Monday.1/08 - Reading Group at 16 Beaver

David Harvey's Spaces of Hope

CONTENTS:
1. About this Monday
2. Patrick - 1/8 Journalisms: Reading Group Recap

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1. About this Monday:

Reading Enclosed (part 1) from David Harvey's Spaces of Hope.

Meeting begins at 8:00pm, if you plan on coming early, someone will be there at 7:30.

For this upcoming Monday Reading Group, we will be reading a short selection from David Harvey's latest book, Spaces of Hope. This reading comes via a suggestion by Susan Kelly and is linked with the previous readings lead by Tamara. It is a short read, but if you do not get to read it, we will try to have a few copies on hand if you would like to come early.

A Brief Book Description

As the twentieth century drew to a close, the rich were getting richer; power was concentrating within huge corporations; vast tracts of the earth were being laid waste; three quarters of the earth's population had no control over its destiny and no claim to basic rights. There was nothing new in this. What was new was the virtual absence of any political will to do anything about it. Spaces of Hope takes issue with this.
David Harvey brings an exciting perspective to two of the principal themes of contemporary social discourse: globalization and the body. Exploring the uneven geographical development of late-twentieth-century capitalism, and placing the working body in relation to this new geography, he finds in Marx's writings a wealth of relevant analysis and theoretical insight. In order to make much-needed changes, Harvey maintains, we need to become the architects of a different living and working environment and to learn to bridge the micro-scale of the body and the personal and the macro-scale of global political economy.

Utopian movements have for centuries tried to construct a just society. Harvey looks at their history to ask why they failed and what the ideas behind them might still have to offer. His devastating description of the existing urban environment (Baltimore is his case study) fuels his argument that we can and must use the force of utopian imagining against all who say "there is no alternative." He outlines a new kind of utopian thought, which he calls dialectical utopianism, and refocuses our attention on possible designs for a more equitable world of work and living with nature. If any political ideology or plan is to work, he argues, it must take account of our human qualities. Finally, Harvey dares to sketch a very personal utopian vision in an appendix, one that leaves no doubt about his own geography of hope.

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2. Patrick - 1/8 Journalisms: Reading Group Recap

(Reading: David Harvey : Spaces of Hope) we continue our architectural bent... the architecture of of the lost utopia... John brought in a great catalogue from a show at New York Public Library based around a history of representation of the lost utopia, the one we never had. I for one will try to find the utopia's on 42nd street. The discussion was a united effort to unify utopic ideas, quickly devolving into a disarray of distopias. This article not the usual on the subject; wrought with elaboration, detail and excrutiating dialectics. Some in the group found a strong sense of the maifesto a rah rah looking for social change in a spatial context. When we searched the text for an unobstructed veiw of the author's definition of said utopia - no clear defination emerged. One may be the manifestation of ideal, another may be the manifestation of subconscious desires for alternative social structures. Why is meaning fixed when the ideal becomes 'real'? If a utopia materializes, is this an act of closure? Does cultural dominance indicate dominant utopic ideals? These and many other questions falling, like teardrops in the rain... When all else fails, quote Marx; TIME CONQUERS SPACE PK