We’re pleased to make available here a Spanish-language translation of one of our most downloaded papers, Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell’s “Neoliberalizing Space” (the original English version is free to access here).
The journal’s “translation and outreach programme” has, in recent years, been focused on facilitating engagement with scholarship from outside the English-speaking world – breaking down some of the barriers between language communities, enabling hitherto under-represented groups, regions, countries and institutions to enrich conversations and debates in Antipode. Whether new or already published, we look for important papers that have been formative in a given field, at a certain time – papers that have contributed to theory and/or had implications for praxis.
While this search continues, we were delighted when Antipode-author and good friend of the journal, Jerónimo Montero Bressán (a researcher of the Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas [CONICET-Argentina] at the Instituto de Altos Estudios Sociales, Universidad Nacional de San Martín), got in touch with a plan to take Antipode to Latin America. As Jeró explains…
The article has been translated for its use in postgraduate courses in Latin America, facilitating the access to it for students with difficulties to read English. It is the most cited article in Antipode’s history, meaning that it has had a critical impact on debates about neoliberalism in Anglophone geography. In it, Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell, two of the most renowned geographers in Anglophone social science, present an excellent analysis of some of the most influential political and institutional transformations in the last four decades. Having passed two decades from when it was first published, the article holds importance today for two main reasons. Firstly, despite its numerous defeats in many areas and places, neoliberalism still is the dominant political ideology. To see it as an ongoing process continues to be methodologically adequate. Secondly, it is remarkable the way in which the authors scape the risks of the “empirical turn” identified by Neil Smith in 1987 (also in Antipode), which has led to a whole wave of “excessively concrete and contingent analyses”, while avoiding “overgeneralized accounts” that obscure the complexities of the processes under study. The balance between the importance given to the more structural aspects, on the one hand, and the local and contingent ones, on the other hand, and the way the authors illustrate their mutually constitutive nature together with the processes of rescaling so critical to neoliberalisation, embodies the most adequate and powerful way to approach processes affecting the lives of millions in many parts of the world.
El artículo fue traducido para su uso en cursos de posgrado en América Latina, asegurando su acceso a los y las estudiantes con dificultades para comprender el inglés. Se trata del artículo más citado en la historia de Antipode, por lo que su impacto en los debates sobre neoliberalismo en la geografía anglófona es fundamental. En este, Jamie Peck y Adam Tickell, dos de los más reconocidos geógrafos anglófona, presentan un excelente análisis sobre algunas de las transformaciones políticas e institucionales más influyentes de las últimas cuatro décadas. A pesar de haber pasado casi dos décadas desde su publicación, el artículo tiene relevancia actual por dos razones. En primer lugar, el neoliberalismo sigue siendo la ideología política dominante a pesar de sus múltiples derrotas en muchas áreas y lugares. Verlo como un proceso en desarrollo sigue siendo metodológicamente adecuado. En segundo lugar, resulta destacable el modo en que los autores escapan a los riesgos del “giro empiricista” identificado por Neil Smith en 1987, que ha llevado a una verdadera avalancha de “análisis excesivamente concretos y contingentes”, a la vez que evita las sobre generalizaciones que oscurecen las complejidades de los procesos bajo estudio. El balance que los autores hacen entre el peso de los aspectos más estructurales y los locales, la forma en que destacan su naturaleza mutuamente constitutiva junto a los procesos de re-escalamiento de poderes, atribuciones y responsabilidades tan centrales para la neoliberalización, encarna la aproximación con mayor potencial explicativo a procesos que afectan las condiciones de vida de millones de personas en buena parte del mundo.
You can download “La Neoliberalización del Espacio” here.
Many thanks to Jeró for his brilliant work, to Jamie Peck for his assistance, and to Wiley for granting permission to publish here.
Jamie Peck and Adam Tickell (2002) Neoliberalizing space. Antipode 34(3):380-404 https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8330.00247
© 2002 The Authors. Antipode © 2020 Antipode Foundation Ltd.