Writing for a wide audience, Harvey here tells the political-economic story of where neoliberalization came from and how it proliferated on the world stage. He constructs a framework, not only for analyzing the political and economic dangers that now surround us, but also for assessing the prospects for more socially just alternatives.

The disruption -- Capital assembled -- Capital goes to work -- Capital goes to market -- Capital evolves -- The geography of it all -- Creative destruction on the land -- What is to be done? And who is going to do it?

Combining his passions for politics and geography, David Harvey charts a cosmopolitan order more appropriate to an emancipatory form of global governance.

The paper explores ways to bring the approaches of J. Habermas and M. Foucault into a productive dialogue. In particular, it argues that Habermas's concept of deliberative democracy can and should be complemented by a strategic analysis of the state as it is found in Foucault's studies of governmentality. While deliberative democracy is a critical theory of democracy that provides normative knowledge about the legitimacy of a given system, it is not well equipped to generate knowledge that could inform the (...) choice of strategies employed by actors from civil society — especially deliberative democrats — vis-à-vis the state to pursue their goals. This kind of strategic knowledge about strengths and vulnerabilities of a given state is provided by Foucault's reading of the state as driven by varying governing rationalities. Since, particularly in his later works, Habermas finds strategic action normatively acceptable under certain circumstances, I argue that societal actors could profit from an integrated approach that incorporates Foucault's strategic analysis into the framework of deliberative democracy. This approach would yield critical knowledge of both a normative and strategic, action-guiding nature. (shrink)

Differences in family factors in determining academic achievement were investigated by testing 432 parents in nine independent, coeducational Melbourne schools. Schools were ranked and categorized into three groups , based on student achievement scores in their final year of secondary school and school improvement indexes. Parents completed a questionnaire investigating their attitudes towards the school environment, their aspirations, expectations, encouragement and interest in their child’s education . They also responded to six open‐ended questions on their attitudes to achievement and to (...) their school. Multiple regression analyses revealed that parental expectations of their children’s educational level made the strongest unique prediction of high achievement followed by the length of time they had maintained their expectations. Limitations discussed include the disparity in meaning associated with the definition of school success and whether these results can be generalized to all students considering the biased sample. (shrink)

Competition in the market is a perennial and ever‐increasing problem for independent schools. How schools can meet this pressure and find ways to attract students is a continuing question and one that will get more onerous as the government funding for education is, in relative terms, decreasing. One of the ways in which schools can show their worth is the attraction of the best teachers and being able to show potential clients how their staff contribute to the academic success of (...) their graduating students. This study considers the relationship between teachers’ attitudes toward their work and the expectations and the extent to which their attitudes and expectations predict the academic achievements of their final year students. Results found that academic achievement is enhanced when school leadership provides an academically oriented context where values and expectations of high academic achievement are part of the school culture. Other teacher variables found to improve academic achievement are the teachers’ need for greater input into decision‐making at their schools; less formalisation of rules, procedures and process; and support through personnel, facilities, finances, equipment and resources. (shrink)

Legal expert systems are computer applications that can mimic the consultation process of a legal expert to provide advice specific to a given scenario. The core of these systems is the experts’ knowledge captured in a sophisticated and often complex logic or rule base. Such complex systems rely on both knowledge engineers or system programmers and domain experts to maintain and update in response to changes in law or circumstances. This paper describes a pragmatic approach using process modelling techniques that (...) enables a complex legal expert system to be maintained and updated dynamically by a domain expert such as a legal practitioner with little computing knowledge. The approach is illustrated using a case study on the design of an online expert system that allows a user to navigate through complex legal options in the domain of International Family Law. (shrink)

The following interview was conducted on July 13, 2009 at the JFK Institute for Graduate Studies, Freie Universität in Berlin, shortly after a conference, entitled “Class in Crisis: Das Prekariat zwischen Krise und Bewegung,” at which Harvey delivered a keynote address. The conference, organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, engaged the political, socio-economic, and conceptual dimensions of the so-called precariat class. The precariat (das Prekariat or la précarité) is typically defined by short-term employment, persistent marginalization, and social insecurity—something of a (...) fragmented urban underclass whose precariousness is increasingly evident in traditionally middle-class economic life. While the concept of the precariat has yet to take root in English-language social theory, the work of Loïc Wacquant (who also delivered a keynote at the Berlin conference), for example, has been popularizing it. (shrink)

The Urbanization of Capital. This article analyses the creation of capitalist urban space during the socalled « Keynesian », or « Fordist », epoch and the transition from this epoch to the era of so-called « post-Fordism » which we are currently experiencing. The production of a spatial fix which is specific to each phase of development is, for capitalism, both a means of managing its internal contradictions, thus ensuring its survival, and of displacing these contradictions onto a new terrain. (...) This terrain is the result notably of the tensions and constraints inherent in the spatial fix inherited from the previous period and remodelled by the constant transformation of the mode of production. The Keynesian urban space, constituted by cities oriented towards demand, and moulded by the joint intervention of state planning and credit-based finance, is succeeded by the post-Fordist city, which is reshaped by intensified interurban and interregional competition, and by the exacerbation of the polarisation of, and separation between, social classes. The reproduction of social relations by and through space poses new problems, at the same time that it opens new possibilities, for class struggles and alternative socialist projects. (shrink)

Freedom’s prospects History shows convincingly that major transformations coincide with periods of crisis or wars. Many aspects of the contemporary world and US economy point to a possible crisis, in particular financial instability, and domestic and external imbalances. Neither hyperinflation nor deflation appear as likely issues. The consolidation of neoconservative authoritarism appears as a potential answer. Fortunately, there is a substantial opposition which can be mobilized against such trends. There are to ways of addressing the problem of alternatives. One is (...) suggested by the directions taken by oppositional movement, now on the rise. The second is critical analysis. But analysis also points up exploitable contradictions within the neoliberal and neoconservative agenda. (shrink)

The « New’imperialism » : Accumulation by Dispossession. It is possible to distinguish throughout the long history of capitalism at a world scale two principal forms of capital accumulation : that based on expanded reproduction, the extraction of surplus-value by means of purely economic constraint, and that based on forms of extra-economic coercion, on violence, predation, expropriation, which illustrates the moment of « primitive accumulation ». This moment, which is characterised as « accumulation by dispossession » is not simply a (...) passing phase of early capitalism, but is rather a permanent modality by which it seeks to resolve its contradictions and to extend its ascendancy over new terrain on a world scale. The current period, marked by neoliberal hegemony, is precisely one in which accumulation by dispossession once again has the upper hand over expanded reproduction, thereby outlining the contours of a « new imperialism », dominated by US power. (shrink)

David Harvey : On peut difficilement imaginer vérification plus spectaculaire de ce que tu prédis depuis très longtemps dans tes théories que l’actuelle crise du système financier mondial. Y a-t-il des aspects de la crise qui t’ont surpris? Giovanni Arrighi : Ma prédiction était très simple. Dans The Long Twentieth Century, je qualifiais de crise annonciatrice d’un régime d’accumulation le début de la financiarisation et je faisais remarquer qu’après un certain temps – en général environ un demi-siècle – la crise (...) terminale suivait. L’hypothèse fondamentale est que toutes ces expansions financières ne pouvaient pas tenir parce qu’elles amenaient à la spéculation plus de capital qu’il n’était possible d’en gérer – en d’autres termes, ces expansions financières avaient tendance à créer des bulles de différentes sortes. Je prévoyais que cette expansion financière mènerait à une crise terminale parce que, aujourd’hui comme dans le passé, les bulles ne peuvent pas tenir. (shrink)

Reinventing Geography. In this interview with the British journal New Left Review, David Harvey summarises the main stages of his trajectory, from his first works, which were positivistic in inspiration, to his conversion to Marxism and from his fieldwork to his theorisation of urban space, to his reflections on postmodernity and the transformation of contemporary capitalism, particularly in its global aspects. It is this latter perspective, analysed via the prism of imperialism, which is at the centre of Harvey’s current research (...) and which has political conclusions which relate to the contemporary meaning of the socialist project. (shrink)

Philosophy in the Seraglio -- The wisdom of the East -- The New World and the noble savage -- The last frontiers -- The varieties of man -- An indelible stain -- The apotheosis of Europe.

The evidence of alienation with respect to work, daily life, politics and inclusion is widespread and has much to do with the increasing influence of right wing populism. Marx changed the basis for his thinking about alienation from a subjective humanist to an objective historical materialist basis. But the relations between the two forms of alienation cannot easily be severed. The contemporary conditions producing subjective states of alienation need to be investigated, chief among these is the rise of personal indebtedness (...) that forecloses upon future possibilities and restricts freedoms. Debt peonage and alienation are in our times a primary material basis for increasing subjective states of alienation. (shrink)

The following interview was conducted on July 13, 2009 at the JFK Institute for Graduate Studies, Freie Universität in Berlin, shortly after a conference, entitled “Class in Crisis: Das Prekariat zwischen Krise und Bewegung,” at which Harvey delivered a keynote address. The conference, organized by the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation, engaged the political, socio-economic, and conceptual dimensions of the so-called precariat class. The precariat is typically defined by short-term employment, persistent marginalization, and social insecurity—something of a fragmented urban underclass whose precariousness (...) is increasingly evident in traditionally middle-class economic life. While the concept of the precariat has yet to take root in English-language social theory, the work of Loïc Wacquant, for example, has been popularizing it. (shrink)