Research On David Harvey's Space Theory

The logic of capital increment controls the development of capitalist society.During the process of capital expansion,capitalism encounters repetitive crises.But it survives every time and continues developing,which illustrates capitalism has its own unique method to fix the crisis,and this unique method is the “Spatial-temporal Fixes”.Harvey points out that,the production mode of capitalism is bound to economic crisis which is caused by over-accumulation in capital.Crisis shows up in different spatial forms.At the same time,the spatial production mechanism keep digesting and absorbing the over-accumulated capital by using Spatial-temporal Fixes in order to ease the economic crisis.Here lies the secret to why capitalism could survive from repetitive crises and gain continuous development.However capitalist spatial production mechanism could only temporarily ease and fix this predicament instead of fundamentally avoiding and eliminating the crisis for capitalism.Moreover,the Spatial-temporal Fixes exert a series of negative impacts during the process of easing the crisis.It would lead to the deficiency of spatial justice.Therefore,how to evaluate the significance and effect that spatial production brings on the development of capitalism becomes an important topic to contemporary western scholars.Under the circumstance of ideological transformation,David Harvey starts his exploration and research on Space Theory.He combines Marx's historical materialism with the dimension of space.Standing on the perspective of Marx's historical materialism,Harvey analyzes and criticizes contemporary capitalist society with his Space Theory.Based on this situation,Harvey wholly grasps the crux of capitalism's economy,politics and culture.He searches for the alternative approaches for capitalism from two angles which are criticism of reality and plan of ideality in order to achieve dialectical utopia and the spaces of hope.This thesis follows the logic line of Space Theory and explains the spatial production mechanism of contemporary capitalism by analyzing the pattern of spatial manifestation of the economic crisis.This thesis will link and systemize Harvey's Space Theory with his political and social theory for purpose of discussing how to understand the economic crisis of contemporary capitalism by using Harvey's Space Theory and thoroughly analyzing his criticism on the politics,economy,and culture of capitalism.Chapter one mainly states traditional Marxism economic crisis theory,in other words,this is the historical background and theoretical origin for Harvey's theory.Chapter two analyzes the pattern of spatial manifestation.By pursuing profit maximization,capitalism causes uneven geographical development and post-modern transformation of culture,city and ecology.Chapter three explains the spatial production mechanism of contemporary capitalism.Based on the theory of capital accumulation in Marx's political economy,Harvey thoroughly dissects the spatial production mechanism of capitalism with his Spatial-temporal Fixes.He updates and develops historical materialism into historical-geographical materialism.Chapter four discusses the spatial development tendency of contemporary capitalist economic crisis which is the main content of Harvey's emancipatory politics theory.Chapter five evaluates Harvey's Space Theory objectively.It aims at analyzing Harvey's essence of thought and promoting the development of Space Theory.The conclusion part states that Harvey's Space Theory is the core concept in his research system.It is also the Inheritance and development of the theoretical tradition of western Marxism in post-industrial era.Harvey combines his Space Theory with Marx's political economy and develops it into historical-geographical materialism.This not only broadens the horizon of Space Theory,but also excavates the hidden vision of space in Marxism.Through analyzing and criticizing the economic crisis and developing reality with Space Theory,Harvey activates the modernity of Marxism.Thus,it provides new thoughts for insisting and developing Marxism,new angles and theoretical basis for understanding the development path and internal contradictions of contemporary capitalism.In this sense,we could conclude that Harvey's Space Theory inherits and promotes the critical spirit of Marxism,and also deeply explores and responds the problems and dilemmas during the developing process of contemporary capitalism.This would have an important guiding and practical significance to scholars nowadays and future.