The Dictionary of Human Geography

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uneven developmentat multiplescaleswas

interpreted as the inevitable result of the ten-

sion between the need forcapitalto be fixed in

place-bound material forms in order for pro-

duction to occur on the one hand, and the

imperative for it to remain liquid and mobile

in the face of competition and shifting rates of

profit in different places and sectors on the

other. Similarly, Harvey explored how geo-

graphical relationships and strategies could be

used to stave offcrisistendencies. Other work

in this period was more historical in nature,

examining the role that geographical relation-

ships played in the origins of capitalism –

whether those that concentrated large numbers

of wage labourers in urban areas, thereby fos-

tering class consciousness, or those that vio-

lently extracted and transferred labour and

raw materials from colonies to industrializing

core countries (e.g. Amin, 1976). Marxist

geography (broadly conceived) also intersected

productively with debates inthird world

Marxism in this period, leading to the develop-

ment of explicitly geographical theorizations of

the global capitalist economy, includingworld

systems theory(Wallerstein, 1979) andde-

pendency theory(Frank, 1967), as well as

critiques of the geographical imaginations

underlying what often remainedeurocentric

conceptualizations of the global economy

(Blaut, 1993). This brief review cannot do just-

ice to the extent of Marxist geography in these

decades, which also examined questions ran-

ging from regional economic development

strategies and industrial location decisions

(e.g. Storper and Walker, 1989) to historical

materialist interpretations ofcultural polit-

ics(e.g. Harvey, 1989b). Marxist geographers’

engagement with the discipline’s nature–

society tradition proved highly fruitful as

well: the intersection of Marxist theory,cul-

tural ecologyand related work in the 1970s

led directly to the burgeoning field now known

aspolitical ecology(e.g.Watts,1983a),while

Neil Smith, focusing more on industrialized

countries, made the strong claim that nature

under capitalism was increasingly materially

produced(1990). Such engagements sparked a

line of work on theproduction of naturethat

continues up to the present (e.g. Henderson,

1999), including debates about the primacy

that such perspectives accord humans in gen-

eral, and capitalist processes in particular, in

the co-construction of nature. Much recent

work in Marxist geography has focused less on

structuralistmarxist economics, and sought

instead to provide criticalethnographiesof

capitalist societies (Postone, 1993; see, e.g.,

Chari, 2004; Wright, 2004), while at the same

time re-evaluating core Marxist concepts, such

as primitive accumulation, in light of contem-

porary geographies (e.g. Glassman, 2006).

Marxist geography itself soon became an

object of critique, however, not least because

of its very scope. Beginning in the early 1990s,

much critical theory in geography and related

fields moved strongly towards ‘post-marxist’

theoretical frameworks that accept many basic

elements of Marxist theory (e.g. the centrality

of commodification and exploitation in capit-

alist societies) while criticizing much Marxism

as fatally ‘modern’; that is, as an overly ambi-

tious and totalizing meta-theory that seeks to

explain nearly all human experiences,differ-

encesandpowerrelations via a narrow, econ-

omistic schema in which interests, conflicts,

outcomes and even forms of consciousness

can be deterministically read off from the pos-

ition of an individual or group within relations

of production (see Castree, 1999b). Whether

such critiques rest upon a fair reading of all

Marxist theory is debatable, but what is

beyond question is that in recent years many

critical geographers have found Marxism

unhelpful, and sometimes even a hindrance,

in attempts to analyse and combat multiple

and intertwined forms of oppression. Instead,

theoretical frameworks broadly characterizable

as post-structuralist (seepost-structuralism)

have dominated critical geography in recent

years, providing different entry points and tools

with which to grapple with the problematics of

gender,racism,sexuality,post-colonialism

and what might constitute ‘Left’ or radical pol-

itics in the contemporary era. Gibson-Graham

(2006b [1996]), for instance, made a widely

influential argument that Marxism often grants

‘capitalism’ far more coherence and power than

it actually has, and that radical politics would be

better pursued by seeking to identify and foster

more modest alternatives to capitalist relations

from the ground up, rather than by attempting

to analyse and transform ‘capitalism’ as a global

totality. Framings that pit these various theoret-

ical frameworks against one another frequently

rely upon quite reductive and static renderings

of each; the most robust work in critical

geography makes use of multiple theoretical

perspectives in order to develop the fullest and

most rigorous critical analyses possible.

Nonetheless, Neil Smith’s observation (2005a,

p. 897) that Marxism, ‘... may be the one

oppositional politics which really has not been

significantly rescripted into media fodder,

integrated, in greater or lesser part co-opted,

but always has to be opposed’, suggests at

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MARXIST GEOGRAPHY