On Spatial Fixes and Urban Disease from the Perspective of Modern Marxism
Che Yuling
PhD, Prof., Department of Philosophy, Soochow University, Suzhou, Chine. lingziche@163.com
Che Yuling On Spatial Fixes and Urban Disease from the Perspective of Modern Marxism. Sotsiologicheskie issledovaniya [Sociological Studies]. 2021. No 4. P. 107-117
According to humanistic urbanologists, urban disease is an appearance of problems in modern society. However, Western Marxists in 20th century exemplified by Henri Lefebvre, David Harvey analyze the realistic root of urban disease from the angle of spatial fixes of capitalism. They hold that urbanization is the essence of qlobalization with urbanized society replacing industrial society playing a decisive role and urban space is the major approach for fixing capitalism. Such theory is critically and pertinently put forth from the perspective of modernity and continually adopts critical methods in Marxist political economy, creating a new viewpoint for social critical theory which is directly referring to capitalism. In modern Western Marxists’ view, urban disease arises from he capitalized space’s invasion of living space, therefore, fighting for control over urban space, i.e. urban right would become the focus of future revolution. However, no matter for urban disease or spatial fixes, their contradictions prove that a predatory approach is bound to cause alienation of unban. In a word, criticism of urban disease centres around people’s reflections about the state of modem civilization and that of new civilization in the future.
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