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A system of transfer from one group or place to another, usually articulated by a mediating institution or group of institutions (e.g. the state). Redistribution is one of the general concerns of welfare geography and its examination played a central role in Harvey\'s preliminary, so-called \'liberal\' formulations of the relationships between social justice and spatial systems (Harvey, 1973, chs 2 and 3). But as Harvey subsequently recognized in his \'socialist\' reformulations (especially ch. 6), redistribution was, more specifically, one of three forms of economic integration identified by Karl Polanyi and linked with a characteristic spatial pattern. Thus, \'redistribution designates appropriational movements toward a centre and out of it again\' (Polanyi, in Dalton, 1968). These centrifugal and centripetal flows were supposed to be in marked contrast to other forms of exchange, notably reciprocity, because they allowed for the concentration of a surplus. Hence, Harvey identified redistribution with hierarchical, rank societies and, following Wheatley (1971), claimed that \'the conditions that enabled the transformation from reciprocity to redistribution were crucial for the emergence of urbanism; they were instrumental in concentrating surplus product in a few hands and in a few places\' (Harvey, 1973). Much of the debate over urban origins accepts the crucial importance of this transformation, but controversy continues over the nature of its \'conditions\'. Wheatley (1971) emphasizes the formative significance of religion, while Harvey regards it as \'super-structural\' and instead accentuates the classical Marxian \'base\' in the economy itself (Harvey, 1973, p. 227; see also Harvey, 1972). But redistribution is not confined to the distant past and, returning to his original theme of social justice, Harvey (1973, pp. 274-84) drew attention to reciprocity and redistribution as \'countervailing forces to market exchange in the contemporary metropolis\'. He was writing before the rise of the New Right, however, and as he subsequently acknowledged, the 1970s and 1980s witnessed a \'political attack on redistributive politics\' throughout the West and, eventually, the articulation of a \'post-welfare geography\' (see Bennett, 1989): one of the most pervasive features of what he now described as the post-Keynesian transition was thus inter-urban competition for redistribution (Harvey, 1985, p. 218). (See also aid.)Â (DG)
References Bennett, R. 1989: Whither models and geography in a post-welfarist world? In B. Macmillan, ed., Remodelling geography. Oxford: Blackwell, 274-90. Dalton, G., ed., 1968: Primitive, archaic and modern economies: essays of Karl Polanyi. Boston: Beacon Press. Harvey, D. 1972: Review of Paul Wheatley\'s Pivot of the four quarters. Annals of the Association of American Geographers 62: 509-13. Harvey, D. 1973: Social justice and the city. London: Edward Arnold; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press. Harvey, D. 1985: The urbanization of capital. London: Blackwell. Wheatley, P. 1971: The pivot of the four quarters. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press; Chicago: Aldine.
Suggested Reading Harvey (1973), chs 2 and 6. Wheatley, P. 1975: Satyantra in Suvarnadvipa: from reciprocity to redistribution in ancient S.E. Asia. In J.A. Sabloff and C.C. Lamberg-Karlovsky, eds, Ancient civilization and trade. Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, ch. 6. |
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