Rethinking Italian Autonomist Marxism: Spatial Composition, Urban Contestation, and the Material Geographies of Social Reproduction

Antipode ◽  
2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Neil Gray
2018 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 255-275 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nick Clare

Through the creation of an original theoretical framework, this paper demonstrates the value of a deeper engagement between autonomist Marxism and (urban) geography. By spatialising arguably the autonomists’ key theoretical contribution – class composition – the paper develops the ideas of technical and political spatial compositions. These dialectically intertwined concepts provide a framework with which to analyse the relationships between shifting urban spaces and struggles, and clarity is therefore added to another key autonomist concept, the evocative yet nebulous ‘social factory’. Applying these to Buenos Aires, the paper focuses on various spatial conjunctures, exploring their emergence and the immanent potentials for radical spatial politics they afford and preclude. In particular, the paper provides a detailed reading of the complex role Buenos Aires’ ‘informal’ settlements play in both perpetuating and resisting a neoliberal, financially extractive economy. The benefit of a ‘spatial composition’ framework is twofold: it provides a periodising heuristic with which to originally and usefully approach urban struggles, and, in unpacking the ‘social factory’, it can be applied widely as a form of radical geographical praxis. The paper thus makes important theoretical and empirical contributions to an exciting, emerging autonomist (urban) geography, as well as to studies of Buenos Aires.


Author(s):  
Max Antony-Newman

This qualitative research involving semi-structured interviews with Ukrainian university students in Canada helps to understand their educational experience using the concept of cultural capital put forward by Pierre Bourdieu. It was found that Ukrainian students possess high levels of cultural capital, which provides them with advantage in Canada. Specific patterns of social inequality and state-sponsored obstacles to social reproduction lead to particular ways of acquiring cultural capital in Ukraine represented by a more equitable approach to the availability of print, access to extracurricular activities, and popularity of enriched curriculum. Further research on cultural capital in post-socialist countries is also discussed.


2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandra Célia Coelho Gomes da Silva

This work is the result of the doctoral thesis entitled Pilgrimage of Bom Jesus da Lapa: Social Reproduction of the Family and Female Gender Identity, specifically the second chapter that talks about women in the Pilgrimage of Bom Jesus da Lapa, emphasizing gender relations, analyzing the location of the pilgrimage as a social reproduction of the patriarchal family and female gender identity. The research scenario is the Bom Jesus da Lapa Pilgrimage, which has been held for 329 years, in that city, located in the West part of Bahia. The research participants are pilgrim women who are in the age group between 50 and 70 years old and have participated, for more than five consecutive years in the Bom Jesus da Lapa Pilgrimage, belonging to five Brazilian states (Bahia, Minas Gerais, São Paulo, Espírito Santo and Goiás) that register a higher frequency of attendance at this religious event. We used bibliographic, qualitative, field and documentary research and data collection as our methodology; we applied participant observation and semi-structured interviews as a technique. We concluded that the Bom Jesus da Lapa Pilgrimage is a location for family social reproduction and the female gender identity, observing a contrast in the resignification of the role and in the profile of the pilgrim women from Bom Jesus da Lapa, alternating between permanence and the transformation of gender identity coming from patriarchy.


1995 ◽  
Vol 31 (8) ◽  
pp. 197-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
L. L. Bijlmakers ◽  
E. O. A. M. de Swart

For the area of the Ronde Venen a plan for large-scale wetland-restoration and improvement of the water quality was developed. Major elements of the developed spatial strategy are the optimal use of the specific hydrological and ecological characteristics of the area. Based on regional hydrological characteristics within the study area hydrological sub-units were distinguished by connecting discharge and recharge areas. In this way the intake of polluted surface water from outside the area could be minimized, with an optimal use of specific local differences in water quality. Two scenarios were developed and evaluated using hydrological, hydrochemical and ecological models. The scenarios differed in spatial composition and the way the water level was manipulated. In order to optimize water quality, natural and artificial pollution control mechanisms were implemented as well. An important criterion for the evaluation was the extent to which the scenarios succeeded in optimizing conditions for the realization of the ecological goals. The most promising and acceptable scenario has been worked out in further detail.


2015 ◽  
Vol 3 (7) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrick Bond

<p class="p1"><span class="s2"><strong>Abstract </strong></span>| The challenge of interdisciplinary intellectual and strategic work in the extractive industries is particularly acute at the interface of research and social activism. Numerous social movements which are dedicated to sustainability fail to ‘connect the dots’ between their campaigns and broader political-economic and political-ecological visions<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>This is becoming a critical challenge in Africa, where the extreme damage done by mining and fossil fuels has generated impressive resistance<span class="s3"><strong>.</strong></span>However, the one obvious place to link these critiques from African activists was the Alternative Mining Indaba in Cape Town in February 2015, and a survey of narratives at that event leads to pessimism about interdisciplinary politics. The potential for much greater impact and deeper critiques of unsustainable extractivism lies in greater attention to combining social reproduction and production (as do eco-feminists), and to tackling social, economic, political and ecological factors with a more explicit structuralist critique and practical toolkit<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>Areas such as energy, economics and climate are ripe for linkages<span class="s3"><strong>. </strong></span>One reason for optimism is a climate justice declaration made by leading civil society activists in Maputo in April 2015.<strong></strong></p>


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