Gramsci’s work explored in new book

GramsciA new collection, co-edited by a York University professor, looking at the work of intellectual and politician Antonio Gramsci will launch in March. It is the first book to bring attention to the geographical dimensions of Gramsci’s work and the implications for social theory and political ecology.

The launch of Gramsci: Space, Nature, Politics (Wiley-Blackwell Publishing) will take place Wednesday, March 12, from 3 to 5pm, in the Senior Common Room, 214 Calumet College, Keele campus. Refreshments will be served. RSVP by Friday, March 8, to Michael Legris at ext. 22078 or mlegris@yorku.ca.

The collection is edited by York University Professor Stefan Kipfer of the Graduate Program in Political Science, Michael Ekers of the University of Toronto Scarborough, Gillian Hart of the University of California Berkeley and Alex Loftus of King’s College London.

Presenting a substantial contribution to Gramsci scholarship, the collection achieves the following:

  • offers the first sustained attempt to foreground Antonio Gramsci’s work within geographical debates;
  • demonstrates how Gramsci’s historically nuanced method also articulates a rich spatial sensibility whilst developing a distinctive approach to geographical questions;
  • contributes to recent debates about Gramsci’s political theory, presenting a substantially different reading of Gramsci from dominant post-Marxist perspectives, as well as more recent anarchist and post-anarchist critiques;
  • builds on the emergence of Gramsci scholarship in recent years, taking this forward through studies across multiple continents, and asking how his writings might engage with and animate political movements today; and
  • forges a new approach within human geography, environmental studies and development theory, building on Gramsci’s innovative philosophy of praxis.

Kipfer’s 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 of Space, Difference, Everyday Life: Reading Henri Lefebvre (2008).

Ekers’ 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.

Hart is currently working on a companion volume to Disabling Globalization: Places of Power in Post-Apartheid South Africa (2002).

Loftus’ 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).

The launch is sponsored by the journal Antipode, Wiley-Blackwell Publishing, York’s Department of Political Science, the Faculty of Environmental Studies and the York University Bookstore.