PERSPECTIVES

Contemporary Globalisation
and the Politics of Space
Swapna Banerjee-Guha

Since place is the arena where

social structure and social
relations interact, all praxis are
grounded in specific places,
giving rise to relations of power,
domination and resistance.
Underlying the spatialities one
finds the material framework of
social relations, power structure
and discursive methodologies of
the common people. A look at the
dynamics of space and
spatiality as reflected in the
research in globalisation studies.

Swapna Banerjee-Guha (sbanerjeeguha@

hotmail.com) is with the School of Social
Sciences, Tata Institute of Social Sciences,
Mumbai.

Space and Spatiality

n current time, an increasing number of

researches in social science are found
to use space and spatiality as key
theoretical constructs to articulate the
link between social and political theories,
between State and people and the issues
of their everyday life. The understanding of
space as a material, social and political
construct, for the same reason, is becoming
more and more significant in the current
discourses on neo-imperialist strategies
for controlling world regions and global
resources. Several contemporary researches
are found to have taken up issues of spatiality, intermixed with uneven development,
contemporary globalisation and geopolitics
to explain the problematic of state, space,
territoriality of production and governance. Hence, the need for a socio-spatial
approach in understanding the presentday social and political processes is not
only important for the analysis of the
changing geopolitical framework, but also
for reflecting on the ways people organise
their lives, livelihoods and struggles
against various power structures.
Understanding the spatial ontology of
social and political processes (Soja 1989)
is, however, a complex issue. After having
written on space and spatiality for years,
David Harvey (2006b) states that space,
included in the updated version of Raymond
Williams (1985) Keywords, should simultaneously have an identity of one of the
most complicated words in use, in its
variety (Banerjee-Guha 1997; Brenner
1999; Harvey 2006a), positioned in
diverse regional conjectures.
Space can be absolute, relative or relational, or all together, depending on the
ongoing process. There is no ontological
answer to the question on the nature of
space; the answer essentially lies in human
practice. For example, in India in current
times, several absolute spaces of agriculture

Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 24, 2011 vol xlvi no 52

or forestlands or mineral-rich areas that

had long remained objects of imagination
and material practices of communities
having organic links with the latter, are
systematically getting exposed to a process
of contrasting imagination, constructed by
the state through projects of neo-liberal
capitalist territorialisation. A fusion is found
to have occurred between the quest of
capital for individual advantages and the
state imperatives towards augmentation
of power of its territory vis--vis other territories in the emerging neo-liberal framework of competition that has gone to use
the inherent instability of regional structures leading to space-specific devalorisation of selected spaces and associated human praxis. Buttressed by institutional
rationality, the capitalist and statist logics
in the above cases are found to have overextended themselves to subjugate the indigenous discourses emerging out of the
organic practices from below.
The inherent contradiction of capitalist
and statist logics in such cases is getting
internalised within the process of capitalist
accumulation in the given tensions between
regionality, territorial class alliance and free
geographical movement of capital. The
process is wrought with epistemic violence
leading to deformation and discontinuity
(Ahmed 2009) of the absolute space and
the local community. The primary/absolute
space of private property in such situations,
located in different regional settings and
bounded by various territorial designations,
functions as absolute (representing regionality and territorial class formations), relative and relational (representing a more
continuous surface suited to the operation
of capital) all three together, remaining in
dialectical tension and in interplay between
each other (Banerjee-Guha 2009).
All these suggest that social processes
are constructed and reproduced according
to the spatiality of factors, involving complexities of politics and history that permeate all the aspects of everyday life,
moulding the contours and topologies of
dynamic spaces that again (re)produce
subjective imaginations about spatiality
through interactions as well as encounters
(Jazeel and Brun 2009). The diversified
aspects of the spatial, in tandem, become

41

PERSPECTIVES

extremely important in the construction,

functioning and reproduction of society,
polity and economy, in a given time,
engulfing the daily life practices of individuals located at diverse situations.
Spatialisation of politics (Agnew and
Corbridge 1995) and theorisation of political economy hence become intensely
material, unfolding the relationships between spatialities, peoples, institutions
and the lived praxis that do not involve
only one territory, but a highly differentiated and varied geography and many spatialities through which the nation states
are contested and controlled. Take the
case of the US war on Vietnam in the
1960s. It is a glaring example of a subjective imagination of a world power about a
distant region wrought with dangers of
communism that it decided to control in
the name of helping the primitive peoples to understand the true basis of a civilised existence (Lawrence 1966). The
innumerable relative spaces of brutality
and torture opened up much later by the
US since the second half of the 20th century in Afghanistan, Iraq, Guantanamo
Base and many other regions are all beset
with the imagination of a new empire and
its desire to subjugate space for political
and economic reasons (Chomsky 2007).
The continuity of such practices in overpowering the organic relation of space and
people is interesting. The 2010 announcement of the Pentagon to convert Afghanistan into a prosperous global mining region
using the latters lithium reserve worth $1
trillion, is nothing but a contemporary
geopolitical ambition of a neo-imperialist
power to establish hegemony through
co-option and coercion (Gramsci 1971)
and thus be in command of regions having
crucial resources. From the point of view of
economic globalisation, capitals increasing use of cheap labour in recent time in
discrete locations of several countries,
outsourcing services and production in
locations far and near, is again a reflection
of a distinct spatiality of its contemporary
accumulation strategy leading to penury
and impoverishment of the working class.
In India, the current fast track industrialisation and mining activities in different
parts of the country displacing and dispossessing a huge number of the locals
exposits, in a similar fashion, spatial

42

imaginations of capital and a neo-liberal

state as its ally leading to reconstitution of
the fundamental elements of relation,
power and control. At city levels, fast track
gentrification and anti-poor beautification
projects to make cities more investment
friendly and congenial to the needs and
aspirations of a powerful global community who actually constitute a minuscule
proportion of the total city population reflect similar imaginations about space for
the purpose of control and accumulation.
Spaces of oppression and marginalisation,
in all the above situations, remain calculable, measurable and absolute, but also
tend to become relative by getting negotiated and by directly entering into the
realm of global economic activities.
Tension and conflict may arise (Lefebvre
1974) over the use of space for individual
or social purposes and its domination by
state and other forms of class power. Such
conflicts can give rise to social movements
that aim at liberating space from the
process of domination. From Dantewada
in Chhattisgarh to Orissa, Jharkhand, and
Lalgarh in West Bengal right up to Jammu
and Kashmir and the north-east and in many
other places and cities in India and other
countries, definite patterns of praxis that
are being generated out of such conflicts
and resistances, are an integral part of the
socio-spatial dialectics of those regions.
Since place is the arena where social structure and social relations interact, all praxis
are grounded in specific places, giving rise
to relations of power, domination and resistance. Thus, underlying the spatialities
one finds the material framework of social
relations, power structure and discursive
methodologies of the common people.

Politics of Production of Space

The last 100 years of capitalist development
have focused on production and reproduction of space at an unprecedented scale.
The renewed importance of geographical
space is reflected in the drastic redrawing
of economic and political boundaries,
based on newer global political-economic
relations. Grandiose phrases like the
shrinking of the world or global village
need to be understood in the light of the
specific necessity of a mode of production,
based on the relation between capital and
labour expressing time-space compression

( Harvey 1982). The latter, a globalisation

project of all time, primarily concerns the
goal of equalisation of profit with unhindered movement of goods, services, technology and selective labour power for the
need of a constantly expanding market
that essentially represents levelling of the
globe at the behest of capital, exacting
equality in the conditions of exploitation
of labour (Marx 1967 edition) in every
sphere of production. It projects a one-
dimensional geography of sameness in
which essentially all facets of human
experiences are degraded and equalised
downward (Smith 1986), hiding the fact
that the premise of this equalisation rests
on a strategy of dividing relative space
into many absolute spaces of differential
development (Banerjee-Guha 2009), tuned
to the requirement of global capital.
Poor, backward regions and modern
territorial production complexes then
become equally important components of
a global framework. Brenner (1999) argues
that the current round of globalisation has
significantly reconfigured the inherited
model of territorially self-enclosed societies
and brought in new modes of analysis that
do not naturalise the territoriality of state,
but focus on a variety of heterodox and
interdisciplinary methodologies, challenging the rigidity of the nation state and its
social imaginations. It is important to
mention, however, that in spite of largescale transcendence of state-centric configuration by the new capitalist territorial
organisations in recent times, at both suband supranational geographical scales, it
has not in any way entailed an irrelevance
of the state as a major locus of social power.
Rather it has generated a rethinking of the
transformed role of the state from a provider to a condescending player of diversified global operations.
Formation of a transnationally operated
space by global capital within the boundaries of the nation state in the contemporary
era has to be considered in the light of the
above. Consequently, globalisation needs
to be theorised as a reconfiguration of
superimposed social spaces that operates
on multiple geographical scales. Striking
an integral accord with regional attributes
of various space economies, capital in the
current time is interconnecting societies
and economies of a large number of nation

december 24, 2011 vol xlvi no 52 EPW Economic & Political Weekly

PERSPECTIVES

states within the network of an anomalously developed interdependence involving

not only space-specific production processes, but, more importantly, the dynamics of
political economy and social relations.
Instead of eliminating absolute space
which, anyway, is not its agenda global
capital (Banerjee-Guha 2008) creates and
recreates innumerable absolute spaces as
a part of a largely produced framework of
relative space (Smith 1984) by building,
fragmenting and carving out newer spatial
configurations with specific human practice
and circumstances (Harvey 2006b). This
leads to annihilation of space by time a
drive famously described by Marx (1973
edition) as capitals globalising dynamic
abolishing all spatial barriers to capitals
accumulation process, in search of cheaper
raw materials, fresh sources of labour
power, new markets and new investment
opportunities, to essentially create dis
integration of space and marginalisation of
peoples based on disparate levels of deve
lopment in respective regions. The spatiality
of the above process is further shaped by
the geographies of cultural forms and
practices of countries and regions and
hence may vary from one spatial framework to the other (Banerjee-Guha 2002).
In this sense, globalisation emerges as both
spatial and temporal: spatial, featuring
continual expansion or restructuring of
capitalist territorial organisation, and
temporal, featuring continual acceleration
of capitals socially average turnover time.
Understanding the significance of space
in the post-Fordist era, however, requires
a deeper deconstruction and reconstruction of social theories. This is especially
because the strategy of post-Fordist flexible accumulation has ushered in a more
intense phase of time-space compression
having a disorienting impact on the entire
gamut of political, economic and social
practices. This can be viewed as a moment
that is continually moulding, differentiating,
deconstructing and reworking capitalisms
geographical landscape. It is true that it is
through the production of relatively fixed
and immobile configurations of territorial
organisations that capitals circulation
process used to get accelerated and spatially
expanded for a long time in the Fordist
era. The current process of restructuring
space, a double-edged process allowing

free movement of capital, goods and commodities and limited movement of labour
(power), has, however entailed a unique
dialectical interplay (Emmanuel 1978) between the endemic drive towards spacetime compression (the moment of de-territorialisation) and the continual production of relatively fixed, stabilised configurations of territorial organisation on multiple geographical scales (the moment of
re-territorialisation). In the above process,
profit rates are equalised internationally
by competition while wages are not. As
workers of different countries are not
equally mobile like goods and capital, they
are not in competition with each other. At
the same time, based on the differential
development status of the countries, variations occur in national-level wages between
one country and the other. This wage differential goes to form the basis of competition between countries in which workers
in situ (remaining in the moment of
re-territorialisation) are incorporated in
the network of capitals international economic operation underpinning a highly
strategised capitalist spatiality. The Chinese states using its own uneven development by means of its incredibly low-wage
(Banerjee-Guha 2011) labour advantages
as a competitive edge over other countries,
is a pertinent example.

Globalisation
and the Politics of Space
The contemporary process of neo-liberal
globalisation that uses the prevailing spatiality of unevenness and inequality as a
premise of an ensuing social order is a
case in point. It concentrates on an arena
of struggle over social production and
reproduction, maintains as well as reinforces the existing spatiality and at times,
restructures it according to the given need
of the market. Its transition to flexible
accumulation through disaggregation and
fragmentation of single production pro
cesses in different modes is essentially
accomplished through new organisational
forms and new technologies in production
and communication.
The related strategy of a partial production process, labelled by Ettlinger (1990)
as non-Fordist is essentially nothing but
global capitals non-traditional manipulation of production functions for the purpose

Economic & Political Weekly EPW december 24, 2011 vol xlvi no 52

of maximising profit. It bypasses the

rigidities of Fordism, involving simultaneous large-scale and small batch productions (run at times in pre-capitalist modes)
and is distributed in discrete absolute
spaces having cheap resource and labour
for achieving efficiency by externalising
economies of scale (in complete contrast
to large-scale factory-based mass production that achieves efficiency by internalising the economy of scale). The success lies
in subcontracting and outsourcing, using
unskilled labour along with modern production systems without getting replaced
by a unilinear, evolutionary progression of
production and technology of a post-Fordist
system (Banerjee-Guha 2008). The presentday territorial dispersal of industrial and
economic activities on a global scale, contributing to the emergence of a changed
order of centralised functions, goes to
reconstruct this new capitalist spatiality that
has not only made the production of space
crucial, but brought in the most powerful
and less developed countries face to face
on an unequal competitive framework.
By this, the entrenched geopolitical and
geo-economic structures of contemporary
capitalism have got radically reconfigured
at once on global, national, regional and
urban scales. I have discussed elsewhere
(Banerjee-Guha 2004; 2009) how on a
global scale, internationalisation of production and the new international division
of labour are consolidated by reorganising
space at global levels. On national scales,
not only territorial borders have become
more porous to international capital
(Brenner 1999), the role of national entity
has also got decentred by creating a wide
range of sub- and supra-national forms of
territorial organisations. On regional scales,
as in India, this can be exemplified by the
special economic zones that have been
recently created at the behest of capital
dispossessing communities and are destroying livelihoods. This new wave of multiscalar exploitation is fashioned in a way that
not only reflects (Harvey 2006b; Chomsky
2007) the control of space by various forms
of institutional and state power but also
the import of a collective praxis of spatial
struggles arising therefrom.
A detailed theoretical-historical-empirical
account of the ongoing multiscalar transformation of space lies beyond the scope

43

PERSPECTIVES

of this article. My concern here has been

to elaborate the dynamics of space and
spatiality that is found in use in numerous
researches in different disciplines of social
science, more particularly in globalisation
studies. I will conclude by invoking Lefebvre (1976) on his understanding of space
that essentially marked a major beginning
in recognising the nuances of space and
spatiality in understanding capitalisms
expansionist strategy. Lefebvre argued
that socially produced spaces are where
the dominant relations of production are
reproduced, concretised and progressively
get occupied by an advancing capitalism.
The above understanding logically links
up all de- and re-territorialised production and human-resource complexes of
the present time with the struggles that
are being organised against the infamous
strategy of creative destruction initiated
by a belligerent capitalism.
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