The Dictionary of Human Geography

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whereby customers are charged as if the com-

modity originated at a certain (base) point;

this can be used to protect producers in the

basing point location, for commodities actu-

ally produced elsewhere will cost more. The

operation of some pricing policies may involve

collusion on the part of producers to maintain

an artificially high price in the industry as a

whole – an increasing tendency in the

advancedcapitalistworld. dms

primary data analysis In contrast tosec-

ondary data analysis, this involves data col-

lected and analysed by the same researchers.

This allows a great deal of control over what is

collected and how it is collected, so that there

can be high coherence between theoretical and

operational concepts. Such an approach can

be costly in time and resources, however, and

there can be a lack of compatibility with other

work in the field; use of resources such as the

Question Bank (http://qb.soc.surrey.ac.uk/)

and of harmonized questions insurvey ana-

lysescan ameliorate the latter problem, while

effectivesamplingcan address the former.kj

Suggested reading

Government Statistical Service (2003).

primate city, the law of An empirical regu-

larity identified by Mark Jefferson (1863–1949:

see Jefferson, 1939). The populations of the

three largest urban areas in some countries

approximated the ratio sequence 100:30:20,

which he attributed to the largest city’s pre-

eminence in economic, social and political

affairs. Although the sequence is now largely

ignored, the concept of primacy, implying a

city’spredominancewithinanarea,isfrequently

deployed (cf.hegemony;rank-size rule). rj

Suggested reading

Vance (1970).

primitive accumulation InCapital I, having

explained the laws of development ofcapital-

ism, and the distinctive features of the capital-

istmode of production, Marx turns to the

process by which capitalism historically estab-

lished itself (Marx, 1967 [1867]). To pose this

historical question – how didcapitalismarise?

• Marx focuses not simply upon the way in
  which one set of relations of production is
  transformed into another – the transition from
  feudalismto capitalism – but on how one
  classof workers, defined by their lack of prop-
  erty, came to confront another, capitalists,
  who monopolized the means of production.

The ‘so-called secret’, as Marx terms it, of

primitive accumulation resides not in the sim-

ple expansion of the provision of the means of

production in a quantitative sense but, rather,

in a revolutionary reorganization of the rela-

tions of production. Primitive accumulation

for Marx was, in other words, the process by

which a pre-capitalist system of largely agrar-

ian relations and small-scale property holding –

a peasantry having some form of direct control

over the means of production, namely land –

was dispossessed. The origins of capitalism are

to be found in the process by which thepeas-

antsare freed – there is much irony in Marx’s

use of this word – to become wage labourers in

agriculture (on large commercial estates) and

in industry. Marx turns to the case of the

enclosuremovement in Britain – in effect,

the violent expropriation of forms of common

property – and the political and extra-

economic means by which this long process

of the creation and disciplining of a proletariat

was achieved. Marx made it clear that this

process always required the powers of the

stateand was necessarily violent – written in

blood and fire, as he put it (seeviolence).

In seeing the enclosure movement as para-

digmatic of primitive accumulation, Marx

opens up a complex debate over the transition

fromfeudalismtocapitalismand how other

parts ofeurope, and subsequently the colonial

and post-colonial world, stood in a different

relation to the ‘original sin’ of primitive accu-

mulation. The debate between Dobb and

Sweezy (see Hilton, 1976) turns precisely on

the interpretation of other European experi-

ences and the weight attributed to the role of

exchange and markettransactions as the

force in the disintegration of pre-capitalist

relations, or whether the pre-capitalist solidity

was broken by the dynamics ofclassstructure

and struggle over property(see brenner

thesis). These debates were, of course, central

not only to the origins of capitalism in Europe

but to the dynamics of capitalism at the ‘per-

iphery’; that is to say, how forms of capital

took hold of agrarian societies in the context

of European empire (the first age ofempire)

and the genesis of a mercantile world system.

The primitive accumulation question has

always been central to theagrarian question;

that is to say, the ways in which peasant sys-

tems of production are differentiated as capital

takes hold of production. Much of this work

dates back to the classic studies of land, labour

and markets instigated by Karl Kautsky (1988

[1899]) and Vladimir Lenin (1964) in their

studies of German and Russian agriculture.

Gregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 580 1.4.2009 3:20pm

PRIMARY DATA ANALYSIS