Aluno: Jakob Sparn

Curso: Espao, Economia e Cultura

Prof: Roberto Monte-Mor
Resenha: Soja Postmodern Geographies
Chapter 1 - History: Geography
According to Soja the obsession with history (or more precisely time) has not ended with the
19th century nor been fully replaced by a spatialization of thoughts. In Sojas opinion modern
social theory (here he cites Kant and Marx) was still very much penetrated with the
interpretative contexts of time or what he calls a historicism of the theoretical
consciousness, which tends to leave the spatial dimension of social life aside. This changed
dramatically in the 1980ies with the development of a postmodern and critical human
geography. This hasnt displaced the historic perspective but rather broaden the onedimensional interpretation into a two-dimensional approach with the entanglement of history
(vertical) and geography (horizontal dimension) as basis for a triple dialectics (trialectics) of
space, time and social being and a re-theorization of geography, history and modernity.
Soja then goes on to locate the origins of postmodern geography with C.W. Mills
(sociological imagination rooted in a historical rationality) and the French Marxist
philosopher Henri Lefebvre and discusses the spatializing projects of Michel Foucault and
John Berger. In Sojas opinion Foucault can and should be considered a postmodern
geographer as he characterizes the spaces of our modern world as heterotopias, as
heterogeneous and relational. Altough Foucault considered space central in the analysis of
power and agreed that a devaluation of space prevailed for genereations, he never
stopped being a historian nor giving up his historical stance. What Soja calls Foucaults
ambivalent spatialization. John Berger on the other hand offers a declaration of the end of
historicism and a change in the mode of narration with a geographical rather than a historical
projection, but without being a simplistic anti-history. According to Berger this is partly due to
the rising awareness of geographically uneven development and a revival of our personal
political responsibility.
In the next part of the chapter Soja starts with conceptualizations of modernity and the
process of modernization, which in his view is a continuous process of societal
restructuring. This restructuring is linked closely to the historical and geographical dynamics
of the modes of production, which have been capitalist for the last 400 years. As all social
processes modernization develops unevenly over time and space, thus creating quite
different historical geographies. But since the 19th century this process has become

synchronic, generating a periodicity (or macro-rhythm) of societal crisis and restructuring in

all capitalist societies. Here Soja argues that spatiality was not only subordinated in critical
social theory, but also lost in the political and practical discourse, thus isolating Modern
Geography from the production of social theory and making it turn in on itself. Only with the
advent of new Marxist schools (especially in Western Europe) in the early 20th century a
countercurrent was established. Here Sojas points again to Lefebvre as a crucial, yet
underestimated figure.
Chapter 3 The sociospatial dialectic
In this chapter, after an academic debate on the origins and short-comings of spatial
Marxism, Soja develops his idea of socio-spatial dialectics which is closely related to
Lefebvres dialectical materialism. First Soja asks the question if Lefebvre was indeed a
spatial fetishist and if reactions to this fetishism resulted in unnecessarily limited
conceptualizations of spatial relations. In Sojas opinion that really is the case, so he tries to
close that gap with his concept of socio-spatial dialectics. Sojas main argument here is that
people modify the spaces they live in, and vice versa are modified themselves by the
spaces. Soja (as well as Lefebvre) argues that space is not only a factor of social production,
but a necessity. In this vision capitalism itself is produced and reproduced within the space,
which questions for example the centrality of class in social transformation. Here it is crucial
to distinguish between the space per se and the social space which is socially organized and
produced, the same way as history is a social transformation of time.
Soja also discusses important recent contributions in the field done by Harvey, Castells and
above all Lefebvre and also cites some of the classical works by Marx, Bukharin and others.
He concludes that there has been a submersion of the spatial analysis he even talks about
a tradition of anti-spatiality in Marxism which needs further explanation. He points out that
Marxs concept of labor exploitation is derivated from his theory of value and its fundamental
measure of (working) time, thus emphasizing the social organization of time and leaving
aside the social organization of space. According to Soja it was only in the 1960ies with the
rise of imperialism theories and a general crisis of capitalism that spatial Marxist analysis got
further developed (here he cites the works by Antonio Gramsci). In the last section of this
chapter Soja discusses one of Lefebvres central questions, that is why capitalism survived?
Lefebvres thesis is that capitalism could soften (perhaps even solve) its inherent
contradictions for around a century which resulted in some growth. Although we cannot
calculate the cost of this process, it seems clear to Lefebvre that this happened with the
occupation and production of space. And it is exactly in this socially produced, fragmented
and hierarchically structured spaces where capitalism has survived.