On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 7:09 AM, Wojtek S <wsoko52 at gmail.com> wrote:
> [WS:] Sorry for not being able to discern artfulness in this form of
> talk - that is what years of working in data mining do to you :) - but
> what exactly does all this mean? That is, other than showing
> erudition of the speaker and maybe the audience? In my narrow-minded
> "essentialist" world, the role of theory is to explain i.e. turn
> obscure into obvious, not the other way around. Can anyone explain
> what is the purpose of this generalized four-section wide intellectual
> edifice?
>
> Wojtek
>
>
>
> On Fri, Oct 8, 2010 at 2:54 AM, Chuck Grimes <c123grimes at att.net> wrote:
> >
> > Harvey presented, under a description of his approach four sections. The
> > first was the axiomatic level where Production was the top generalized
> > level, then below Distribution, and Exchange---which are fed back into
> the
> > top level. He considered this something of fixed form, an abstract
> > architecture.
> >
> > The next area he considered not in terms of a fixed architectonic, but a
> > flow in the sense of thermodynamics. The central form was the flow of
> money,
> > composed of labor value, rents... I lost him here, almost nodding out. He
> > wrote out a relational equation of balance that essentially said, if any
> of
> > these factors is stopped it stops the flow, and shit breaks down.
> >
> > His third category was the dynamic of interlocking systems which included
> > technology, social relations, conditions of daily life, relation to
> nature,
> > an ideological system and its discontents, and others. The basic idea was
> > the presentation of the categories of potential change that animate the
> > system and which Capital mobilizes. The condition was that if these
> > interdependent factors are not simultaneously addressed, change on our
> side
> > fails.
> >
> > The fourth section was on Geography, the wide field of application, which
> > for Harvey the urban environment was central. The city was center place
> in
> > its dialectic with nature, as landscape was the locus of
> change-revolution.
> >
> > The latter was really interesting and I definitely woke up for this part,
> > since my ex-wife was a city planner, worked for Berkeley city government,
> > and we had talked endlessly about this dialectic between city and
> country,
> > Berkeley and Yosemite, the take over of local business by national
> > franchise, the nastiness of the Chamber of Commerce and its feudal land
> > system...
> >
> > The crowd were all graduate students, old timers something like me, and
> the
> > young professional turks. This was a fine view of actual, living,
> breathing
> > left. Very glad I got off my hermit(internet) ass. It was really nice to
> be
> > around smart people. These folk have no idea how lonely it gets in the
> > bullshit that passes for life in the US. I want to debate
> Darwin---fucking
> > kiss my ass.
> >
> > The questions were interesting. The first was about the role of
> > proletariat---standard issue Marxism.. Havery redirected the
> understanding
> > of who the prols were, in caspule, the makers of cities. He used several
> > other examples like the obvious disaffect intellectuals...
> >
> > The DOE library is under current occupation---who knew? The guy sitting
> next
> > to me was an archaeologist on staff in Geography whose period, place was
> > ancient Peru. We chatted about the Peruvian collection below the Hearst
> > women's gym and swimming pool, a Julia Morgan building, which worries the
> > archivialists---as it fucking should below many tons of water.
> >
> > Patrick Bond turned me on to this lecture, but he was very distracted. We
> > only exchanged a few words of greeting. I have to say, the most beautiful
> > thing geography does is maps, fabulous maps that track the rotten-right
> > through its Mason-Dixon territories. If you notice these traces follow
> the
> > central river systems of the US, the Mississippi, Ohio, and Missouri.
> What
> > does that mean?
> >
> > Then there are the scatter diagrams of blacks and minorities in major
> urban
> > centers, or the crop intensity plots of the California landscape. The
> > landscape creates the gigantic wealth of California because it has
> virtually
> > every productive eco-system from SEA rice paddies to grasslands for live
> > stock to valleys of custom Tuscan grapes for wine, cheese, and wheat
> plains
> > for bread. It has three giant natural ports in SF, LA, and San Diego. The
> > idiots that run this state have never seen it. The river systems that
> flow
> > into the Sacramento Delta create something compariable to the ancient
> deltas
> > of yore. Well that's the conceptual level of the geography of California;
> >
> > I have gone on about this because there is a lot of intellectual life in
> > Berkeley, but it is incrediably difficult to keep track of. You have to
> > evolve a system of some social sort I never mastered to follow all the
> > goings on. The Berkeley Planet sure ain't the New Yorker or the NYT.
> >
> > For those around the bay area here is the link to David Harvey's big
> public
> > lecture:
> >
> >
> http://events.berkeley.edu/?event_ID=32976&date=2010-10-08&tab=all_events
> >
> > Summary. Wurster Hall 112, 4pm. Parking. Go to the concrete parking
> > structure on Bancroft a block below College in front of Kroeber Hall and
> > cheat anyway you can. It is a short walk from this parking structure to
> the
> > Architecture and Design building of Wurster---a souless Le Courbusier
> > modular structure. I assume this lecture will be a book lecture on The
> > Engima of Capital. Of course it is popular because art and architecture
> > students are too stupid to grasp the abstract concepts. I hate the idea,
> but
> > that is about right.
> >
> > CG
> >
> >
> >
> >
> > ___________________________________
> > http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk
> >
>
> ___________________________________
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>
-- ********************************************************* Alan P. Rudy Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work Central Michigan University 124 Anspach Hall Mt Pleasant, MI 48858 517-881-6319