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Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference by DAVID HARVEY, Blackwell Publishers, Cambridge, MA, and Oxford, 1996, viii + 468 pp, paper us$21.95 (ISBN 155786-680-5)
For 25 years, David Harvey has challenged geographers to develop analytical approaches and theoretical concepts adequate for the political project of imagining better possible worlds. His latest book is no exception. Here, Harvey sets out to define a set of 'workable foundational concepts' for understanding space-time, place, and the environment, not only to show their interrelation, nor simply to construct a more complete historical-geographical materialism, but because he feels this to be necessary to achieve 'social justice'.
This is a remarkably ambitious project, in part because Harvey seeks to show the relation between an enormous range of what at first seem to be unrelated topics and processes. That Harvey succeeds is a testament to his analytical abilities. But it is ambitious in another way also, for it represents an apologia for Marxism in the face of what Harvey considers the 'problematic inroads' made by postmodernism, postructuralism, and deconstruction. The result is a complex, yet rewarding, text that shows the continued relevance of dialectics - and Marxist theory - at a time when both are decidedly unfashionable. But it also results in a book that runs on for over four hundred pages and lacks the clarity, discipline, and focus of much of his earlier writing. Few readers are likely to persevere to the end. This is a shame, since, in true dialectical fashion, Harvey's arguments gain force as the book proceeds and as additional elements are drawn into his analytical frame.
Beyond its specific arguments, readers will find the volume notable for a number of reasons. First, it extends Harvey's historical-geographical materialism to new realms of inquiry. Harvey recently summarized his entire project since Social Justice and the City as an attempt to advance Marxian theory in order to make it 'robust enough' to handle the complex urbanization processes and experiences of urban life found in capitalist modernity (Harvey 1992). The present work introduces additional questions surrounding 'place', 'identity', and 'nature'. Second, the volume clarifies and reworks a number of central concepts for materialist analysis: dialectics, internal relations, spatiality, even 'theory' itself. Third, it returns Harvey to the question of 'social...