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David Harvey | |
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 Harvey in 2014 | |
| Born | David William Harvey (1935-10-31)31 October 1935 (age 90) Gillingham, Kent, England |
| Alma mater | St John's College, Cambridge |
| Known for | Marxist geography,quantitative revolution in geography,critical geography,economic anthropology,political anthropology,right to the city,time space compression,accumulation by dispossession |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Anthropology, geography,political economy,social theory |
| Institutions | CUNY Graduate Center |
| Thesis | Aspects of agricultural and rural change in Kent, 1800–1900[1] (1961) |
| Website | davidharvey |
David William HarveyFBA (born 31 October 1935) is a British-American academic best known for Marxist analyses that focus onurban geography as well as the economy more broadly. He is aDistinguished Professor ofanthropology and geography at theGraduate Center of the City University of New York (CUNY). Harvey has authored many books and essays that have been prominent in the development of modern geography as adiscipline. He is a proponent of the idea of theright to the city.
In 2007, Harvey was listed as the 18th most-cited author of books in the humanities and social sciences in that year, as established by counting citations from academic journals in theThomson Reuters ISI database.[2]
David W. Harvey was born in 1935 inGillingham, Kent.[3][4] He attendedGillingham Grammar School for Boys andSt John's College, Cambridge, for both his undergraduate and post-graduate studies. Harvey's early work, beginning with his PhD (on hops production in 19th century Kent), was historical in nature, emerging from a regional-historical tradition of inquiry widely used at Cambridge and in Britain at that time. Historical inquiry runs through his later works (for example on Paris).[5]
By the mid-1960s, Harvey followed trends in the social sciences to employ quantitative methods, contributing to spatial science andpositivist theory. Roots of this work were visible while he was at Cambridge: theDepartment of Geography also housedRichard Chorley, andPeter Haggett. HisExplanation in Geography (1969) was a landmark text in the methodology and philosophy of geography, applying principles drawn from the philosophy of science in general to the field of geographical knowledge. But after its publication Harvey moved on again, to become concerned with issues ofsocial injustice and the nature of the capitalist system itself. He has never returned to embrace the arguments made inExplanation, but still he conforms to the critique of absolute space and exceptionalism in geography of the regional-historical tradition that he saw as an outcome ofKantiansynthetica priori knowledge.[6]
Moving fromBristol University toJohns Hopkins University inBaltimore in the United States, he positioned himself centrally in the newly emerging field of radical andMarxist geography.Injustice, racism, andexploitation were visible in Baltimore, and activism around these issues was tangible in the early 1970s USEast Coast, perhaps more so than in Britain. The journalAntipode was formed atClark University; Harvey was one of the first contributors. The BostonAssociation of American Geographers meetings in 1971 were a landmark, with Harvey and others disrupting the traditional approach of their peers.[7] In 1972, in an essay on ghetto formation, he argued for the creation of "revolutionary theory", theory "validated through revolutionary practice".[8]
One of the most important subfields impacted by the rise of Marxist geography was inurban geography. Harvey established himself as the leader of this subfield with the publication ofSocial Justice and the City (1973). Harvey argued in this book that geography could not remain 'objective' in the face of urban poverty and associated ills.[9] It makes a contribution to Marxist theory by arguing that capitalism annihilates space to ensure its ownreproduction.
Dialectical materialism has guided his subsequent work, notably theLimits to Capital (1982), which furthers the radical geographical analysis of capitalism, and several books on urban processes and urban life have followed it. In 'Limits to Capital' Harvey expanded and innovated Marxist theory with respect to the functioning of money and finance, and the 'spatial moment' in the unfolding of capitalist crisis formation.[10]The Condition of Postmodernity (1989), written while a professor atOxford, was a best-seller (the LondonThe Independent named it as one of the fifty most important works of non-fiction to be published since 1945, and it is cited 50,000 times by 2023). It is a materialist critique ofpostmodern ideas and arguments, suggesting these actually emerge from contradictions within capitalism itself.Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference (1996) focuses onsocial andenvironmental justice (although its dialectical perspective has attracted the ire of some Greens.[citation needed]).Spaces of Hope (2000) has a utopian theme and indulges in speculative thinking about how an alternative world might look.
His study of Second Empire Paris and the events surrounding theParis Commune inParis, Capital of Modernity, is his most elaborated historical-geographical work. The onset of US military action since 2001 has provoked a critique – inThe New Imperialism (2003) he argues that the war in Iraq allows US neo-conservatives to divert attention from the failures of capitalism 'at home'. His next work,A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), provides an historical examination of the theory and divergent practices of neoliberalism since the mid-1970s. This work conceptualises the neoliberalised globalpolitical economy as a system that benefits few at the expense of many, and which has resulted in the (re)creation of class distinction through what Harvey calls "accumulation by dispossession". His bookThe Enigma of Capital (2010) takes a long view of the contemporary economic crisis. Harvey explains how capitalism came to dominate the world and why it resulted in the2008 financial crisis. He describes that the essence of capitalism is its amorality and lawlessness and to talk of aregulated, ethical capitalism is to make a fundamental error.[11] A series of events linked to this book across London academic forums, such as the LSE, proved popular[quantify] and sparked a new interest in Harvey's work.[citation needed]
Harvey returned to Johns Hopkins fromOxford in 1993, but spent increasing time elsewhere as a speaker and visitor, notably as a Miliband Fellow at theLondon School of Economics in the late 1990s. In 1996, he delivered theEllen Churchill Semple lecture at theDepartment of Geography, University of Kentucky.[12] He moved to theCity University of New York in 2001 as a Distinguished Professor, now residing in its Department of Anthropology. He has spent most of his academic career in Anglo-America, with brief sojourns in France and a range of foreign visiting appointments (currently as acting Advisory Professor atTongji University in Shanghai). He has supervised many PhD students. Several of these, such asNeil Smith, Richard Walker,Erik Swyngedouw, Michael Johns,Maarten Hajer,Patrick Bond, Melissa Wright, and Greg Ruiters now hold or held important academic positions themselves.[citation needed]. In 2013 Harvey was asked by theRepublic of Ecuador to help set up the National Strategic Center for the Right to the Territory (CENEDET),[13] which he directed with the urbanistMiguel Robles-Durán until its allegedly forced closure in 2017.
Critical response to Harvey's work has been sustained. In the early years, there was competition between Harvey and proponents of quantitative and non-politicized geography, notablyBrian Berry. A recent critical appraisal (Castree &Gregory, 2006) explores some critiques of Harvey in detail.
Two constants in Harvey's life and work have been teaching a course on Marx'sCapital[14] and his support for student activism and community and labour movements (notably in Baltimore). His course was put into a YouTube lecture series,[15][16] which gained immense popularity and resulted in two companion books covering the three volumes of Marx'sCapital.[17]
David Harvey is widely recognised as a foundational scholar inurban geography.[18] Harvey's books have been widely translated. He holds honorary doctorates from Roskilde (Denmark), Buenos Aires (Argentina), the Faculty of Social Sciences atUppsala University[19] (Sweden),Ohio State University (USA),Lund University (Sweden), theUniversity of the Republic[20] (Uruguay) and theUniversity of Kent (UK). Among other awards he has received the Anders Retzius Gold Medal of theSwedish Society for Anthropology and Geography, thePatron's Medal of theRoyal Geographical Society and theVautrin Lud International Prize in Geography (France). He was made a fellow of theBritish Academy in 1998, and was elected to theAmerican Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2007. He is a member of the Interim Committee for the emerging International Organization for a Participatory Society.[21]
Harvey resides in New York. He has a daughter, Delfina, born in January 1990.[22]
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| Preceded by Dimitris Milonakis and Ben Fine | Deutscher Memorial Prize 2010 | Succeeded by Jairus Banaji |
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