Spaces of Capital/Spaces of Resistance

Mexico and the Global Political Economy

Chris Hesketh, Nik Heynen, Mathew Coleman, Sapana Doshi

• Publisher: University of Georgia Press
• Year: 2017
• ISBN:
  9780820351759
• Topic: Ciencias sociales
• Subtopic: Geografía humana

Based on original fieldwork in Chiapas and Oaxaca, Mexico, this book offers a bridge between geography and historical sociology. Chris Hesketh examines the production of space within the global political economy. Drawing on multiple disciplines, Hesketh's discussion of state formation in Mexico takes us beyond the national level to explore the interplay between global, regional, national, and sub-national articulations of power. These are linked through the novel deployment of Antonio Gramsci's concept of passive revolution, understood as the state-led institution or expansion of capitalism that prevents the meaningful participation of the subaltern classes.

Furthermore, the author brings attention to the conflicts involved in the production of space, placing particular emphasis on indigenous communities and movements and their creation of counterspaces of resistance. Hesketh argues that indigenous movements are now the leading social force of popular mobilization in Latin America. The author reveals how the wider global context of uneven and combined development frames these specific indigenous struggles, and he explores the scales at which they must now seek to articulate themselves.

CHAPTER ONE

Geographical Politics and the Politics of Geography

The spatial is not just a matter of lines on a map; it is a cartography of power.

– Doreen Massey, For Space

This chapter seeks to critically engage with debates surrounding the production of space under capitalist social relations of production. The aim is to construct a theoretical framework whereby changes in the geography of the global economy and, moreover, resistance to those changes can be understood. Furthermore, the framework developed here should allow us to examine these changes through a multiscalar analysis. Rather than simply focusing on global, national, or local changes, this chapter seeks to develop an approach that can integrate analyses on a variety of spatial scales. In short, the chapter aims to serve as a tool of analysis, helping to explain why struggles over space, and what particular spaces contain, are likely to become an ever more prominent feature of political life. Linked to this explanation are ancillary arguments about state and class formation and their central role in these processes.

This chapter thus lays the theoretical foundations for explaining the changing scalar organization of the world economy since the 1970s. That organization is viewed from a macrostructural perspective, with an analysis of how it affected the space of Latin America, as well as state formation in the region (see chapter 2) and the changing historical sociology of the state form in Mexico (chapter 3). Finally, the chapter provides the basis to understand processes of geopolitical conflict and class struggle around particular subnational spaces that are currently being targeted as sites for increased capital accumulation (chapters 4 and 5). As was set out in the introduction, the first task is to make the theoretical argument in the abstract before putting flesh on these bones through empirical investigation and the appreciation of wider nuances. Neil Brenner (2004: 18) has stated in relation to this that “consideration of the abstract level enables scholars to examine the general, systemic features of a given historical system.” Noel Castree (2000: 10) usefully illustrates how it is in the realm of abstract argumentation that we organize our worldviews and then come to act out our everyday practices. Our conceptions of the world thus clearly matter, and they motivate us toward action (Gramsci 1971: 323–25, Q 11, §12; Harvey 2010: 38). This chapter, while providing the beginnings of a theoretical framework, deliberately does not close that framework, as I am cognizant of the fact that theory is always modified and informed by the manner in which it works itself out in the real world, including processes of struggle. The concept and the lived experience, in other words, remain inseparable, and we cannot do without either (Lefebvre 1976: 20). It should also be noted that this theorizing is itself not ahistorical in nature but in fact derives from the historical materialist tradition of seeing “theory as history” (Banaji 2011). In other words, it builds on already-accumulated historical knowledge, as opposed to constructing pure, ideal types (Rioux 2013).

An overarching focus on issues of “space” can seem at first appearance to be something of an abstract concern. However, a “politics of space” occupies a central part of our daily lives and promises to have profound effects on our future. One may think here of the peculiarly modern phenomenon of urban slum proliferation, the tragic plight of those who, each year, fleeing political or economic persecution, mortgage their lives in the backs of trucks or other precarious means of transportation, only to be turned back at demarcated and fortified borders, or the relocation of corporations to far-flung parts of the globe, to highlight just a few examples of how the politics of the spatial permeates conflicts and struggles throughout the world. Since the 1980s we have also seen a rise in claims for spatial exclusiveness in terms of nationalism, or regional and localist identity (Massey 1994: 4). In light of this, a prominent, yet spurious, spatial discourse stressing a “clash of civilizations” has gained credence. This maps the world according to key cultural characteristics and claims that the “fault lines between civilisations will be the battle lines of the future” (Huntington 1993: 22). After the events of September 11, 2001, this thesis has risen to prominence, notably among those whom John Agnew and Gearóid Ó Tuathail (1992) term “intellectuals of statecraft.” With the recent upsurge in indigenous activism across Latin America against the privatization of natural resources, U.S. intelligence agencies have wondered aloud whether this is to be the new backdrop for a renewed civilizational clash (Grandin 2007: 213–14). A similar thesis (albeit with a different political rationale) is to be found in one of the most famed books on Mexican history. In his celebrated text México profundo, Guillermo Bonfil Batalla (1996) argued that the last five hundred years of Mexican history can best be understood as a clash of civilizations between a native Mesoamerican culture, on the one hand, and an exogenous Western culture, on the other. According to Bonfil Batalla (1996: xvi), from the time of colonialization onward, Mexico has been organized on “the norms, aspirations, and goals of western civilisation.” The alternative, he argues, is to return Mexico to its basis in Mesoamerican culture (which has retained its presence, albeit in a marginalized fashion). This argument obviously has had wider purchase for Latin American societies that have shared experiences of colonization. However, while we cannot deny the huge importance of cultural negation that colonialism implied (and continues to imply), if we do not want to essentialize location and culture and are serious about examining the possibilities for emancipatory transformation that extend beyond the borders of Mexico or Latin America (thus avoiding parochialism), we should perceive this scenario not as a clash between civilizations but rather as a clash between spatial class projects that were, by their nature, culturally loaded.1 This involves a dialectical process of defetishizing fixed categories, leading to further fundamental questions about the processes and interactions that serve to constitute social reality (Ollman 2003). For example, once we come to investigate the spatial transformations that occurred during colonialism, we are also forced to explore questions of territorial control, as well as the resources within that territory, including the population’s labor. This then leads us to inquire into the motivations driving the process of colonization. Here, appeals to essential cultural characteristics become something of a misnomer. It is, after all, doubtful that we could identify anything inherent to Western civilisation that made it seek to conquer other areas and peoples of the world. If these conquests were contingent rather than linked to reified characteristics of human nature, then we must explore what social processes animate and transform cultures. It is here, as I will demonstrate, that a relational category like class has far more utility, because it allows us to examine the power interests involved and the contradictory dynamics of a mode of production. This does not mean that issues of culture are unimportant. Rather, this examination entails exploring the manner in which culture itself is interwoven with place-specific constructs of political-economic power (Harvey 1993: 21).

My research seeks to construct an alternative framework for understanding geopolitical conflict. A central issue under investigation in this chapter is therefore the importance of the spatial in distinctly capitalist processes of development. After all, capitalism is the dominant socioeconomic model for development in our time. Since the fall of the Soviet Union and the collapse of “actually existing Communism” in Eastern Europe, and following the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping in China, there is little doubt that the world has become more capitalist.2 Indeed, Francis Fukuyama (1992) has gone as far as to say that liberal capitalism represents the “end of history” in terms of a developmental paradigm, as it now has no ideological competitor (although he left open the caveat that history was always open to begin again). In the wake of the world financial crisis of 2007–8 (the latest in a wave of financial crises that have afflicted the world with increasing frequency and intensity since the 1970s), it has become acceptable once again to discuss the term “capitalism” in the mainstream (Nitzan and Bichler 2009: 1), and it indeed appears that people (in certain parts of the world more than others) are beginning to question what sort of history we wish to create. It is imperative, therefore, that we understand why particular spaces are produced in the manner in which they are. Can we discern an overall logic to this process, and if so, in what general direction is this process heading? Is this purely a unilinear trajectory, or do we encounter multiple paths to modernity? Moreover, is this process free of contradiction, or can we infer general tendencies from which we can make certain assumptions about the future and uncover potential agents of change? Furthermore, what does the changing geography of capitalist production imply for a politics of resistance? This book seeks to address all these issues in empirical detail. In chapter 2 I conduct a meso-level analysis in relation to the global political economy and Latin America’s relation to it. I discuss the concrete level of Mexico’s incorporation into these structures in chapter 3 before going on to discuss the dialectic of incorporation and resistance in the cases of Oaxaca and Chiapas (chapters 4 and 5, respectively).

The argument proceeds as follows. First, I provide a general discussion of how to approach the problem of space, and I make an argument for considering the relevance of class struggle to it. Second, I will clarify what it means to talk about the “production of space” and why the term “mode of production” can serve as a useful heuristic device to explain spatial patterns. Third, I examine the difference between feudal and capitalist space, with reference to the different class relations that these modes of production embody and thus the different social purpose that the spatial serves in each mode. This discussion serves to illuminate key tendencies for spatial production under capitalism, tendencies that I will then analyze theoretically and empirically in terms of the transition to neoliberalism in chapters 2 and 3. Fourth, I discuss the role of resistance in shaping the production of place, space, and scale before finally drawing some conclusions. All these points underscore the key claim that struggles over space are ever more integral to the modern world.

A Crisis of Subject Matter? Why Class Matters

As noted in the introduction, within the historical-materialist geographical tradition, approaches to political economy and world order have often focused on the power of capital and issues of capital accumulation (e.g., see Harvey 2006a, 2010; Smith 2008). Although an explanation of contemporary phenomena like globalization can serve a useful function in pointing out some inherent antinomies of capital, there is the danger that such an explanation will be presented in one-sided terms that focus only on the dominant (and therefore singular) narrative, eliding the multifaceted processes of contestation and subversion that have concomitantly been taking place while also unwittingly giving intellectual coherence to such a process. J. K. Gibson-Graham (2006b: 41) refers to this as “capitalocentrism,” whereby capitalism in placed at the center of all developmental narratives, thereby marginalizing the possibilities for noncapitalist social relations. While recognizing the importance of discerning a logic to the movement of capital, this book is equally concerned with highlighting the dialectically related power of those whom capital employs, seeks to employ, or else relies upon in other forms (such as the unemployed who can function as an industrial reserve army) as possible agents of change. It is also concerned with the potential of those who refuse to be dispossessed and incorporated (notably, indigenous and peasant communities). Indeed, the survival of noncapitalist spaces and how they interact with capitalist forms are an integral focus in chapters 3, 4, and 5.

In concurrence with John Holloway (2002a: 40), I argue that “what we want is not a theory of domination but a theory of the vulnerability of domination.” This changes the focus somewhat of who the subject of a given piece of research is. As stated above, all too often, intellectual production is solely geared to analyzing processes of capitalist expansion. Capital, in other words, becomes the subject of study, whereas people and places affected by capital are viewed as passive objects (Lebowitz 2003; Chassen-López 2004: 17).3 Drawing upon the crisis-ridden nature of the structure of capitalism, Holloway has offered a different type of paradigm, one in which we put “crisis” at the forefront of our thinking. This change in perspective fundamentally affects our research agenda. As Holloway (interview with the author, Cholula, 2008) explains, “Crisis is important first and foremost as a methodological approach. What interests us is not the question of how capitalism works, but rather the question of how on earth we get out of it. When we are talking about living in a crisis, we are not claiming that capitalism is about to collapse, but rather stressing that the question is one of crisis, the question is not one of domination. If you start with domination, you close the world all the time. It seems to me, if you start with domination, there is absolutely no way out.”

The approach I develop here, while concurring with the spirit of Holloway’s argument, demurs slightly by arguing that in fact we do need to understand how capital works in order to understand how to get out of it. Without an understanding of the overarching “field of force,” the broader structural relations of capitalism, we are unable to understand present fault lines that are capable of being transformed into future earthquakes. Marx (1852/2000: 329) was profoundly aware of this need to explore the potential for the future from the standpoint of the present, writing: “Men [sic] make their own history, but they do not make it as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past.” The spaces of capital and the spaces of resistance, in other words, cannot be separated from one another; instead, structure and agency are akin to a Gordian knot (Bieler and Morton 2001).

I argue below that appealing to Gramsci’s notion of hegemony allows us both to understand the structural power that capital is able to wield and to be attentive to the manner in which this process is actively shaped by subaltern groups pressing their own claims. Hegemony is defined by Gramsci (1971: 57, Q 19, §24) as the intellectual and moral leadership that the dominant class is able to exercise over society as a whole. However, its stability is often predicated on concessions being granted to subaltern classes in order to secure their consent. Holloway (2005: 270) derides this concept, labeling it as a cop-out that crosses over to bourgeois theory. He further objects that it does not contain a theory of its own gravedigger and reinforces rather than dissolves relations of domination.4 However, this is based on a misreading of the way in which Gramsci deployed the term “hegemony”: he viewed it as a continuous process rather than a fixed accomplishment. Hegemony does not remove the contradictions inherent in capitalist society. What it illuminates is the manner in which the economy, politics, and culture are interwoven and how political power is constantly renegotiated as new social needs are produced and demands created (Lefebvre 1947/2008: 49). Capitalism can thus be viewed as an inherently unstable form of power that is modified by subaltern class struggles and has relied upon consent more than any system before it (Gramsci 1971: 52–54, Q 25, §5; Lefebvre 1991: 57; Roseberry 1994). Hegemony’s chief purpose is to illustrate the nature of class struggle, but in a manner that avoids crude determinism based on historical inevitability. This brings us to the question of values. As David Harvey (1996: 10–11) has cogently argued, “Meaningful political action (and for that matter, even meaningful analysis) cannot proceed without some embedded notions of value, if only as a determination as to what is, or is not important to analyse intellectually let alone to struggle for politically.” However, Harvey asks us not to conceive of values in timeless, nondialectical terms; instead, we need to look at “processes of valuation.” As stated earlier, in order to do this, we need to read history backward, taking as our starting point the relative “permanences” that exist in the here and now and examining the processes and flows that make up these permanences and that are essential to sustaining them (Harvey 1996: 63). It is only through doing this that we can grasp the essential point that place, space, and scale are, in fact, social relations (Massey 1994: 2).

That place and space are products of our interrelations and are dependent upon particular social processes to sustain them can be witnessed by examining any historical city of splendor that now serves as a tourist attraction under the name of “ruins” (Massey 2005: 3). Concomitant with this is a change in the place’s social function. For example, when it was the main seat of monarchical power in the Inca Empire Machu Picchu clearly had a social purpose different from the social purpose it has now as a commodified global attraction in modern-day Peru. In recent decades, the breakup of the Soviet Union and the restructuring of global capital have created profound changes in space. During this same period the decline of former Fordist heartland cities with the onset of deindustrialization in the United States and the converse surge in the development of industrial production in the emerging economies have occurred. All these events point to the contingent and thus changeable nature of space.

The question that we must therefore ask is, What are the dominant processes constructing modern forms of space? The approach I adopt here when answering this question is rooted in the historical-materialist tradition of understanding the social world through processes of class struggle. It should be noted that with the fall of the Berlin Wall and the collapse of Communism in Eastern Europe, as well as the increasing neoliberalization of China, issues of class have come to be viewed as an anachronism that the social sciences can do without. That religious-based rather than class-based groups have been raising the banner of revolution in recent decades, combined with the fact that major economic downturns have not been met with proportionate working-class responses, has led others to dismiss the significance of class (Cox 1987: 3). Indeed, if the past is a foreign country where people do things differently, as L. P. Hartley (1953) famously stated in his classic novel The Go-Between, then it has been conjectured that the language of class could only be understood there. However, Jean-François Lyotard’s (1984) invective against metanarratives notwithstanding, I submit here that appeals to notions of class and class struggle remain vital for our understanding of the modern world. Without appeal to such concepts, our understanding of contemporary sources of concentrated power is highly blunted (Jameson 1991: 349). Likewise, without an analysis of class we are blinded to one of the most pernicious and pervasive forms of exploitation that exists today (Wood 1995). As Neil Smith (2000: 1011–16) rightly points out, the social sciences stopped using the term “class” precisely at a time when its relevance was being reasserted with a vengeance in terms of global class formation, most notably in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Latin America. Indeed, class remains the big nonissue within the global economy. For example, Thomas Piketty (2014) has usefully highlighted the issue of rising inequality since the beginning of the neoliberal period, resulting in an increasing share of wealth flowing to the top 10 percent of society. However, without any notion of class, this remains a historical process with no agency.5

This stress on class struggle should not be interpreted as some wistful longing for a politics of certainty but rather an imperative explanatory device able to illuminate key issues in today’s often opaque world. Frederic Jameson (1991: 331) succinctly explained the connections between class politics and political mobilizations, postulating, “What is sometimes characterised as a nostalgia for class politics of some older type is generally more likely to be simply a ‘nostalgia’ for politics tout court: given the way in which periods of intense politicisation and withdrawal are modelled on great economic rhythms of boom and...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Geographical Politics and the Politics of Geography
• Chapter 2 Latin America and the Production of the Global Economy
• Chapter 3 From Passive Revolution to Silent Revolution: The Politics of State, Space, and Class Formation in Modern Mexico
• Chapter 4 The Changing State of Resistance: Defending Place and Producing Space in Oaxaca
• Chapter 5 The Clash of Spatializations: Class Power and the Production of Chiapas
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index