Marxist & Feminist Geographies

Question 1

How does Marxism conceptualise class inequality and conflict?

Answer 1

In the context of Industrialisation:
rural-urban migration (-> factories in urban centres) – proletariat – UNDERCLASS (urban) – exploitation – no way of owning the means of production -> alienation

Question 2

How does Marxism conceptualise capitalism?

Answer 2

Capitalists own means of production (land, factories, equipment, etc) and compete with one another
Workers own their labour power. They are freer than in feudalism, but need to sell labour power to capitalists
Capitalists can exploit labour by extracting more effort from labour without paying a higher price (wages)
Surplus value = invested back into the means of production (which are owned by the capitalists) (and extracted as profit for the capitalists/owners of the means of production)

Periodic crises – competition, over-production, collapse in demand (e.g. great depression), capital expands through moments of crises.

Question 3

Describe Marxist Geography.

Answer 3

Marxist analysis offered way of thinking about how economies produce patterns of unequal development, in contrast to neoclassical model of economics that dominated spatial science in the 1960s.

Uneven Development (Smith): capitalism moves constantly between developed and underdeveloped areas. E.g. gentrification in cities.

Spatial Division of Labour (Massey): tendency to distribute different elements of production process across different spaces. Other relations important, e.g. unionized labour relations

Question 4

Critiques of Marxist Geography?

Answer 4

• Capital portrayed as all-powerful (hegemonic) and abstract – analyses make it seem as though there is very little space for resistance.
• Neglect of gender, race, colonialism, environmentalism.
• Economic and Eurocentric reductionism.

Question 5

Where did Feminist Geography emerge form?

Answer 5

1st wave feminism – suffrage – women’s reaction against the denial of the right to vote (which meant that women were excluded from public space)

Women’s work often not seen as work at all (e.g. household work) – invisibilised labour

2nd wave feminism - equality - Equal pay, education, opportunities, access to finance, contraception/abortion, sexual freedom, etc

Question 6

Explain radical feminism and its critiques.

Answer 6

Radical critique of patriarchy as a form of double subordination – women by men and younger men by older men
Men need to be excluded from radical feminist politics

X - critiqued for normalising an essentialised, white female body

Question 7

Explain socialist feminism and its critiques.

Answer 7

Women’s oppression explained through relation between class and relations of production 
Role of domestic labour power in sustaining capitalism
Emphasis on how dual roles of domestic and wage-labour acts as constraint on women’s lives

Question 8

How did postmodern tensions challenge feminist/marxist geographies?

Answer 8

Critique of some of these arguments
Assumption of the position of the god-trick,
Failure to examine subject positions
Ignoring patriarchy, colonialism, and racism