This involves a movement from abstract to concrete, i.e., the increasing concretization of a given phenomenon (e.g., commodities in general vs the real wage). On this basis, Harvey incisively summarizes Marx’s overall method. Harvey remarks that ‘Marx chose never to write out any principles of dialectics… The only way to understand his method is by following his practice’ (1996a: 48 cf. This dual approach, indebted to Marxian political economy and the theory of internal relations, shapes his analysis of all three fixes. His broader contributions to historical geographical materialism are further rooted in a broader understanding of the dialectic, the ontology of internal relations, and the cogredience and compossibility of social relations with different spatio-temporalities (Harvey 1973: 285-301 1982a: 1-2 1996a: 286). Harvey deploys this method to respecify and elaborate key economic categories and crisis mechanisms and to reveal their inherently spatio-temporal qualities. Thus his key contributions on the spatio-temporality of accumulation are rooted in Marx’s dialectical method as developed in the 1857 ’Introduction’ (1973b), the Grundrisse (1973a), and Capital (1970). Whereas his training as a geographer, his inquiries on cities and his intellectual and political projects all motivate Harvey’s spatial interests, his interest in temporal fixes owes more to his knowledge of Marx’s critique of political economy and his own growing recognition of the tendential autonomization of financial capital. Finally, whatever his intellectual motivations, Harvey’s interest in space and place also reflects his view of political practice, inspired by Raymond Williams, namely, ‘militant particularism’ rooted in local mobilization but linked to wider social movements (1996a 2000a 2001a). This holds both for the general ontological importance Marx attaches to place and space in social life and for the substantive importance of possible (dis)connections between qualitatively different forms of labour performed in different places and times and their integration as abstract labour into the circuit of capital. A further, and later, justification suggests that, whereas neo-classical economics collapses when it confronts spatial issues, these are foundational for Marx’s critique of political economy. Thus Harvey suggests that an ‘scape from the teleologies of Hegel and Marx can … most readily be achieved by appeal to the particularities of spatiality (network, levels, connections)’ (1996a: 109). This project corresponds in part to his desire to overcome the privileging, in conventional dialectics, of time over space (1996b: 4 cf. But it is also informed by a deeper ontological and methodological project, namely, ‘to reconstruct theory with space (and the “relation to nature”) clearly integrated within it as foundational elements’ (1996a: 9). Harvey’s work on spatial fixes is obviously rooted in his long-standing interest in land-use patterns and locational dynamics, spatial forms, spatial justice, and urbanism and his later sustained engagement with Marx’s method and theory and with capitalist dynamics (2000d/2001a: 8-10 Merrifield 2003). Harvey on Methodology, Dialectics, and Internal Relations It also proposes a potentially more productive reading of the spatio-temporal fix that is nonetheless consistent with and, indeed, inspired by his approach. My chapter affirms Harvey’s key contributions on these themes but also suggests that they have significant ontological, epistemological, methodological, and substantive limitations. Each works in its own way to defer and/or displace capitalism’s inherent crisis-tendencies but does so only by subsequently intensifying these tendencies and their effects. These interests are reflected in his successive but overlapping accounts of three interrelated fixes: spatial, temporal, and spatio-temporal. More recently, he has introduced the term ‘spatio-temporal fix’ to decipher the dynamics of capitalist imperialism and its grounding in the interaction between capitalist and territorial logics of power. He has also shown how capitalism rests on a political economy of time and has explored the dynamics of time-space compression in both modern and post-modern societies. If one phrase symbolizes this, it is surely ‘spatial fix’. Harvey is famous for stressing the importance of spatiality for an adequate historical materialism. Accordingly, my contribution reviews Harvey’s concern with the spatialities and temporalities of capitalism and capitalist social formations. It is especially productive to probe major thinkers on issues central to their work and widely regarded as their strong points.
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