Talk:David Harvey (geographer)

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Good article. Could perhaps do with being a little less hagiographic. Icundell 19:08, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

This was deliberate, when I started it. Nice to see that after a year, 80% of it is intact. SB

I know David Harvey best for his work as an urban theorist - would it be okay to add him into this catagory too? - br

I added the blurb about A Brief History of Neoliberalism in the fifth paragraph as I just read the text and felt that it should be present in the article. Matcoz


Last paragraph: The University of Texas is generally taken to mean the Austin campus (to which the linked article pertains). Brian Berry, however, is at the University of Texas at Dallas (but was previously at Chicago, Carnegie Mellon and Harvard).

What is with the last part, as marxism has faded recently.

Contents

[edit] Are there any Geographers who are not famous?

Yet another puff for an obscure academic. Wikipedia appears to be inundated with this kind of thing - 'I touched the hem of His garment, and He made me whole' - particularly as regards geographers. Has someone decided to put all the outpouring of their mutual admiration society on Wikipedia? We should be told. 15/9/06

Hey, I coughed recently, and a friend told me the noise it made sounded like 'geographee'. Can someone now write me up as a famous geographer? VS 8th October 2006

I'm working on it right now, in furtherance of my BAPPP qualification (see Discussion about Derek Gregory). 02-11-06

I didn't realize "fame" was the requirement to be included in wikipedia, virtually all academics are obscure. In the grand scheme of things, the most famous intellectuals around are still obscure compared to say, Britney Spears, so should we just only include the famous?...11.30.06

If 'fame' is not the criterion for a wikipedia entry, then why are some academics but not others given write-ups as if they were 'famous'? The point concerns not those written-up in this manner, but those who do the writing-up. What do the latter hope to gain from this client-like behaviour (on which see the discussion about Michael J. Watts)? 02.12.06

Fair enough, the write ups could be better and less obsequious. The Watts entry is particularly horrid. Both of these geographers, while not particularly famous, are influential among geographers and non-geographers alike. The Harvey entry here isn't as fawning as the Watts entry (which should be scrapped and re-written), but could be more critical. Nevertheless, the intellectual influence of both these authors (Harvey especially) is such that the question of their inclusion in wikipedia should be beyond discussion.

Nothing is ever 'beyond discussion'. You’ve missed the point, which is the way ‘fame’ (or ‘influence’) is generated and reproduced. As is clear from the discussion about Watts, the writer of that entry is responsible not just for sycophantic reviews of books edited by Watts but also for similarly fawning entries about other geographers holding senior academic positions. The discussion about Watts details the errors made by the same wikipedia writer in attributing to geographers the critique of post-development that was in fact made earlier by non-geographers. What all this suggests is that ‘fame’ or ‘influence’ is an effect of unwarranted – and in this particular instance, inaccurate – puffery of senior academics by subordinates in the same discipline. 02.12.06

I agree that it is possible for both fame and influence (two distinct concepts) to be generated through wikipedia entries, although it is highly unlikely. Your beef seems to be with the discipline of geography as a whole, where even its most influential figures are unworthy of an entry, with all such entries being merely "puff" pieces.

Again, you are wrong. As my reference to non-wikipedia materials (book reviews) demonstrates, the problem is much wider in scope: wikipedia is merely one particular manifestation of this. My beef, as you so inelegantly put it, is not with geographers per se but with academics who now aspire to celebrity status, and either on their own account or as a result of action by clients, are involved - either directly or indirectly - in self-promotion. Part of this involves making claims to have been the first to criticize this or that wrong theory that ignore earlier critiques which did the same. In this geographers do seem to feature prominently: perhaps it is just the one geographer responsible for a rather large number of sycophantic entries in wikipedia about his senior colleagues, a fawning approach that applies also to his non-wikipedia pieces of puffery, of which there are many. It is a problem, and will not be defined out of existence by claims about the intrinsically worthy nature of those puffed in this manner. The two things - clients composing puffs about senior academics, and the inflated reputation of the latter - are connected. 04.12.06

[edit] Puffs?

So...when is it a piece a piece of "puff" and when is it a legitmate entry? That is the original issue raised here and in the Watts discussion. Should the Harvey entry be deleted or not? How about the entry on Marx? That reads like a fairly fawning entry to me. If your beef (sorry, I'm American, we're not so elegant over here) is with, as you concisely put it, "puffery", what are the standards for this?...12/4/06

You might start by asking what the purpose of these fawning wikipedia entries is. Alternatively, you could question the epistemology that underwrites them. Rather than focusing on a person, which immediately takes the entry into the territory of celebrity, in the process reproducing academic hierarchy, there could be a focus instead on ideas, where an individual is identified as one among many who have contributed to a process of intellectual formation. Such an approach has the additional advantage of moving away from the pervasive concept of academic-as-hero (carving ideas out of the ether) that informs these kinds of sycophantic presentation. Intellectual formation is never simply a case of one individual contribution, but a synthesis of knowledge generated by many. Recognition of this fact would also be a useful beginning. 04.12.06

Two additional points: being the ‘the world’s most cited academic geographer’ means nothing, in the sense that we do not know what is said by those who cite Harvey. It may simply be that ‘he is wrong’, or that ‘these ideas are not new’. And second, his being ‘credited with bringing back class…in the critique of global capitalism’ ignores the fact that for a lot of social scientists (especially non-geographers) the issue of class never actually went away. 26/12/06

[edit] marxian?

"It has been cited widely (over 1000 times, by 2005, in a discipline where 50 citations are rare), and it makes a significant contribution to Marxian theory by arguing that capitalism annihilates space to insure its own reproduction."
Shouldn't it be "MarxIST" instead? I may be wrong but I've never heard the word 'Marxian'...Zigzig20s 00:07, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Another star-struck geographer giving vent to his/her fan-dom. The argument about capitalism and space attributed to Harvey has in fact been made earlier – at least twice. First, at the start of last century by Rosa Luxemburg in her work on how capitalism occupies and changes in its own image non-capitalist social formations. And second, by Frobel et al., in their book The New International Division of Labour (published in German in 1977, and in English in – I think – 1981), who show how capital was engaged in outsourcing production to ‘off-shore factories’ in the so-called Third World countries where labour-power was cheaper. Geographers who don’t bother to check the lineage of a discussion as conducted by non-Geographers are always going to fall into this kind of trap – thinking that it was someone in their own subject who ‘discovered’ an issue and/or initiated the debate about it. Jong the Tippler, 17th January 2007.

Tim Cresswell, in Place, a short introduction, mentions David Harvey's marxist take on the notion of 'place'. So did my lecturer. I was not questioning that. However, does the word "marxian" actually exist? Zigzig20s 16:40, 17 January 2007 (UTC)

Very depressing, but not surprising, to learn that statements made by institutional authority (‘my lecturer’ – how quaint!) remain unchallenged. You are asking the wrong question: rather, it is the validity of claims made by some geographers (no matter where these are positioned in the academic hierarchy) about the theoretical ‘discoveries’ made by other geographers that should be examined. Kip the Jacqueur, 17th January, 2007.

Not to the point. This subsection is about the word 'marxian'. If you wish to hold forth about something else, feel free to edit another subsection. Anyway, should anyone know if this word exists, please enlighten me. If no one does, I shall change it to 'Marxist'. Zigzig20s 01:43, 18 January 2007 (UTC)

It is precisely the point. If you want an answer to what is anyway a rather pointless query, along the lines of how-many-angels-fit-on-the-head-of-a-pin, then why don't you go and look it up in a book? The more important question is the one geographers seem unwilling to address: are they correct to attribute to one of their number the ideas actually presented by non-geographers a long time ago. In other words, are they the 'discoveries' that geographers think they are. Jac le tippleur, 18th January 2007.

I hate to have to point out the obvious to Le Tippoir, but Frobel et al.'s book was published AFTER Harvey's Social Justice and the City, where his argument about the "spatial fix" first appeared...More on Luxemburg to come...

Welcome back, el zalamero, and many congratulations on your BAPPP. But as usual you are wrong. On the issue of ‘spatial fix’, Jessop (Spatial fixes, temporal fixes, and spatio-temporal fixes) observes that Harvey ‘first discussed “spatial fixes” at length in an essay on Hegel, von Thunen and Marx (1981/2001)’. So the concept emerges after, not before, Frobel at al. What we are talking about here, anyway, is not the ‘spatial fix’ per se but the claim that Harvey was the first to come up with the idea that international capitalism occupies and changes in its own image non-capitalist social formations – the argument about the internationalization of capitalism (or globalization), in other words. The focus of Social Justice and the City is urbanization, not the outsourcing of production to take advantage of cheap labour in the Third World (both rural and urban) and its economic logic in terms of Marxist theory. As Harvey himself admits (NLR July/August 2000) ‘[w]hat I realized after Social Justice and the City was that I didn’t understand Marx, and needed to straighten this out’. That he now talks about global capitalist restructuring in Marxist terms should not obscure the fact that, more accurately, this was a process discussed and conceptualized initially by Frobel et al. and Rosa Luxemburg. Jip le Bongleur, 29/01/07

No less than three attempts at spelling (‘Luxembourg’, ‘Luxemberg’) before you got the name of Rosa Luxemburg right. Oh dear, oh dear, just a hint of unfamiliarity here. Presumably, now that you have had time to rush out and enquire as to how to contact this Rosa Luxemburg (‘At which university does she teach? Is she a geographer? Is she a professor? Is she famous?’), where are the fruits? Bong le Jippleur, 08/02/07

Having found out that Rosa Luxemburg did indeed make the case all those years ago that geographers erroneously now attribute to Harvey, el zalamero seems to have given up. Jong le Pipleur, 24/02/07.

There is a decent account of the distinction between 'marxist' and 'marxian' at the Marxian economics page. 27/02/07

[edit] School?

Any source to the school he attended? It was listed as Chatham Grammar School for Boys (and included in that article) but this was changed by an IP. Gary Kirk [Talk] 09:53, 28 March 2007 (UTC)

Again, who cares? Is there no end to this attempt to construct a personality cult around obscure academics in general, and academic geographers in particular? MT, 31 March 2007

I see that someone changed Harvey's label from "geographer" to "social theorist", his/her explanation has something to do with how long it took to find the entry, bizarre. Anyone even remotely familiar with his work knows geography has been central to his research. The "social theorist" (which is vague and unhelpful anyway) should be reverted back to "geographer", I can't seem to do this though. Does anyone know how to change the top heading of an entry?

I was wondering if anyone knows the source, reference of the part that states "the condition of postmodernity" is the independents 1 of 50 most important non fictional books since 1945?

thanks —Preceding unsigned comment added by Jenz.87 (talk • contribs) 13:26, 6 February 2008 (UTC)

Its here: Boyd Tonkin, "Fifty Books to Change Your Life," The Independent,(London), Apr 23, 1998. http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19980423/ai_n14159197/pg_1 AW, 11 Feb 2008



[edit] Fair use rationale for Image:DavidHarvey.JPG

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BetacommandBot (talk) 20:18, 13 February 2008 (UTC)