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The Violence of Abstract Space: Contested Regional Developments in Southern Mexico

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  • Japhy Wilson

Abstract

The article proposes a reinterpretation of Henri Lefebvre's concept of abstract space, emphasizing the significance of the ‘violence of abstraction’ within the concept itself, and within the concrete process of the capitalist production of space. This interpretation of abstract space is developed through the case of the Plan Puebla Panama (PPP) as an ‘actually existing’ abstract space. Launched in 2001 and abandoned in 2008, the PPP was a regional development programme for southern Mexico and Central America, which aimed to transform this region from a peripheral zone of peasant agriculture and social unrest into a modernized node of the global economy through the construction of infrastructure networks and the restructuring of economic activity. Focusing on southern Mexico, I explore the symbolic, structural and direct forms of violence embodied in the PPP: its abstraction from the lived spaces of the region; its incorporation of the region into global circuits of capital; and its repression of a network of place-based resistances.

Suggested Citation

  • Japhy Wilson, 2014. "The Violence of Abstract Space: Contested Regional Developments in Southern Mexico," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 516-538, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:ijurrs:v:38:y:2014:i:2:p:516-538
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    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1111/1468-2427.12023
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    1. Kanishka Goonewardena & Stefan Kipfer, 2005. "Spaces of Difference: Reflections from Toronto on Multiculturalism, Bourgeois Urbanism and the Possibility of Radical Urban Politics," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 29(3), pages 670-678, September.
    2. Mark Purcell, 2003. "Citizenship and the right to the global city: reimagining the capitalist world order," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(3), pages 564-590, September.
    3. Patricia M Martin, 2005. "Comparative Topographies of Neoliberalism in Mexico," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 37(2), pages 203-220, February.
    4. Kevin Fox Gotham, 2009. "Creating Liquidity out of Spatial Fixity: The Secondary Circuit of Capital and the Subprime Mortgage Crisis," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 33(2), pages 355-371, June.
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    Cited by:

    1. Anke Schwarz & Monika Streule, 2016. "A Transposition of Territory: Decolonized Perspectives in Current Urban Research," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(5), pages 1000-1016, September.
    2. Martín Arboleda, 2016. "Spaces of Extraction, Metropolitan Explosions: Planetary Urbanization and the Commodity Boom in Latin America," International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 40(1), pages 96-112, January.

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