Seminar (TURBA Lab): "The Territorial-Structure Approach in Danish Marxist Geography"

Program

Abstract

Radical geography came only patchily to Nordic geography, and the development of theoretical Marxist geography was even sparser. But in the radical geography environment at Copenhagen University, a group of geographers in the 1970s developed a vocal and self-assured Marxist theory, which became known as the territorial-structure approach and drew its inspiration from the work of the GDR geographer Gerhard Schmidt-Renner. In this chapter we present a critical discussion of the territorial-structure approach as an example of an early theorisation of geography from a Marxist perspective. We discuss the central controversies that came to surround the approach, and we discuss the territorial-structure approach as a conscious effort to resist disciplinary specialisation and fragmentation of (human) geography. Our aim is not to resurrect the territorial-structure approach, but rather to investigate this theory as an important step towards socio-spatial theory in Nordic geography.

Peter Jakobsen

Geographer educated at Aalborg University and Lund University. He is now a doctoral candidate in human geography at Uppsala University. His current research is about the history of Marxist geography in Denmark and the Scandinavian countries. He is coeditor of the newly published book Socio-Spatial Theory in Nordic Geography, and he has previously also been involved in research on alternative housing.