Uneven Development in Capitalist Societies: Changing Spatial Divisions of Labour, Forms of Spatial Organization of Production and Service Provision, and Their Impacts on Localities

Abstract

Uneven development is an endemic characteristic of capitalist societies. Understanding uneven development necessitates both theorizing about the social structure of capitalist societies and empirical investigations of facets of uneven development that are informed by such theorizations. Considerable progress has been made in recent years by human geographers and other social scientists in exploring the links between the social relations of capitalism and the spatial patterning of capitalist societies. This has revealed the variety of spatial forms that production of goods and provision of services can take and the ways in which these combine to produce different forms of uneven development over space. This general point is illustrated by drawing on research in three different locations: the old industrial regions and countries of western Europe; the semi-peripheral countries of southern Europe; and the newly industrializing Gulf States of the Middle East.