outside of us. "Second nature" really never comes to fruition. We are not able to break free of it and society is still internal to nature (ibid, 34).

This mold allows us to analyze sources such as Schwarz effectively when looking at the culture of a country such as Brazil. Here, the contradictions in liberalism between the forces of "free labor" (how can wage slavery be seen as freedom) and chattel slavery in the 19th century were nakedly evident. Schwarz sees this as most embarrassing to Brazilians themselves. Just as in Smith's paradigm where the citizen of America is embarrassed and feels guilty about the inherent contradiction in his liberal society and its sometimes barbaric dominance of nature, so too Brazilian society was embarrassed by its failure in Enlightenment eyes (Schwarz, 19-20).

This "revolutionary imagination" has played out in many other parts of Latin America as well. This author sees students on campus all of the time wearing very stylish Che Guevara t-shirts that complete their western Levi blue jeans. While we all might not be polite enough to hide our laughter, it is not always so funny. Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo argues that twentieth-century revolutionary challenges to colonialism and capitalism (such as handsome Che and other revolutionary company) have not only failed to resist effectively, but are actually related to the capitalism that they portray themselves as combating. One only needs to look at present day Cuba to realize this. And in the West, developmentalist narratives have justified and postwar capitalism as the natural order of things. The "revolutionaries" in the former Soviet Bloc have been almost all overthrown. Essentially, the revolutionary consciousness has failed and the gringo still casts a large shadow as any revolutionary from the Zapatistas in Mexico to Chavez in Venezuela will confirm (Saldana-Portillo, 17).