Neoliberalism, Capitalism, Contradictions

In the past decade, urban regeneration policy makers and practitioners have faced a number of difficult challenges, such as sustainability, budgetary constraints, demands for community involvement and rapid urbanization in the Global South. Urban regeneration remains a high profile and important field of government-led intervention, and policy and practice continue to adapt to the fresh challenges and opportunities of the twenty-first century, as well as confronting long-standing intractable urban problems and dilemmas. This Companion provides cutting-edge critical review and synthesis of recent conceptual, policy and practical developments within the field. With contributions from 72 international experts within the field, it explores the meaning of ‘urban regeneration’ in differing national contexts, asking questions and providing informed discussion and analyses to illuminate how an apparently disparate field of research, policy and practice can be rendered coherent, drawing out common themes and significant differences. The Companion is divided into six parts, exploring: globalization and neo-liberal perspectives on urban regeneration; emerging econceptualizations of regeneration; public infrastructure and public space;
housing and cosmopolitan communities; community centred regeneration; and culture-led regeneration. The concluding chapter considers the future of urban regeneration and proposes a nine-point research agenda. This Companion assembles a diversity of approaches and insights in one comprehensive volume to provide a state-of-the-art review of the field. It is a valuable resource for both advanced undergraduate
and postgraduate students in Urban Planning, Built Environment, Urban Studies and Urban Regeneration, as well as academics, practitioners and politicians.

GEOGRAPHY AND CAPITALISM: RETHINKING CONTRADICTIONS. – From the last book of D. Harvey Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism a workshop was held in Rome in May 2015. It is proposed here, among different perspectives of remarks, a change of focus in the analysis of the capitalist relation, from concept of contradiction to the one of crisis. This focus, necessarily goes with a complete articulation of the territorialization process, with the constitutive territoriality overcoming and the integration of other articula- tions of territoriality, especially that configurative and ontological. This allows to put in a specifically geographical perspective the issue of the globalitarian capitalistic relation.

En la producción de caña de azúcar los agricultores cañeros se afilian a organizaciones que les permiten establecer vínculos con el ingenio para negociar recursos, insumos y asegurar la comercialización. Durante la producción y la cosecha de caña se generan gastos que tienen que ver con el uso de la maquinaria, el pago a los trabajadores que participan en la zafra y en el transporte de la caña hasta el ingenio; éstos gastos son manejados por las asociaciones de productores que funcionan como intermediarias entre los productores de caña y el ingenio. En el caso de estudio que se presenta se han identificado a dos organizaciones de productores, en el ejido de Casasano, Cuautla, Morelos; una pertenece a la Unión Local de Productores de Caña de Azúcar (CNC) y la segunda a la Asociación Local de Pequeños Propietarios de Casasano A.C. (CNPR). El análisis se centra en la sección de la CNPR, fundada en la década de los ochenta, que en los últimos años han aumentado a 800 productores adscritos; esto se debe a un descontento con la asociación filial de la CNC, algunos productores argumentan que esta organización no defiende al cañero, además de que los gastos que maneja en la zafra son más altos que en la asociación de los pequeños propietarios.

Para citar texto:
Parral-Quintero, Luis (2011) La organización de productores cañeros en Casasano; ventajas y contradicciones, en Memorias del 8° Congreso de la Asociación Mexicana de Estudios Rurales, Puebla, México. ISBN: 978-607- 95231-2-1.

"Capitalismo e riconoscimento" presenta, in cinque saggi per la prima volta raccolti insieme e tradotti in italiano, una densa e pregnante analisi di taluni cruciali processi socio-strutturali, morali e normativi delle società capitalistiche contemporanee dalla prospettiva delle dinamiche del reciproco riconoscimento e del disrispetto concernenti la sfera del lavoro. Particolare attenzione è dedicata ai paradossali rovesciamenti delle istanze di autorealizzazione, autonomia e responsabilità personale registratisi negli ultimi decenni nel quadro di un mercato del lavoro sempre più deregolato.

I would claim that differential space is the conceptual culmination of the major spatial themes of  Lefebvre's spatial project. That said, I argue that it is essential to consider differential space and the right to the city as related intimately. Lefebvre developed both concepts in the politically volatile Parisian years of the mid-1960s. He did so partly in response to the evident political tensions and spatial contradictions impacting on France, especially Nanterre University and Paris in this turbulent epoch. Lefebvre developed the concept of the right to the city in his 1968 book Le droit à la ville: publication of which predated the May disturbances of that year. In the same year his book L’irruption de Nanterre au sommet was published in which he begins to develop the concepts of: urban utopia, urban society and differential space. It is unlikely to be coincidence that these books followed in close succession and I contend the right to differential urban space is a fundamental right to the city. Lefebvre counter-poses the abstract homogenised space of neo-capitalism against heterogeneous space of difference and the everyday lived space of ordinary urban inhabitants. I want to suggest here that although the powerful spatial practice and dominant representations of space subjugate the urban realm through the production of abstract space, it is possible for differential space to emerge.

Quite recently, Patrick J. Deneen from the University of Notre Dame has initiated a debate between neoliberal and communitarian conservatives of the United States. A certain branch of this debate, the one that takes place in the journal Public Discourse, focuses particularly on the ideas of the founding fathers of the United States. Deneen argues that the Lockean, liberal ideas of the American foundation emphasize rights too much, and pay insufficient attention to duties. The fact that the fathers were so keen on individual liberties actually causes the erosion of communities in his eyes. Deneen has put forward his own position as a MacIntyrean one, however, MacIntyre himself has stayed out of the debate. My aim in this paper is twofold. First, to assess the debate on its own, and second, to assess the positions of the two opposing sides from the perspective of MacIntyre’s writings on the United States. In other words, I try to answer the question, what would MacIntyre say was he to enter the debate in Public Discourse.
As it turns out, MacIntyre’s own views on the philosophical foundations of the States are quite nuanced. While Deneen completely denounces the ideology of the United States, and his opponents praise it in its entirety, MacIntyre both praises and criticizes it. Besides his condemnation of their liberalism, he actually commends the founding fathers for their idealism, trying to achieve nothing less than a utopia. Based on MacIntyre’s insights and textual evidence, I show that both parties in the debate in question are rather one-sided, they simplify the original ideas of the founding fathers so as to fit their appraisal or criticism.

This is the first issue of an academic journal, of which I am aware, to focus on Henri Lefebvre and urban planning. Urban spatial planning evolved as a concept to integrate the complex social, economic, environmental, political and land use conundrums of late 20th century society. Similarly, the spatial ideas of Henri Lefebvre encompass these issues but stress the importance of everyday life, production, culture and history. This thematic issue of Urban Planning is predicated principally on three of Lefebvre’s major works: The Production of Space (Lefebvre, 974/1991), Critique of Everyday Life (Lefebvre, 1947/1991) and The Urban Revolution (Lefebvre, 1970/2003). Lefebvre’s ideas regarding the investigation of cities and urban society have been taken up most rigorously in the fields of geography, urban studies and latterly architecture. Despite this, it is clear that Lefebvre’s five central concepts: the production of space, abstract space, everyday life, the right to the city and planetary urbanisation—provide powerful tools for the examination of urban planning, cities and urban society in the Global North and South. Anglophone urban planning first embraced Lefebvre’s ideas in the 1980s. Surprisingly then, it is only in the last ten years or so that urban planning academia and research has witnessed a blossoming of interest in Lefebvre’s ideas.

Since the 1970s, neoliberalism has been animated by welfare reform/reversal, wage erosion, relaxing trade controls, and privatization schemes. Neoliberalism was supposed to bequeath unprecedent growth and stability but it brought about sluggish growth rates, increasing inequality, the 2008 financial crises, and riots as violent forms of resistance against the tyranny of austerity.

In this paper, I will argue that neoliberalism is animated by fantasy, creativity, innovation and destruction. It ultimately creates violence. We will define neoliberalism as a set of political and economic practices which argue that human well-being can best be advanced by the maximization of entrepreneurial freedoms within an institutional framework characterized by private property, individual liberty, free markets, and free trade.

In a neoliberal model, the role of the state is to create and preserve an institutional framework that will maximize the potential of such practices. This undermines the developmental state and Keynesian economic models. I argue that neoliberal practices are a double-edged sword – but the edge of destruction is the sharpest. Neoliberalism generates new innovations – but it also creates displacement and a tragedy of the commons. It degrades the environment and undermines alternative futures.

Neoliberalism is a bland technocratic process that is antithetical to our nature as creative human beings. Austerity creates hunger and frustration in the body – and this violence creates riots. I will conclude this paper by proposing alternatives to neoliberalism that will liberate the soul and bequeath authentic democratic mobilizations.