Making space for the new state capitalism, part II: Relationality, spatiotemporality and uneven development

Abstract

The theme issue ‘Making Space for the New State Capitalism’ brings together insights from critical economic geography and heterodox political economy through a series of papers published in three installments, each accompanied by an introductory essay written by the guest editors. In this, the second of these introductory commentaries, we explore the consequences of embracing relationality, spatiotemporality and uneven development, together with the second group of papers. Introducing a final group of papers, the third installment will address the challenges and opportunities of thinking conjuncturally.

Making space for the new state capitalism, part III: Thinking conjuncturally

“…Circumstances such as these present some challenges to more orthodox forms of theorization and methodological specification, such as those that privilege monocausal explanation and one-sided abstraction, or those predicated on the specification and refinement of tidy and mutually independent ideal types, defined according to nominally internal features. They are, on the other hand, congruent with the epistemological principles of conjunctural analysis (and associated forms of relational thinking), with its emphasis on positionality, multipolarity, spatial (inter)connection, and geographical and temporal unevenness (Alami et al, 2023). This is not to suggest that conjunctural analysis represents a definitive or all-purpose method, even as it arguably does point in the direction of a distinctive style of methodological practice, and to an emergent culture of methodological practice to which several of the papers in this theme issue have contributed.…”

“…These, in the context of a plethora of other “polycritical” conditions represent fertile—not to say urgent—opportunities for just the kind of grounded, granular, and reflexive approaches that have been hallmarks of critical economic geography, of geographical political economy, and spatialized adaptations of conjunctural analysis. It was on this basis that we noted the potential for work in this area to augment “our collective ability to develop new research strategies, designs and methodologies in order to confront [such] challenges in both empirical and theoretical terms” (Alami et al, 2023: 624).…”

Politicising proximity: Radical municipalism as a strategy in crisis

“…In practice, while attempts at (re)municipalisation are frequent features of new municipalist movements (e.g. Angel, 2021; Becker et al, 2015; Paul and Cumbers, 2023), this rescaling of the delivery of services remains a creature of the state, with perhaps just as much in common with the ‘new state capitalism’ (Alami et al, 2023; Peck, 2023) as with the new municipalism. At whatever scale we care to look, the state’s recently rediscovered interventionist role in the proactive management of capitalism is a marker of a conjunctural turning point away from previous iterations of neoliberalism and towards some sort of new state capitalism, whose rise, Peck (2023: 2)notes, ‘signals a significant geohistorical moment (maybe not a new “era” as such, but a notable inflection point for sure)’.…”