Socio-Spatial Dialectic - Essay Example

The Socio Spatial Dialectic explains Edward Sojas concept of socio-spatial. It incorporates the social production of space in the Marxist analysis as something more than an epiphenomenon. Soja built the theory centered on the works of Henri Lefebvre, Ernest Mandel, and others. It pinpoints and debates universal spatial problems within the setting of both urban and regional political economy. Discerning the relevance of the dialectic on a local and global level is imperative.

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According to Marxist, the urban scale evolved as part of a larger development, which draws together particular emphases on economic, sociological, and geographical into a common focus on the political economy of urbanization. The emergence of cities and industry interferes with the peoples space, and they cannot happen without controversy. However, putting the theory into practice as investigated by Edward Soja helps solve the problem. The positive spatial perspective of thinking aids in understanding the important struggle over geography. The view puts emphasis on the power of consequential geographies of justice. The consequential geographies of justice involve the outcomes of social and political possession and the dynamic force affecting it in significant ways. Soja grounded the spatial theory in the material showing a practical example of how space and urban planning works. In the dialectic, Soja suggests that for someone to seek spatial justice, it is paramount to commence from the new theoretical ground, which is a foundation of the social, historical and the spatial justice. The theory can be used to determine who is to take serious charge among those seeking spatial justice or those engaging in blocking spatial justice achievements. In the dialect, there is a need to pay attention to spatial justice that is evident from Sojas explanation of the concept. He explains the meaning of spatial justice, its evolution and how the concept reinforces some of the primary work of civil society organizations and activists in urban development. From the social dialectic, Urban Revolution and spatial praxis were linked directly to the reproduction of the social relations of production, that is, the means whereby the capitalist system as a whole can extend its existence by maintaining its defining structures.

The spatial problematic and its social implications at the regional and international levels hinges upon the importance assigned to uneven geographical development in the origin, growth, survival, and transformation of capitalism. It depends upon the degree to which Mandels assertion that the unequal development of regions and nations is as fundamental to capitalism as the direct exploitation of labor by capital. Socio-spatial dialectic, therefore, leads to various international transformations (Seo 157). Conferring to Soja, there are some advantages and disadvantages attached to a location in the space. Some of the dissimilarities are relatively inconsequential while others are oppressive. Even though human beings cannot avoid spatial injustice, he opened people's mind and gave insights on its existence and the processes that gave rise to it. The processes are from a wide range of areas such global developments like climatic change, cross-border world trade, investment, international growth like the drawing of electoral boundaries and regional progress like the siting of a new industry, school, bus route or railways. Proletariats thus concentrates in joint regions because of those factors. The concentration of the proletariats in industrial areas and towns makes them aware of their common interests. On that basis, they being to build institutions, such as unions to articulate their claims. Furthermore, the modern systems of communications put workers of different localities in contact with each other thus allowing the numerous local struggles between classes.

In conclusion, to think spatially is the kernel of a move towards social justice. The achievement of social justice is not absolute unless the practical application is made instead of it remaining only as a thought. From the social dialectic, the keyword application is the key to critical spatial awareness as Soja explained.

Works Cited

Seo, Bongman. Socio-Spatial dialectics of crisis formation and the 1997 crisis in Korea. Geoforum, vol. 45, 2013, pp. 156167.