GEOG 2400 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Labour Power, Intensive Farming, Walt Whitman Rostow
14 Jun 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
GEOG 2400
Urban Inequality and Neoliberalism
Growth and Decline of cities
Modernization theory, Rostow
• Stages of growth, from primitive to industrialized
1. Traditional society
2. Transitional stage, preconditions for take off
3. Take off
4. Drive to maturity
5. High mass consumption
• Post-colonial period, any country can follow this model
• Critique: global south has not seen the same benefits as Europe
Political Economic Approach, Neil Smith
• Ecological problems are built into economy
• Urbanization and capitalism are interconnected
• Roots in Karl Marx
o Mode of production: the way humanity organizes itself to provide subsistence needs and
improve social well-being
• Cheap labour and environmental resources -->profit-->investment--> economic growth
Uneven Development
• Urban growth is process of uneven development in a capitalist system
• Geographically uneven, but also urban social change is a class-based process, elite have more
control over the city
• Products of labour is commodities that are exchanged on the market
o Labour for sale
o Environmental inputs to make commodities
o Market for commodities
o Transformation of labour power and environmental resources into a commodity
• Urbanized society and environment are inextricably linked in a capitalist economy
o Our life is commodified, difficult to find something in our life not tied to the economy
Capitalism
• Labour
o Separating workers from means of production
o Alienation
o Relations of Production
• Hegemonic, relations of production
• Who's in control of labour power and means of production? Manager, corporation,
state?
• Nature
o Need inputs
• Industrial agriculture
• Mining
• Fishing
• Resources are 'free' in monetary terms, but costs are brought on environment and
society
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