“2011 and All That: From Ideology to the Confluence of Revolts”

Whatever the fate of the revolts of last year – and they are anything but finished – 2011 will go down as a turning point in political history and geography. There were surely many precedents: economic crises that sparked from the heart of capitalism, the anti-austerity revolts that resulted, the antiglobalization movement a decade ago, the Zapatista revolt even earlier. Yet the confluence of a still-unfolding Arab Spring, Chilean and continuing European anti-austerity revolts, Chinese strikes and the global Occupy movement, en masse made 2011 a year of transition. Neoliberalism is dominant but dead.

Announcement by the Centre for British Studies here.

Neil Smith was born 1954 in Leith, Scotland. He is a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology and Geography, at the Graduate Center department of the City University of New York. Neil Smith earned his Ph.D. degree from Johns Hopkins University, where he studied under David Harvey. Smith’s research explores the broad intersections among space, nature, social theory, and history, including trenchant analysis of American Empire. In his major work of social theory (“Uneven Development: Nature, Capital and the Production of Space”, 1984), he proposed that uneven spatial development is a function of the procedural logic of capital markets, thus, society and economies ‘produce’ space. Smith is credited with the convincing theories about the gentrification of the inner city as an economic process propelled by urban land prices and city land speculation — not a cultural preference for living in the city. (Wiki)

Website including pdf of “Uneven Development” and more recent writings here.

Monday, 13 February 2012, 18:00 hours

Centre for British Studies
Mohrenstr. 60
10117 Berlin-Mitte