David Harvey's "Rebel Cities"
May. 22nd, 2015 02:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stormdogI finished reading "Rebel Cities." I guess I was hoping for a sort of direct plan of action for creating resistance to neoliberal trends in an urban context. It's not really that, at least partly because, as Harvey notes, there's isn't a simple plan.
Discussion of the tension between cities as fungible commodities vs cities as unique sites with unique resources was interesting. He discusses the the way "monopoly rent" (that is, rent or value related to uniqueness) is important to capitalist practice, and that cities are being positioned (or positioning themselves) as sites of authenticity and uniqueness in order to be attractive. But when authenticity is commodified, it undermines itself. These sorts of cracks, he says, are where anti-capitalist resistance can make room for itself.
His discussion of the need for activists on the left to look beyond horizontal, non-hierarchical organization is really interesting stuff too. I'm someone who tends to romanticize the structure of groups like Food Not Bombs or Occupy Wall Street, or even the Rainbow Family of Living Light; groups that are radically democratic and without a power structure. But of course, all groups have power structures, whether explicit and formal or implicit and informal. And without a formalized structure of power, organization fails beyond a local scale.
Harvey looks at a couple of case studies demonstrating some of his points. His mentions of the Zapatista autonomous zone was interesting to me. The fact that I've been to Chiapas, talked with some of the Zapatista compañeras and compañeros, and seen (in a very superficial way) the working of a couple of Zapatista communities helped contextualize Harvey's observations. I think I should write an email to the professor who organized that trip and tell her how much I feel I've learned from it in some very indirect ways. Anyway, Harvey points out the problems of trying to interact with the external capitalist world when, as a group, you have rejected all capitalist structure. It was a point I wondered about while in Chiapas and afterward. How can you be truly independent and autonomous while still being enmeshed in larger infrastructural systems of economy, electricity, petroleum products, and more? These things are complicated, but I feel like creating an autonomous zone can't be a permanent solution. It needs to go somewhere from there, and I'm not sure where.
Rebel Cities had a lot to say both about cities specifically, and about neoliberal economics and politics in general. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. It was worthwhile reading, but left me with more questions than answers.
Well, next I'm going to read Keller Easterling's "Extrastatecraft."
Discussion of the tension between cities as fungible commodities vs cities as unique sites with unique resources was interesting. He discusses the the way "monopoly rent" (that is, rent or value related to uniqueness) is important to capitalist practice, and that cities are being positioned (or positioning themselves) as sites of authenticity and uniqueness in order to be attractive. But when authenticity is commodified, it undermines itself. These sorts of cracks, he says, are where anti-capitalist resistance can make room for itself.
His discussion of the need for activists on the left to look beyond horizontal, non-hierarchical organization is really interesting stuff too. I'm someone who tends to romanticize the structure of groups like Food Not Bombs or Occupy Wall Street, or even the Rainbow Family of Living Light; groups that are radically democratic and without a power structure. But of course, all groups have power structures, whether explicit and formal or implicit and informal. And without a formalized structure of power, organization fails beyond a local scale.
Harvey looks at a couple of case studies demonstrating some of his points. His mentions of the Zapatista autonomous zone was interesting to me. The fact that I've been to Chiapas, talked with some of the Zapatista compañeras and compañeros, and seen (in a very superficial way) the working of a couple of Zapatista communities helped contextualize Harvey's observations. I think I should write an email to the professor who organized that trip and tell her how much I feel I've learned from it in some very indirect ways. Anyway, Harvey points out the problems of trying to interact with the external capitalist world when, as a group, you have rejected all capitalist structure. It was a point I wondered about while in Chiapas and afterward. How can you be truly independent and autonomous while still being enmeshed in larger infrastructural systems of economy, electricity, petroleum products, and more? These things are complicated, but I feel like creating an autonomous zone can't be a permanent solution. It needs to go somewhere from there, and I'm not sure where.
Rebel Cities had a lot to say both about cities specifically, and about neoliberal economics and politics in general. It wasn't quite what I was expecting. It was worthwhile reading, but left me with more questions than answers.
Well, next I'm going to read Keller Easterling's "Extrastatecraft."
