GEOGRAPHY OF NEOLIBERALISM AND SPATIAL FIX
Abstract : This paper emphasizes the consequences of economic inequality, the roots of which lie at the heart of capitalism. It was explained by Marx (1867), and a modern interpretation was offered by Harvey (1982, 1985, 1987, 2013b) through the term spatial fix, which connects the development of capitalism and urbanization. In this global process, inequalities arise that can be illustrated numerically: the net worth of the world’s 358 wealthiest people in 1996 was equal to the total income of the poorest, which makes up 45% of the world’s population or 2.3 billion people. This fact of economic inequality, most convincingly written about by Piketty (2016) and Chancel (2020), became even more critical during the Covid-19 pandemic. The gap between the richest and the poorest widened. The period in which several significant changes in global economic policy took place was called neoliberalism (Harvey, 1989, 2013a; Dušanić, 2016) and led to the establishment of a new economic system that significantly determined the further directions of geography. Understanding these processes implies an interactive approach to their study because the capital/labor relationship defines the global framework for developing urbanization and demography, and thus geography (Mutabdžija, 2020, 2021).
Keywords: neoliberalism, spatial fix, spatial and temporal displacement.
JEL classification: N 14
1. INTRODUCTION
About other social sciences, space was later discussed from an economic point of view. Therefore, several reasons can be related to the founder of the regional economy, Walter Isard. First, he pointed out the decisive influence of the neoclassical school, which started the temporal analysis of economic development as crucial while neglecting the space variable consequently for simplification. Isard confirmed this in the views of Alfred Marshall (1920: 286), who considered that the difficulties of a problem mainly depend on variations in ​​space and time in which the market in question extends; the influence of time is more fundamental than space.” The second reason was explained by R. Capello (2016: 2) through the relationship of this variable (space) in economic analysis, which can ”complicate the logical framework.” She sees the reasons for that in analytical tools, which until recently could not simultaneously deal with temporal and spatial dynamics ”nor could they cope with the appearance of nonlinearities of space, such as agglomerations or the economy of proximity.” This led to the introduction of this variable (space), which required ”the rejection of the simplifying hypotheses of constant yields and perfect competition.” According to economic logic, the market is spatially divided among producers, and some companies do not compete with all companies but only with the closest ones. It follows that spatial distance is an obstacle to market entry, and it, therefore, emphasizes that the regional economy is trying to answer the following fundamental questions:
• What economic logic explains the location of companies and households in the area?
• What economic logic explains the configuration of large territorial systems (e.g., urban systems)?
• Why are certain areas - regions, cities, individual territories - more developed than others?
Capello states that the answers to these questions are given by two large groups of theories, which make up the regional economy:
• Location theory, as the oldest branch of the regional economy, deals with economic mechanisms that distribute activities in space. • Theory of regional growth (and development) focuses on the spatial aspects of economic growth and territorial income distribution.
The answers to these questions, which define the theoretical assumptions of economic geography and regional economy, imply a previous clarification of the geographical meaning of the term space, then a ”spatial turn” in the social sciences, and only then, as the most complex, economic aspect of the term space.
2. GEOGRAPHICAL SPACE
The epistemological basis of geography is broken through the notion of space because geographical knowledge has always been based on understanding space and its cartographic representation. The expansion of this knowledge depended on the applicability of various innovations, which led to new concepts of space. During the historical development of geography, the notion of space has been modified by specific links between ”power, knowledge, and geography.” According to Gregory et al. (2015: 2), XIX c. was an age dominated by ”time” while the XX century. Marked ”space,” during which ”modern” became ”postmodern.” This is marked as a ”spatial turn” in a wide range of humanities and social sciences, with the ”conceptualization of space” being a watershed between geographical directions.
The contribution to the scientific foundation of modern geography was marked by the concept of space, which developed along the historical vertical: Descartes, Newton, Leibniz, and Kant. From the point of view of geographers, Humboldt and Hettner expanded the theoretical conception of the term ”absolute space” and thus modern geography, and the final form was given to it by Hartshorne (1939) by introducing the term ”spatial differentiation.” The concept of space and its philosophical interpretation will become the basis for developing different geographical views of reality in the second half of the twentieth century when there were two more changes in the concept of space, which also represented divisions within geography. Schaefer (1959) began a quantitative revolution in geography (the idea of relative space) as the theoretical basis for the new geography. A more complex geometry was needed to clarify the new concept of space, which introduced the process of abstraction into the spatial analysis (basic methodological procedure) as a precondition for the transition from ”physical” to ”mathematical” space. During this phase in the development of scientific geography, the antagonistic relationship between the concepts of space and regional tradition will appear when space is artificially separated from the natural environment. Peet (1998: 32-33) emphasizes that a kind of crisis of the identity of geography arose from this and because of its complexity (natural and social science).
Table 1: Conceptualization of space and development of scientific geography