The Dictionary of Human Geography

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upward or downward mobility (Granovetter,

1982; Hanson and Pratt, 1991). sha

Suggested reading

Cresswell (2006).

mode of production Karl Marx refined

‘mode of production’ to explain determinate

ways of harnessing social labour to the trans-

formation ofnature. Nonetheless, Marx and

Engels use the concept variously: sometimes as

a unity in tension between ‘forces ofproduction’

(technology, materials, human–environment

relations) that fetter the transformation of

‘relations of production’ (property,work,

law,class); while elsewhere, well-known pas-

sages from theCommunist manifestolend weight

to an epochal, teleological interpretation of suc-

cessivemodes,includingprimitivecommunism,

slavery, feudalism, capitalism, socialism

and, finally,communism. Marx’sCapitalsys-

tematically explores the dynamics of one mode

of production, through commodities pro-

duced by ‘free labor’: dually freed from the

means of production of necessities for

survival, and free to sell all they have left, their

capacity to labour, without obligations from

workplace or employer. On this exploitation,

Capital constructs ramifying, spiralling, an-

archic forces ofinnovation, class struggle,

crisis, resolution and destruction – dynamics

long debated as periodic or catastrophic

(see dialectic). Twentieth-century orthodox

Marxists carried the burden that precise deter-

mination of the mode had vital political effects.

This orthodoxy was called into question, at

least ‘West’ of the Iron Curtain, through the

revisionistmarxismsof the 1970s. The revival

of ‘modes of production’ in the plural spoke to

new exigencies: British Marxists broke with

Stalinism and evolutionism, as social history

reopened histories of transition to capitalism;

scholars of decolonization and develop-

ment in africa, latin america and asia

questioned the politics andpolitical econ-

omyof peasantries (seepeasant) in relation

to capitalism andimperialism; and Marxist

feminists questioned agrarianhouseholds’in-

ternal and external relations tomarkets(see

agrarian question). A translation of Marx’s

(1857) ‘Introduction’ to hisGrundrisseexem-

plified a hinge between his early and late

thought, calling into question an economistic,

mature Marx. Passages from Marx’s corpus

were re-read with an eye to ‘subsumption’ and

persisting relationsbetweenmodes of produc-

tion. In debate with radicaldependencyand

world-systemstheorists, French structuralists

(seestructuralism) – in particular, the philo-

sophers Louis Althusser and Etienne Balibar,

economic anthropologists Claude Meillassoux

and Maurice Godelier, and sociologist Nicos

Poulantzas – conceived of internally systematic

modes ‘structured in dominance’. Debates

inEconomy and Society, collected in Wolpe

(1980) – including Wolpe’s own classic article

on South Africa – questioned the historical

and political articulation between the reproduc-

tion of capitalism and that of subordinate, pre-

capitalist modes within the social formation.

Eric Wolf’s (1982) critique of Marxist struc-

turalism appealed instead to consciousness

and historical diversity, to show how ‘people

without a history’ organized capitalist, tribu-

tary and kin-ordered modes of production in

relation to a diffusing global capitalism. Talal

Asad (1987) questions Wolf’s recourse to

‘permanent criteria’ in distinguishing modes

rather than explaining complex histories of

articulation to the unequally global history of

capitalism. Instead, ‘articulation’ would have

to contend with traditions, constructions,

aspirations and conditions through which

people could or could not participate in ‘mak-

ing history’. Central to work in this vein since

has been Stuart Hall’s (1980) reworking of

‘articulation’ as both ‘joining up’ and ‘giving

expression to’: a Gramsican analytic that he

uses to explain state-sanctionedracismas one

form of cultural, material and political articu-

lation of multiple modes. sc

model An idealized and structured repre-

sentation of (part of) the world (cf.abstrac-

tion;ideal type). Model-building has a long

history in many sciences, but its formal and

conscious incorporation into geography is

usually attributed to attempts to establish

geography as aspatial sciencein the 1960s

and 1970s. Scientificity was central to the

benchmark collection of essays edited by R.J.

Chorley and P. Haggett asModels in geography

(1967). They treated models as ‘selective

approximations which, by the elimination of

incidental detail [or ‘noise’] allow some fun-

damental, relevant or interesting aspects of

the real world to appear in some generalized

form’. The accent on generalization was vital

to their project, and this was achieved thro-

ugh visual–geometric representations ofspa-

tial structuresand through mathematical–

statistical generation of spatial patterns. The

twentieth anniversary of the originalModels

was marked by an international conference

attended by both revisionists who sought to

rethink and revitalize the project and

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_M Final Proof page 468 1.4.2009 3:19pm

MODE OF PRODUCTION