Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography

David Harvey is unquestionably the most influential, as well as the most cited, geographer of his generation. His reputation extends well beyond geography to sociology, planning, architecture, anthropology, literary studies and political science. This book brings together for the first time seminal articles published over three decades on the tensions between geographical knowledges and political power and on the capitalist production of space. Classic essays reprinted here include 'On the history and present condition of geography', 'The geography of capitalist accumulation' and 'The spatial fix: Hegel, von Thünen, and Marx'. Two new chapters represent the author's most recent thinking on cartographic identities and social movements. David Harvey's persistent challenge to the claims of ethical neutrality on behalf of science and geography runs like a thread throughout the book. He seeks to explain the geopolitics of capitalism and to ground spatial theory in social justice. In the process he engages with overlooked or misrepresented figures in the history of geography, placing them in the context of intellectual history. The presence here of Kant, Von Thünen, Humboldt, Lattimore, Leopold alongside Marx, Hegel, Heidegger, Darwin, Malthus, Foucault and many others shows the deep roots and significance of geographical thought. At the same time David Harvey's telling observations of current social, environmental, and political trends show just how vital that thought is to the understanding of the world as it is and as it might be.


About the Author

David Harvey is Professor of Geography at the Johns Hopkins University and adjunct Professor of Sociology at the London School of Economics. He was previously Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at the University of Oxford. His books include Social Justice and the City (1973); The Limits to Capital (1982); The Urban Experience (1988); The Condition of Postmodernity (1989); and Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (1996). He received the Outstanding Contributor award from the Association of American Geographers in 1980; the Anders Retzius Gold Medal from the Swedish Society for Anthropology and Geography in 1989; the Patron's Medal from the Royal Geographical Society and the Vautrin Lud Prize in France in 1995.