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In the 1960s, the boom in peasant studies
increasingly focused on the land and landed
inequality question; for example, how the
green revolutionary technologies were (or
were not) producing an agrarian proletariat
(Harriss, 1982: see green revolution).
Primitive accumulation has also been central
to theories ofimperialism, building upon
Marx’s observation of the ways in whichcolo-
nialismdispossessed Third World property
holders and laid (or attempted to lay) the
foundations for systematic accumulation. In
so many cases, colonial capitalism proved to
be dominated by merchant and other forms of
capitalism, in which the speed and depth of
proletarianization was often constrained
(Watts, 1983a).
Against the backdrop of the counter-
revolution indevelopmenttheory and the rise
ofneo-liberalismglobally in the past three
decades, primitive accumulation has returned
as a category of analysis. Much of this has been
spurred by the new ways in which various sorts
of commons – common property resources, the
airwaves, human and plant genetic materials –
have been subject to the violent forces ofpri-
vatizationand what Marx called ‘disposses-
sion’. Massimo De Angelis and the electronic
journalThe Commonerhave been especially
important in rethinking primitive accumula-
tion in the context ofglobalizationand neo-
liberal hegemony (see alsoRETORT, 2005).
Harvey (2005) has also returned to primitive
accumulation in his account of neo-liberalism.
Here he draws upon the important observation
made by Arendt (1958) that primitive accumu-
lation – the ‘original sin of simple robbery’ –
was repeated historically as capitalism
expanded into non-commodified areas, sec-
tors, countries and frontiers. Harvey deploys
this insight to show that neo-liberalism has typ-
ically operated in global terms, especially under
the auspices ofamerican empire, as a form of
dispossession – what he callsaccumulation by
dispossession– rather than intensive accumula-
tion. The forms of dispossession are enor-
mously varied – privatizing public housing,
raiding pension funds, displacing indigenous
people through dam projects, privatizing germ
plasm – and throw up quite varied forms of
resistance, typically articulated around the
defence of the commons, which have been a
fundamental force in the so-called anti-
globalizationmovements.
In the socialist arena, a notion of primitive
socialist accumulation was developed by
Preobrazhensky in the 1920s, in post-
revolutionary Russia (see Preobrazhensky,1965). He emphasized that maintaining the
equilibrium between the market share of indus-
trial and agricultural output at pre-war levels
meant upsetting the balance between rural
effective demand and the commodity output
of the town. A large increase in heavy invest-
ment was required that could not be funded
internally; hence agriculture had to bear the
burden. State trading monopolies would divert
excess demand from the peasantry to invest-
ment from consumption. This was to be
achieved by a sort of unequal exchange in
which agrarian goods were underpriced and
manufactures overpriced. This monopoly pri-
cing by the state – in effect, a massive tax on
peasants to kick-start heavy industry – was the
socialist model of primitive (originary) accu-
mulation. The presumption was that the terms
of trade would strike the kulaks hardest. A bril-
liant theorist of socialist accumulation, he
broke with both Trotsky and Stalin and was
arrested and shot in the late 1930s. mwSuggested reading
De Angelis (2006).primitivism A Euro-American discourse
that represents the indigenous cultures of sub-
Saharanafrica,Southamericaand the Pacific
islands as outside the perimeter ofcivilization.
It was inspired by Europeantravel-writing,
and in particular by the discoveries made by
European explorers in the South Pacific in the
closing decades of the eighteenth century. Its
imaginative geographies received formal
expression in post-enlightenmentphilosophy
(Rousseau’s ‘noble savage’), in modernart
(Gauguin’s Tahiti), and in early anthropology
(Malinowski’sArgonauts of the Western Pacific).
In all three cases, the possessive is significant:
while primitivism was often connected to a cri-
tique ofmodernity(a ‘oneness’ withnature,
for example, an intrinsic simplicity, and a
celebration of the sensual and the spiritual
through the fantastic), it was also closely tied to
colonialism. In many ways, it acted as the cul-
turaldualtothe conceptoftropicality,and isa
powerful reminder that colonial discourse was
about more thanorientalism.Historically,
‘primitivism has its place in the genealogy of
relationships between the West and the Other:
itallowsonetograspthegeographybywhichthe
West has constructed itself in reference and
opposition to ‘‘Elsewheres’’. Conversely, primi-
tivism accounts for the geography of these
‘‘Elsewheres’’, in that they were transformed,
and even produced by the West’ (Staszak,
2004, p. 362). But primitivism continues toGregory / The Dictionary of Human Geography 9781405132879_4_P Final Proof page 581 1.4.2009 3:20pmPRIMITIVISM