Noel Castree – författare

David Harvey is among the most influential Marxist thinkers of the last half century. This book offers a lucid and authoritative introduction to his work, with a structure designed to reflect the enduring topics and insights that serve to unify Harvey’s writings over a long period of time.

Harvey’s writings have exerted huge influence within the social sciences and the humanities. In addition, his work now commands a global readership among Left political activists and those interested in current world affairs. Harvey’s central preoccupation is capitalism and the impacts of its growth-obsessed, contradictory dynamics. His name is synonymous with key analytical concepts like ‘the spatial fix’ and ‘accumulation by dispossession’. This critical introduction to his thought is an essential companion for both new and more experienced readers. The critique of capitalism is one of the most important undertakings of our time, and Harvey’s work offers powerful tools to help us see why a ‘softer’ capitalism is insufficient and a post-capitalist future is necessary.

This book is an important resource for scholars and graduate students in geography, politics and many other disciplines across the social sciences and humanities.

David Harvey is among the most influential Marxist thinkers of the last half century. This book offers a lucid and authoritative introduction to his work, with a structure designed to reflect the enduring topics and insights that serve to unify Harvey’s writings over a long period of time.

Harvey’s writings have exerted huge influence within the social sciences and the humanities. In addition, his work now commands a global readership among Left political activists and those interested in current world affairs. Harvey’s central preoccupation is capitalism and the impacts of its growth-obsessed, contradictory dynamics. His name is synonymous with key analytical concepts like ‘the spatial fix’ and ‘accumulation by dispossession’. This critical introduction to his thought is an essential companion for both new and more experienced readers. The critique of capitalism is one of the most important undertakings of our time, and Harvey’s work offers powerful tools to help us see why a ‘softer’ capitalism is insufficient and a post-capitalist future is necessary.

This book is an important resource for scholars and graduate students in geography, politics and many other disciplines across the social sciences and humanities.

Each chapter presents examples of labour practice from around the world, and across multiple sectors of work, not just Western manufacturing. In addition, the book features:

· further reading section with key questions

· glossary of key terms

· short summaries of the main theoretical approaches

· guide to further learning resouces

Spaces of Work is a key book for all social scientists interested in the contemporary state of labour, and the scope for progressive change within the capitalist system. Students of human geography, sociology, international political economy, economics and cultural studies will all find this an invaluable text.

What is the purpose of Geography? What do geographers study and why? How do they seek to shape the world they interrogate?

This book addresses these questions by examining the lives and works of individual geographers, both past and present. Like all disciplines, Geography is no more nor less than the collective endeavours of researchers and teachers operating in specific contexts. The contexts both shape, and are shaped by, these individuals. This book’s biographical and autobiographical chapters transport readers to the times and places where geographers have sought to make Geography matter. The result is a more vivid, grounded understanding of the discipline than the many high-level surveys of geographic thought paradigms currently written for university students.

This book’s accessible essays each conclude with a study task. Making Geography Matter is aimed at university students and their teachers who wish to understand the goals, history and evolving practice of Geography. It provides an alternative perspective – both concrete and engaging – to the many student-focussed texts that map out numerous ‘isms and ologies’.

What is the purpose of Geography? What do geographers study and why? How do they seek to shape the world they interrogate?

This book addresses these questions by examining the lives and works of individual geographers, both past and present. Like all disciplines, Geography is no more nor less than the collective endeavours of researchers and teachers operating in specific contexts. The contexts both shape, and are shaped by, these individuals. This book’s biographical and autobiographical chapters transport readers to the times and places where geographers have sought to make Geography matter. The result is a more vivid, grounded understanding of the discipline than the many high-level surveys of geographic thought paradigms currently written for university students.

This book’s accessible essays each conclude with a study task. Making Geography Matter is aimed at university students and their teachers who wish to understand the goals, history and evolving practice of Geography. It provides an alternative perspective – both concrete and engaging – to the many student-focussed texts that map out numerous ‘isms and ologies’.

· What are humans doing to our one and only planet?

· In an age of scepticism, division and rancour, whose claims and counter-claims about human impacts should we believe?

· What questions do we need to ask about global environmental change?

· How do we grope towards actionable answers in a disunited world?

The scale, scope and magnitude of human impacts on the Earth are unprecedented. Geoscientists warn of a perilous future in which the Earth System has been forced out its interglacial Holocene state. But geoscience can’t tell us what the root causes of anthropogenic planetary change are, nor how humanity should best respond to it. It’s for others to do this analytical and normative work.

What Future for the Earth? examines a growing landscape of thought ranged across the social sciences, humanities and the arts. Setting geoscience in its wider institutional and epistemological context, this multidisciplinary book addresses a set of key societal questions arising from escalating Earth System change. It offers an advanced introduction to concepts, arguments and propositions ventured by environmentally minded historians, geographers, anthropologists, sociologists, political theorists and many others. Placing capitalism and ‘strong anthropocentrism’ at the centre of analysis, What Future for the Earth? tackles a set of big issues, such as how we should think about time and future, about ‘environmental crisis’ and the moral status of the non-human world. The book lends shape to an urgent debate about the many profound implications of what people are doing to our one and only planet. Who gets to speak for the Earth and its inhabitants, how and to what ends? Who gets to identify causes, propose solutions and enact them? As the technological power of certain private firms and many national governments grows prodigiously, these questions focus our attention on how influential actors can be held accountable and a more just world be created.

University students and instructors across a wide range of disciplines will find this book of interest, as will general readers concerned about climate change, biodiversity loss and related problems. This book identifies issues of common concern and outlines ways of addressing them in a world riven by conflict and dissent yet in need of urgent, cooperative action among otherwise different peoples.