Environment and Planning D: Society and Space

The art of painting represents for the geographer, perhaps more than for another individual, the search for an image of the world as a sort of ecstasy of spaces. The apparent objectivity of scientific concepts, beloved by geographers, must be moderated by their hidden subjectivity. This is why, as a geographer, I continue to ask questions about space and landscapes, about their social and symbolic meanings through an unusual media: painting.

The social area analyses and factorial ecologies of the 1950s and 1960s have constrained the way in which scholars conceptualize urban space; in particular, one can trace contemporary arguments regarding the social reproduction of class to the notion of homogeneous neighborhoods that emerges from social area analyses and factorial ecology. It is argued that the growth in female labor-force participation, the fact of occupational sex segregation, and other recent demographic trends have important implications for the social geography of the North American city. With 1980 Census data from the Worcester, MA Standard Metropolitan Statistical Area, the impact of the gender division of labor on urban social space is described; in particular it is shown that occupational segregation is an important source of intraneighborhood class heterogeneity. The final section of the paper is an exploration of the implications of the findings for theories of social reproduction and for class-based urban politics.

In this paper certain sociospatial processes currently affecting the evolution of the inner city are considered, namely the processes of gentrification, polarisation and marginalisation. It is argued that these processes are increasing in importance as a result of deindustrialisation, demographic trends, the activities of the state, and changes in ideology; these forces then being reflected in the operation of the housing market. Marginalised groups in urban society can be categorised through their relationships to three elements of capitalist-patriarchal control, namely economic standards, social norms, and legal codes. Constraints on the residential location and activity spaces of marginal groups are examined by means of case studies of the impoverished elderly, the lesbian community, and down-and-out groups in Paris in the 1980s.

The central theme of this paper is that a core – periphery structure which was established in Fiji in colonial times has been maintained in the current independent state. The basic structure has not changed and the nature of the relationships between the capitalist mode of production (as the main component of the core) and the village-based mode of production (as a typical mode of the periphery) are supporting the already polarized economic pattern. The current major mechanisms which operate to maintain the basic structure are the pattern of capital allocation, internal migration, the preservation of the village mode of production, and the monopolistic position of the core. These major mechanisms do not differ significantly from past mechanisms although the specific details may vary somewhat. Changes within the structure may occur through a transformation process, in which some basic modification in the production relations and the production forces of the village mode of production may occur. This is regarded as progress and may improve the position of the periphery in relation to the core but does not cause any change of the basic structure.

The industrial restructuring thesis is criticised for offering too limited an explanation of local political consequences. A more elaborate model is developed to connect industrial change and local political behaviour. Burawoy's concept of factory regime and Castells' analysis of collective consumption are scrutinised to establish connections between production processes, labour-market conditions, patterns in the reproduction of labour power, and local political practices. These links are illustrated empirically by reference to a local case-study of a town in northwest England. The model is developed in terms of the operation of three mechanisms which underlie local political practices: factory regime, local labour-market, and mode of the provision of services.