7: Fordism, Marx Flashcards
Preindustrial city
Model Sjoberg (1960) of social geography of premodern city:
3 distinct spaces related to different social groups:
- Elites (religious, political, administrative powers): exclusive central core
- Merchants (lower classes according to Sjoberg): in a wider area surrounding the central core
- Outcasts (poorest) are in the periphery
Within the merchant and outcast area: distinct socioeconomic clusters related to occupations
Idealized model of Sjoberg questioned
Vance (Geography, University of California, Berkley):
- Too much focused on exclusive central core (wealth and status versus surroundings)
- Occupational clusterings based on socioeconomic organization (craft guilds)
- Not one center, but many distinct craft quarters (related to occupations)
- Within occupational districts: class and status stratification
Consensus on social geography pre-industrial city
- ‘walking city’: distances between home and work short
- Work organization constrained by patriarchal and familial structures.
- Social order immutable: based on tradition and nonmaterialistic value system
- Elite residing in the core of city
- Existence of districts based on occupation, but socially mixed.
GIS shows: socio-economic stratification within districts and streets
Spatial structure of the industrial city
During industrialization cities are characterized by:
- Spatial separation of classes
- England: innermost zone most severe crowding and extreme poverty
- U.S.: zonal pattern (concentric zone model of Burgess) reflects different economic competitive power
Chicago model became the archetype of industrial cities in the U.S.
Marx and the industrial city
System of industrial capitalism:
Mode of production
Two elements:
- Forces of production (labour, raw materials, tools/machinery)
- Social relations of production (legal system)
Economic base of society key driver (superstructure) → social-cultural relations
System based on class conflict: labour versus capital
Marxist mode of production contested
Much has changed since the 19th century:
- Much more stratification and social mobility
- Skilled labour and knowledge more important than unskilled labour
- State has increasing role in regulating economy
- Increasing welfare and well-being
However, underlying ideas still a source of inspiration
Fordism and the industrial city
Key concept used to analyze changes in cities from the 1920s
Basic question: why do capitalist economies manage to survive?
Answer found in regulation theory:
- Regulations govern commerce, trade, labour, relations
- Mode of regulation
- Regulatory mechanisms vary from one country to another
Fordism and industrial organization
A way of working and organizing industry associated with the factory system by Henry Ford (Detroit)
Taylorism:
- Planning and control are allocated to management
- Production according to specialized tasks
- Link between technical division of labor (what needs to be done) and the social division of labor (the skills of people available)
Efficient system of production leads to development of mass production > mass consumption
Keynes and the Fordist system
new interpretation of fordism after the economic depression 1920-30s
Keynes:
- governments need to intervene to regulate economic fluctation
- governments should spend on public works, intra-urban highway system, people were able to travel longer dis. to work because of those investments,
-family homes create more demand for goods and services
Results:
- process of suburbanization, people can live not only in the centre of the cities, in the suburbs, impact on urban space
- huge growing demand for domestic consumer products, all kinds of products or tools to manage the household
Problems with the ford system
since 1970s:
- declining productivity, first rising production and consumption, after that economic depression, regulations that were set up aren’t longer useful
- regulations hindered flexibility
- role of national governments less effective, because of global information technologies, transnational corporations and networks
New economy:
- Neo-Fordism: more flexibility
- Neoliberalism: minimal role of the state
Deindustrialization of the city
- Decline in the output of manufactured goods or in employment in the manufacturing sector.
- A shift from manufacturing to the service sectors (finance, business, retailing, leisure, entertainment).
- Manufactured goods comprise a declining share of external trade
Associated with North-America, but deindustrialization
more severe in Latin-America, Asia and Africa
Globalization: growing importance and integration of transnational production and consumption on a global scale.
- Products are made in multiple locations
- Resources/raw materials come from different places
- Components manufactured in different places
- Global culture?
The global city as a problem
Global cities produce social polarisation
- flows of information, capital and people are not bound to national boundaries
- global cities are fundamentally different from the great cities of the 19th century
- financial command centres and services based on inequality
result:
- concentration of wealth in the hands of owners (using services)
- large marginalised and low-paid population
- disconnection city and region
David Harvey, Social Justice and the City (1973)
Shift in his career
- From a scientific approach with quantitative methods to focus on social issues.
- From liberal point of view to Marxian approach (focus on classes and urban inequality)
Why?
He was confronted with the enormous scale of poverty and unemployment in US cities
Criticism of his work:
- Focus on class based economic relations
Other sources of inequality (ethnicity, gender, religion, citizenship).
Doreen Massey Spatial divisons of labour(1984)
Shift from regional sectoral specialization (specialization in products) to regional functional specialization in cities (specialization in stages of production).
- Capitalist economies generate inequality
- Spatial divisions are a product and producer of unequal relations
- Not only class, but also gender and ethnicity
