Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics

This first volume on Antonio Gramsci’s relevance to contemporary concerns with space and nature takes Gramsci scholarship in new directions. It shows how his writings, well known for their historical nuance, also convey a rich spatial sensibility and a distinctive approach to geographical and ecological questions. By linking Gramsci’s socially differentiated understanding of politics to his spatial and ecological concerns, the contributors demonstrate his relevance to new audiences. While recognizing his sometimes problematic discussions of sexuality, gender, racism, and (post)colonialism, several contributors discern distinctive elements of his work that bear directly on current debates. The volume presents a substantially different Gramsci from post–Marxist perspectives and recent anarchist and post–anarchist critiques. It retains his revolutionary orientation, and highlights the profound conceptual and political leverage that a spatialized reading of Gramsci enables today. Reorienting his innovative philosophy of praxis, it proposes new approaches within human geography, environmental studies, and development theory.

Notes on Contributors vii Abbreviations of Works by Antonio Gramsci ix Preface xi Acknowledgments xiii Framings 1 “A Barbed Gift of the Backwoods”: Gramsci’s Sardinian Beginnings 3 Michael Ekers, Gillian Hart, Stefan Kipfer, and Alex Loftus How to Live with Stones 6 John Berger Introduction 13 1 Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics 15 Michael Ekers and Alex Loftus Part I Space 45 2 Traveling with Gramsci: The Spatiality of Passive Revolution 47 Adam David Morton 3 “Gramsci in Action”: Space, Politics, and the Making of Solidarities 65 David Featherstone 4 City, Country, Hegemony: Antonio Gramsci’s Spatial Historicism 83 5 State of Confusion: Money and the Space of Civil Society in Hegel and Gramsci 104 Geoff Mann Part II Nature 121 6 The Concept of Nature in Gramsci 123 Benedetto Fontana 7 Space, Ecology, and Politics in the Praxis of the Brazilian Landless Movement 142 Abdurazack Karriem 8 On the Nature of Gramsci’s “Conceptions of the World” 161 Joel Wainwright 9 Gramsci, Nature, and the Philosophy of Praxis 178 Alex Loftus 10 Difference and Inequality in World Affairs: A Gramscian Analysis 197 Nicola Short 11 Gramsci and the Erotics of Labor: More Notes on “The Sexual Question” 217 Michael Ekers Part III Politics 239 12 Cracking Hegemony: Gramsci and the Dialectics of Rebellion 241 Jim Glassman 13 Gramsci at the Margins: A Prehistory of the Maoist Movement in Nepal 258 Vinay Gidwani and Dinesh Paudel 14 Accumulation through Dispossession and Accumulation through Growth: Intimations of Massacres Foretold? 279 Judith Whitehead 15 Gramsci, Geography, and the Languages of Populism 301 Gillian Hart Conclusion 321 16 Translating Gramsci in the Current Conjuncture 323 Stefan Kipfer and Gillian Hart Index 345

Michael Ekers is Assistant Professor at the University of Toronto Scarborough. In addition to his interests in Gramsci, his research focuses on urban unemployment and rural relief projects in Depression–Era British Columbia, and questions of masculinity, race, and the social contribution of the unemployed. Gillian Hart is Professor at the University of California Berkeley and Honorary Professor at University of KwaZulu–Natal, Durban. She is currently working on a companion volume to Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post–Apartheid South Africa (2002). Stefan Kipfer is Associate Professor at York University, Toronto. His research deals with comparative urban politics and the role of the urban in social and political theory, particularly in Marxist and counter–colonial traditions. He is the co–editor (with Kanishka Goonewardena, Richard Milgrom, Christian Schmid) of Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre (2008). Alex Loftus is a Senior Lecturer at King′s College London. His research focuses on the political ecology of water and the political possibilities within urban ecologies. He is the author of Everyday Environmentalism: Creating an Urban Political Ecology (2012).

“As can be inferred from my opening remarks, my brief comments on the overall purpose of this collection, and my even briefer comments on individual chapters, this is an important contribution to the urgent critical work of recovering, appropriating and recontextualizing Gramsci’s concepts, methods and analyses, and, above all, ‘translating’ them for the current conjuncture, in which issues of political ecology as well as political economy are ever more critical to human flourishing.”  ( Antipode , 1 November 2013) “A book that has just landed on my desk is the fantastic volume edited by Michael Ekers, Gillian Hart, Stefan Kipfer and Alex Loftus entitled Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics . . . My hope is that this intervention and the outstanding chapters from all the additional contributors in the book will provoke renewed debate on space, nature, and politics in and beyond Gramsci!.”  Adam Morton, adamdavidmorton.com, 13 November 2012