Progressive Geographies

Political Geographyis looking for a new associate editor, to begin this July. The position, made possible by James Sidaway stepping down after 12 years as associate editor, is broadly worded to cover the breadth of the subdiscipline. However we will look especially favourably on associate editor candidates with expertise in political theory and critical IR/security studies or political ecology, regardless of their disciplinary foundation, as well as candidates who expertise outside the English-language tradition.

For more details, please see the full announcement.

Please note that applications are due no later than 1 May 2016.

“It is David Harvey’s contention that the production of space, especially the distribution and organization of the territory, constitutes a principal aspect of capitalist economies. His writings on this theme have contributed to the ongoing political debate on globalization and on the different spatial strategies associated to global processes. A foundation of Harvey’s intellectual project is his “close reading” and interpretation of Karl Marx’s Capital, which he has taught and read for decades and documented in his Companion to Marx’s Capital (2010). But Harvey’s work is distinguished by the way he has brought Marxism together with geography with productive results for each discipline. For instance, he has approached the overaccumulation of capital by way of its reflection in spatial expansion in order to demonstrate its causative role. His book Limits to Capital (1982), which traces this argument, is a mainstay of the contemporary understanding of capitalism’s perennial economic crises (among…

Stephane J Baele, Live and let die: did Michel Foucault predict Europe’s refugee crisis?, The Conversation, February 25, 2016

In March 1976, philosopher Michel Foucault described the advent of a new logic of government, specific to Western liberal societies. He called it biopolitics. States were becoming obsessed with the health and wellbeing of their populations.

And sure enough, 40 years later, Western states rarely have been more busy promoting healthy food, banning tobacco, regulating alcohol, organising breast cancer checks, or churning out information on the risk probabilities of this or that disease.

Foucault never claimed this was a bad trend – it saves lives after all. But he did warn that paying so much attention to the health and wealth of one population necessitates the exclusion of those who are not entitled to – and are perceived to endanger – this health maximisation programme.

Biopolitics is therefore the…