Event

The distinguished geographer and social theorist, David Harvey, will be the 22nd Annual Urban Studies Public Lecturer. The lecture is entitled ‘Neoliberalism and the City’, and will take place Thursday, November 2, 2006 at 5:00 PM in Room 17 of Logan Hall ( 249 South 36 th Street). The lecture is free and open to the public.

In his talk, Harvey will draw on his recent book, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), in which he traces the rise of neoliberal principles based on the theory of free markets and unfettered international capital flows from an obscure economic theory to dominance on the world stage. Harvey shows how proponents of a neoliberal economic philosophy, such as the influential leaders Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, gained the consensus of key figures and economic and political institutions, driven by an aspiration to re-establish class power. He dissects the logic of neoliberalism, revealing its built-in contradictions and the tremendous variation in how it looks from place to place and at different scales. He will talk about how cities have both complied and resisted neoliberalism’s discipline.

David Harvey’s career has had several phases, from work on the methodology and philosophy of geography and historical geography to an exploration of Marxist approaches, particularly related to urbanization and the crises of poverty and racism in US cities. His later work delves into such issues as environmental justice, alternative modes of urbanization, progressive approaches to addressing problems of the environment and inequality. His most recent works looks at questions of globalization and uneven geographical development within a globalizing world.

David Harvey serves as a Distinguished Professor in the Ph.D. Program in Anthropology at the City University of New York Graduate Center. He has been called "one of the most influential geographers of the later twentieth century." He earned his Ph.D. from Cambridge University, was formerly professor of geography at Johns Hopkins, a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics, and Halford Mackinder Professor of Geography at Oxford. His reflections on the importance of space and place and nature have attracted considerable attention across the humanities and social sciences. His highly influential books include Spaces of Global Capitalism: A Theory of Uneven Geographical Development (2006); A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), Justice, nature and the geography of difference (1996); The Condition of Postmodernity (1989); and Social Justice and the City (1973).

He has been the recipient of numerous awards including a Guggenheim Fellowship (1976), the Gill Memorial Prize of the Royal Geographical Society ( London) in 1972 and the Outstanding Contributor Award of the Association of American Geographers in 1980. He was awarded the Anders Retzius Gold Medal of the Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography in 1989, the Patron's Medal of the Royal Geographical Society of London in 1995 and the Vautrin Lud International Prize for Geography also in 1995.