Sunday 3 February 2013

Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics

Michael Ekers (Editor), Gillian Hart (Editor), Stefan Kipfer (Editor), Alex Loftus (Editor) 

This unique collection is the first to bring attention to Antonio Gramsci’s work within geographical debates. Presenting a substantially different reading to Gramsci scholarship, the collection forges a new approach within human geography, environmental studies and development theory.
  • Offers the first sustained attempt to foreground Antonio Gramsci’s work within geographical debates
  • Demonstrates how Gramsci articulates a rich spatial sensibility whilst developing a distinctive approach to geographical questions
  • Presents a substantially different reading of Gramsci from dominant post-Marxist perspectives, as well as more recent anarchist and post-anarchist critiques
  • Builds on the emergence of Gramsci scholarship in recent years, taking this forward through studies across multiple continents, and asking how his writings might engage with and animate political movements today
  • Forges a new approach within human geography, environmental studies and development theory, building on Gramsci’s innovative philosophy of praxis
The introduction to this book can be downloaded here.

'This well-crafted volume pushes the boundaries of current debates on Gramsci. Highlighting spatial and geographical relations, the diverse contributions all share detailed attention to Gramsci’s writings while opening an array of contemporary issues including struggles in Brazil, Nepal, India and South Africa, discussions of gender, class, race and ecology class, and engagements with theoretical work of Laclau & Mouffe, Lefebvre, David Harvey, Hardt & Negri and Subaltern Studies. The contributors have set a hallmark in scholarship that will be very influential across many fields from critical geography and international relations to political theory, development studies and postcolonialism.'—Peter Ives, Department of Politics, University of Winnipeg, Canada

 'From the backwoods to the frontlines, Gramsci’s geographical imagination receives here the thoroughgoing exploration it has always deserved. With deep and nuanced attention to Gramsci’s spatial historicism, this collection foregrounds the profoundly geographical nature of Gramsci’s critical consciousness and what it offers for thinking space, nature and politics relationally. As beautifully considered as its cover, this book is alive to the ‘earthliness of thought’ and its political possibilities.'—Cindi Katz, Earth and Environmental Sciences & Environmental Psychology Programs, The City University of New York

Notes on Contributors vii
Abbreviations of Works by Antonio Gramsci ix
Preface xi
Acknowledgments xiii
Framings 1
“A Barbed Gift of the Backwoods”: Gramsci’s Sardinian Beginnings 3
Michael Ekers, Gillian Hart, Stefan Kipfer, and Alex Loftus
How to Live with Stones 6
John Berger
Introduction 13

1 Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics 15
Michael Ekers and Alex Loftus
Part I Space 45
2 Traveling with Gramsci: The Spatiality of Passive Revolution 47
Adam David Morton
3 “Gramsci in Action”: Space, Politics, and the Making of Solidarities 65
David Featherstone
4 City, Country, Hegemony: Antonio Gramsci’s Spatial Historicism 83
5 State of Confusion: Money and the Space of Civil Society in Hegel and Gramsci 104
Geoff Mann
Part II Nature 121
6 The Concept of Nature in Gramsci 123
Benedetto Fontana
7 Space, Ecology, and Politics in the Praxis of the Brazilian Landless Movement 142
Abdurazack Karriem
8 On the Nature of Gramsci’s “Conceptions of the World” 161
Joel Wainwright
9 Gramsci, Nature, and the Philosophy of Praxis 178
Alex Loftus
10 Difference and Inequality in World Affairs: A Gramscian Analysis 197
Nicola Short
11 Gramsci and the Erotics of Labor: More Notes on “The Sexual Question” 217
Michael Ekers
Part III Politics 239
12 Cracking Hegemony: Gramsci and the Dialectics of Rebellion 241
Jim Glassman
13 Gramsci at the Margins: A Prehistory of the Maoist Movement in Nepal 258
Vinay Gidwani and Dinesh Paudel
14 Accumulation through Dispossession and Accumulation through Growth: Intimations of Massacres Foretold? 279
Judith Whitehead
15 Gramsci, Geography, and the Languages of Populism 301
Gillian Hart
Conclusion 321
16 Translating Gramsci in the Current Conjuncture 323
Stefan Kipfer and Gillian Hart
Index 345