Recommend me books on critical / (post) marxist spatial theory
January 17, 2013 10:20 AM   Subscribe

I am interested in critical theoretical and marxist spatial theory, please recommend me some books that provide a good overview or introduction to this area! Thanks!
posted by FuckingAwesome to Education (5 answers total) 9 users marked this as a favorite
 
I posted some notes on Lefebvre's Production of Space here, which may be helpful in evaluating its relevance. Other than that, anything by David Harvey, Richard Peet, or Ed Soja should be on point. One caveat: my familiarity with the topic is twenty years out of date, but those guys seem to have generated stuff in the past few years that's still in the right ballpark.
posted by Monsieur Caution at 10:34 AM on January 17, 2013 [2 favorites]


Yeah, start with David Harvey. He's such an important figure in this area. I would add Michel de Certeau's work on the everyday, micro-level way we make it through the world. Walking in the city, or part III of the practice of everyday life, for example.

It might be helpful to go back to Frederick Jameson's postmodernism, or, the cultural logic of late capitalism. If I remember right, the way he talks about architecture has a spatial side. Also, his idea of cognitive mapping has both temporal and spatial aspects to it.
posted by umbú at 11:31 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


The late Neil Smith and Allan Pred should also be on MC's list. I haven't actually read these two, but Pred 1984 (non-paywalled) gets hundreds of citations while Smith 1984 gets thousands, so they or the works that cite them may be a good place to start.
posted by col_pogo at 11:42 AM on January 17, 2013 [1 favorite]


A lot of phenomenology starting with Husserl but particularly in the works of Merleau-Ponty discusses spatiality in relation to perception and embodiment.
posted by ga$money at 12:04 PM on January 17, 2013


Don't forget landscape theory! Denis Cosgrove, Stephen Daniels, Don Mitchell...actually, John Wylie's book Landscape offers a fantastic overview of the last few decades of work, I'd probably start there.

+1 for Neil Smith, who is dearly missed.
posted by avocet at 3:39 PM on January 17, 2013


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